Gates, Ex-Officer Continue Finger-Pointing Over Riots : Police: Two careers unraveled with failure to control mob. Retired lieutenant has sued former chief for slander.

In the gathering twilight of the Los Angeles riots and the volatile trials that bracketed them, two fallen soldiers of the Los Angeles Police Department are waging one final battle over the most pivotal moment in the mayhem that engulfed the city last year.

On one side is former LAPD Lt. Michael Moulin, who was in charge of a group of officers at the intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues on April 29, 1992. On the other is the man who headed the LAPD for 13 years, former Chief Daryl F. Gates.

Both Moulin and Gates saw their mostly distinguished careers come crashing down after the department’s failure to stem the racial violence at Florence and Normandie. And both say a lawsuit working its way through the court system may finally settle the question of who was responsible for that embarrassing performance.

If the case goes to trial, the winner will emerge with at least a measure of his good name restored. The loser could be branded forever--either as a liar or a coward.

Their dispute dates to a news conference held just one week after the riots had been contained. On that day, Gates told reporters that an LAPD lieutenant had been right to withdraw from Florence and Normandie but wrong not to quickly regain control of the intersection.

“He had a responsibility to regroup and form up in squads and obtain additional people and go back to that location and clean it up,” Gates said at the May 8, 1992, news conference. “Unfortunately, he did not do that. . . . That was a mistake.”

Moulin, a 21-year veteran of the LAPD, was at home watching television when Gates made those remarks. Even though Gates did not use his name, the lieutenant knew instantly he was being singled out.

“That was the end of my career,” Moulin, now retired from the LAPD, said in a recent interview. “I knew there was no recovering.”

To clear his name, Moulin hired one of the nation’s premier libel lawyers, Barry Langberg, who filed suit, alleging that Gates slandered Moulin, invaded Moulin’s privacy and intentionally caused him emotional distress. In the suit, Moulin seeks at least $30 million and blames Gates for the public safety failure, alleging that the LAPD had done virtually nothing to prepare for possible rioting.

Since the bitterly contested suit was filed in October, 1992, both sides have been fighting over whether the case should ever be allowed to go to trial. A Superior Court judge is considering motions by Gates’ lawyers to have it thrown out, primarily on the grounds that the chief merely was stating his opinions and never sought to harm Moulin. The lieutenant’s lawyers have countered in legal papers that Gates maliciously took out after Moulin to shield himself from mounting criticism.

Neither charges of slander nor the threat of a multimillion-dollar judgment have been enough to put a muzzle on the irascible Daryl Gates.

“This guy screwed up so badly,” Gates said last week of his former subordinate. “He truly deserves whatever he gets.”

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When Moulin and about two dozen officers arrived at Florence and Normandie in the late afternoon, shortly after a Simi Valley jury’s not guilty verdicts in the trial of the four LAPD officers accused of beating Rodney G. King, the crowd was about 200 strong and growing. Officers were pelted with bottles and bricks. They worried about snipers.

“I was not going to place the men and women in my division under my command in a position where they might have to use deadly force,” Moulin said in the recent interview. “We just plain didn’t have the resources to handle what was happening in that location.”

Tapes of the radio transmissions from that evening reveal Moulin issuing the order to pull out. “I want everybody out of here,” Moulin said. “Florence and Normandie. Everybody. Get out. Now.”

Moulin helped a New York Times photographer who had been assaulted, and later sent a helicopter and patrol car to rescue another victim from the intersection. That car also came under attack as it pulled away, and the radio tapes feature Moulin again and again ordering all other cars away from the intersection and to a nearby command post.

Other police officers can be heard on the tapes excitedly expressing their bewilderment: “We don’t know what the f--- is going on. What the f--- are we doing here?”

In the weeks immediately after the riots, Gates supported Moulin’s decision to withdraw from Florence and Normandie, saying the lieutenant had a right to assess the danger and back off. But in the interview last week, Gates hardened his position.

“What we had was a major 415,” Gates said, referring to the police code for a disturbance of the peace. “I’ve never in my career seen a lieutenant walk away from a major 415.”

What angered Gates far more, however, was that once Moulin had withdrawn he did not immediately turn around and head back into the fray. Moulin says he sought direction from his superiors. According to Moulin, they dawdled.

They disagree. Then-Capt. Paul Jefferson, now the police chief in Modesto, has said he ordered Moulin back into the field. Other officers who saw Moulin that night said he seemed overwhelmed.

“Mike looked like he had gone 15 rounds with Cassius Clay,” said Lt. Mike Hillman, a Metro division officer who was near Florence and Normandie that night and who echoes Gates’ assessment of Moulin’s conduct. “You do not leave, period. You do not let it go. You call in for help.”

Still, Moulin has his backers.

“There are a lot of people here who support what you did and who stand by you,” three of Moulin’s officers wrote to him. “The people who are criticizing you are the people who weren’t there. We were there, and we know we did the right thing.”

The letter concludes: “Hang in there, Lt. Don’t let the pencil-neck geeks get you down.”

What all sides agree on is that during the half an hour or so that the violence built to a crescendo at Florence and Normandie, at least 100 Los Angeles police officers stood by at a nearby command post or in their vehicles. While the LAPD waited, Reginald O. Denny pulled his truck into the intersection and was set upon by a violent mob that already had beaten and robbed a number of other victims--all of it captured on live television.

Department critics say the absence of LAPD officers emboldened other rioters to flood the streets.

In the riots’ immediate aftermath, reporters investigating the causes of the violence focused much of their attention on the department’s inability to protect citizens from the mayhem that erupted at that intersection.

Under mounting pressure, Gates said he asked a few senior officers to investigate the response to Florence and Normandie, and they quickly fixed the blame on Moulin. Although Gates insists he did not set out to hurt the lieutenant when he spoke to the press in the week after the riots, he says he chastised Moulin--without naming him--to deflect the criticism being leveled at the rank and file.

“They were being typed as being chicken,” Gates said.

Jesse A. Brewer, a former assistant police chief who was then serving as a member of the Police Commission, listened to Gates that day. And Brewer, one of the most respected figures in Los Angeles law enforcement, did not like what he heard.

When Gates maintained that he was trying to absolve rank-and-file officers, Brewer interpreted the chief’s comments as an attempt to clear himself. Gates was by then under fire for leaving police headquarters as the riots were gaining steam so he could attend a Brentwood cocktail party of his supporters.

“Whenever something happens on your watch and you’re responsible for it,” Brewer said in a recent interview, You shouldn’t lay out one of your subordinates.”

Moreover, while Gates insists he did not mean to single out Moulin, he spent the next several months repeating his criticism again and again, occasionally using the lieutenant’s name. He criticized him on television’s “Inside Edition,” on the “Donahue” show and in other interviews. He continued repeating his position even after Moulin filed suit.

Some of those programs initially were sued by Moulin as well. An indignant Phil Donahue has filed a declaration with the court proclaiming that he was only doing his job.

“In the best journalistic traditions,” said Donahue, “I put Chief Gates on the defensive and forced him to try to explain his actions and opinions.”

Moulin’s lawyers ultimately dropped Donahue and the other programs from the suit, leaving only Gates, the city of Los Angeles and KFI, the local radio station that employs Gates as a talk show host, as defendants.

To win his case, Moulin needs to show that Gates lied about him and that he did so maliciously. And as part of that, he and his lawyers hope to show that the real fault for the riots’ destructive toll lies with the chief himself. It was Gates, they argue, who failed to prepare the LAPD for violence, who left Parker Center for Brentwood and who ultimately was responsible for the actions of the Police Department.

The Webster Commission, which studied the LAPD response to the riots, did not resolve the question of Moulin’s responsibility but concluded that no specific riot plan was in place and sharply criticized Gates for his leadership of the department and his actions on the opening night of the unrest.

The commission found that the LAPD’s command structure was riddled with problems and said that “Chief Gates himself cannot justify his decision to take a leisurely car ride to a Brentwood political event at this critical time.”

When the smoke from the riots had cleared, Gates and Moulin both were among the wounded. Moulin returned to work once, for a few hours, and then left, saying the pressure was too much for him. In September, he retired on a stress pension. Today, he stews at home, focusing all his energy on the lawsuit that he hopes will finally clear his name.

Gates made a softer landing, eventually giving up his job as chief but gaining a new spotlight as a radio talk show host. Two years later, he is still outspoken and visible--and, if anything, even more strident in his criticism of the city leadership and the breakdown that he says caused Los Angeles to burn.

And yet, while they disagree about almost everything else, Moulin and Gates share one thing--a sense of pain over the violence that tore through the city and discharged them both from the department they had served for decades.

“What I want I can’t have,” Moulin said. “To erase the bad memories since April 29, to see our community whole again, without the tremendous loss of life and damage. I loved my job. I would like to see my wife and my daughter not to have gone through the hardships that they have gone through. Those are things that I can’t have.”

As always, Gates is more brusque. But he too has been scorched. And he too wants vindication.

“This has been a very, very difficult time,” Gates said. “I’m hailed by the President one day and attacked the next. I ask myself: ‘What in the hell did I do?’ ”