Riordan Appoints Diverse Police Panel : Commission: Valley car dealer Herbert F. Boeckmann II returns.

Herbert F. Boeckmann II, the millionaire San Fernando Valley car dealer who was named Friday to the high-profile Los Angeles Police Commission for the second time, has strong conservative beliefs but as a policy maker does not always follow a rigidly conservative line.

Boeckmann, the Valley’s top political contributor, is a fixture in Valley business and Republican circles who backed television evangelist Pat Robertson’s unsuccessful 1988 presidential campaign and was criticized Friday by some civil rights leaders as an apologist for former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

Others, however, said Boeckmann’s actions during his previous seven years on the police commission were not predictably conservative.

“I know Bert is a conservative Republican, but you could never tell that in his public actions as a police commissioner,” recalled Phil Depoian, who was ex-mayor Tom Bradley’s liaison to the Police Commission when Boeckmann served on that body from 1984 to 1991. Boeckmann resigned in 1991, protesting that the new city ethics law’s financial disclosure requirements--since changed--were an invasion of privacy.

Riordan, in announcing the appointment of the 62-year-old president of Galpin Motors, Inc., said he was confident Boeckmann and his four other commission appointees would work well with reform-minded Police Chief Willie L. Williams.

But some critics still charged Friday that as a commissioner during Gates’ reign, Boeckmann had been too accommodating to the controversial chief and too accepting of a department troubled by scores of lawsuits charging officers with excessive force.

“Boeckmann, unfortunately, represents a retread from the Gates era and that is troubling,” said John W. Mack, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Urban League. “We are concerned that he will not be a vigorous champion of the reforms that are needed in the department.”

But when asked by reporters if the prior commission on which he served could not be blamed in part for the city’s police abuse problems and the costly litigation they bred, Boeckmann replied during Friday’s jam-packed news conference: “I don’t think responsibility for those multimillion-dollar lawsuits can be laid at my feet.”

Boeckmann, in an interview later Friday, also refused to hold the tough-talking Gates culpable for creating an atmosphere that encouraged police excesses, including the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney G. King.

“I don’t think the King affair was due to Daryl Gates’ hip-shooting,” Boeckmann said.

Boeckmann said he hoped to use his time on the commission “to make the city safer,” to improve Police Department morale and to see that officers are better trained to deal tactfully with the public.

“I’d like to see more training in the human relations area,” he said. “I feel very strongly about this.”

Boeckmann recalled an incident that he had witnessed years ago during a ride-along with officers that he said still troubled him. At that time, two men who resembled suspects in a murder investigation were stopped and questioned by police, who, however, never explained to the pair after they were released why they had been interrogated.

It was insensitive not to have explained to the two men why they had been detained and the experience probably left a bitter taste in their mouths, he said.

In Friday’s interview, Boeckmann reiterated his support for the overall reform program outlined in the Christopher Commission report without, however, letting himself be pinned down on individual recommendations in that report.

Boeckmann also said he could not recall what his position had been on Charter Amendment F, the June, 1992, ballot measure that stripped the police chief of job protections and strengthened police disciplinary rules. Gates and the police union strongly opposed the measure.

Meanwhile, Boeckmann’s appointment thrilled conservative Valley residents. “He’s Mr. San Fernando Valley--a pillar of this community and a wonderful selection,” said state Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills).

But Boeckmann also won kudos from veterans of the Bradley Administration as a hard-working, fair-minded commissioner during the 1980s. “I feel very comfortable with Bert Boeckmann,” Depoian said. “I don’t see him being a problem at all when it comes, for example, to implementing the Christopher Commission reforms or working with Chief Williams.”

As for his performance during the Gates years, Depoian said that Boeckmann, like many others, had perhaps failed to restrain Gates. “All of us are perhaps guilty of having hoped that if we ignored the problem it would go away,” Depoian said.

Boeckmann made his biggest mark as a commissioner in the 1980s when he headed a task force responsible for improving the time it took the department’s officers to respond to calls for assistance and for developing a new formula for deploying officers throughout the city.

Boeckmann abruptly resigned from the commission in March, 1991, because he objected to complying with a newly enacted financial disclosure law that he considered too intrusive. According to two sources, Boeckmann specifically complained about having to disclose the financial interests of his five children and report his investment in a venture to obtain automobile franchises in Russia.

“He thought it was like giving out trade secrets to his competitors,” said one source. Boeckmann denied Friday that these were his real concerns, but he declined to elaborate.

Boeckmann, a self-made millionaire with a wide-range of financial interests, said he can live with the city’s current reporting requirements because they have been significantly relaxed by subsequent court rulings.

For years, Boeckmann has been a powerful fixture in Valley GOP and civic circles. In 1976 he received the long-standing Fernando Award for community activism in Valley matters. He has also been, with his wife Jane, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Valley Magazine, one of the most outspoken champions of plans for an ambitious arts complex in the Sepulveda Basin.

Boeckmann has been a longtime member of Church on the Way, a conservative Protestant congregation in Van Nuys aligned with the denomination formed by flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson.

The base for Boeckmann’s financial holdings has been Galpin Motors, Inc. Boeckmann is president of that company as well as Galpin Hyundai, Inc. and Galpin Lincoln-Mercury, Inc.

Boeckmann, who lives in Northridge, also has been an active investor in real estate, and is currently a partner with a controversial Irvine-based firm, Southwest Diversified Inc.