Chief Sees Riordan as Force in Controversy, Sources Say : LAPD: Williams tells backers he thinks mayor is using aides, appointees to orchestrate criticism. They reject claim.

From his modestly appointed office on the sixth floor of Parker Center, Police Chief Willie L. Williams oversees a landscape suddenly dotted with conflicts and adversaries. And behind almost every problem, according to sources close to the chief, Williams sees the face of Mayor Richard Riordan.

The five police commissioners who have criticized Williams’ management and who have reprimanded him for allegedly lying all were appointed by Riordan. Popular high-ranking LAPD officers whom Williams allegedly perceives as threats--most notably, Deputy Chiefs Bernard Parks and Mark Kroeker--are said to enjoy Riordan’s high regard.

And the man Riordan tapped as his deputy mayor for public safety, William Violante, was formerly the head of the rank-and-file police union and was an outspoken critic of the chief. Although Violante has refrained from attacking Williams since joining the mayor’s staff, sources say Williams remains wary of him.

In private conversations with supporters, Williams has cited some of those circumstances and has said he believes the controversy surrounding him is being orchestrated directly or indirectly by Riordan and his staff. The chief’s attorney, Melanie Lomax, has framed Williams’ battles with the Police Commission as a veiled attempt by Riordan to knock down a political rival and replace him with a chief of his own.

“This is just so disgustingly and obviously partisan,” said Lomax, who, in an interview this week, vigorously contested what she called the “mayorally appointed Police Commission’s political selfishness and Machiavellian expediency.”

On Thursday, Williams declined to comment about his relationship with the mayor. Lomax also refused to discuss the topic, saying only that “the chief wants to refrain from getting involved in destructive politics.”

Riordan, police commissioners and Police Department sources deny that the mayor is behind both the May 16 reprimand of Williams for allegedly lying to the commission about accepting free accommodations from a Las Vegas hotel-casino and the recently disclosed Police Department memos documenting the commission’s unhappiness with his job performance.

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Williams has not commented on the confidential job performance memos except to accuse whoever leaked them to The Times of trying to damage him. He has denied any wrongdoing regarding the Las Vegas trips, insisting that the dispute is the result of a misunderstanding with the commission and memorably proclaiming: “I am not a liar.”

Riordan declined to comment on the recent controversy surrounding Williams, but he has previously made clear that his enthusiasm for the chief’s management is somewhat tempered.

“The mayor thinks the chief’s done an admirable job repairing relations with the community, but he’s also made no secret of the fact that there’s room for improvement,” said Noelia Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for Riordan. “He’s said that directly to the chief. He’s not going around behind Williams’ back.”

In a December interview, Riordan expressed guarded concern about the chief’s management style. Citing his own practice of delegating responsibility and then holding subordinates responsible for results, Riordan told The Times: “That’s a style that the chief is learning. I think he’s had a little trouble learning it, but I think he’s doing well at that now.”

The specter of a police chief and mayor at odds has renewed fears of the paralysis that accompanied the breakdown in relations between Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and Mayor Tom Bradley during the early 1990s, particularly after the beating of Rodney G. King. More than a year went by with those two leaders barely speaking to each other, and their lack of communication was cited by some as a complicating problem during the early hours of the 1992 riots.

Already, the relationship between Williams and the Police Commission shows signs of strain. Commissioner Gary Greenebaum and the chief appeared Thursday afternoon for a meeting with The Times editorial board. The two men, who have previously toured the city to stump jointly for projects, did not speak and barely made eye contact.

As for Williams’ relationship with the mayor, aides to the two men said that their bosses continue to speak and conduct official business. While their relationship has never been especially close, it has not broken off altogether, the aides said.

“The mayor and the chief work together,” said Rodriguez, the mayor’s press secretary. “They continue to talk and to deal with problems. They speak to each other.”

The mayor may be speaking to Williams in private, but he has done little publicly to defend the embattled chief, a silence that some observers interpret as evidence that Riordan has not been terribly troubled by the travails of his police chief. Rather than voice his confidence in Williams this week, Riordan’s public comments have been limited to expressing faith in the professionalism of the police commissioners and bemoaning the public disclosure of some of the chief’s personnel records.

While Riordan held his tongue, some of the police commissioners he appointed expressed their indignation at the suggestion that they are merely ciphers for a politically driven mayor.

The commissioners say their moves have been motivated solely by a desire to fulfill their role as the policy-makers for the LAPD and that their conclusions in the personnel matter were unanimous. This, despite the diversity of a panel that includes a black woman lawyer, a white male car dealer, an openly gay executive who volunteered as a Police Department reserve officer, a Latino businessman with a law degree and a rabbi with a long history of social work.

When the nominations of those commissioners were reviewed by the City Council for confirmation, members praised the panel’s mix. They especially commended Riordan for his selection of Rabbi Greenebaum, an outspoken supporter of police reform who had worked on the campaign to win approval for Charter Amendment F, the legislative package that was intended to usher in a new era for the LAPD.

“At the beginning of our tenure as police commissioners, the mayor said to us: ‘Don’t micro-manage the Police Department. I’m not going to micro-manage you,’ ” Greenebaum said Thursday.

Although Greenebaum declined to comment on the commission’s reprimand of Williams or on the personnel records reported by The Times, he added: “To the extent that we’ve had personnel difficulties with the chief, the mayor is in no way close enough to the situation to have played a role. . . . The mayor is not behind this.”

Commission President Enrique Hernandez Jr. agreed: “The mayor has never done anything that I infer to be an attempt to influence the commission’s work. Ever.”

The chief’s perception that Riordan is at least partly to blame for the controversy has added yet another complexity to the debate over Williams’ performance: By pitting a black chief against a white mayor, it threatens to turn a management dispute into a racial one.

Supporters and critics of the chief say they want to avoid that spectacle, but there are quiet grumblings about Riordan’s treatment of Williams and Franklin E. White, the MTA chief, who also came under fire and is black.

Last spring, a group of community leaders held a dinner at the Biltmore Hotel to show support for black city administrators. Williams and White were among those honored.

Coincidentally, supporters of Deputy Chief Parks held a party honoring his anniversary with the LAPD that same evening. Riordan attended the function for Parks, who is black.

As the chief and commission square off, two potentially key players, the Los Angeles Police Protective League and the Command Officers Assn., have stayed on the sidelines, nervous about entering the fray. In the past, both groups have tangled with Williams over different issues, and some members of each group would like to voice their discontent with the chief soon, perhaps by holding votes of no-confidence in Williams.

Others in the groups have resisted, partly because so much uncertainty surrounds the allegations involving Williams. Members of the two organizations say they are not sure exactly what caused the Police Commission to conclude Williams lied to the board, and the officers are reluctant to venture an opinion about their chief’s culpability without having all the details.

“It’s a simple matter of fairness,” said Hank Hernandez, general counsel to the Protective League, which represents rank-and-file officers. “We need to ensure that before we do anything that we have all the facts. We would expect nothing less if it was one of our members in this situation.”