Here We Go Again

They snuck him in through the kitchen. About 10 camera crews had staked out the front entrance of the Universal Sheraton, hoping to catch Willie Williams as he arrived for a luncheon to honor hero cops and firefighters. This was Thursday, a day when the lead headline leaping out from news racks across Los Angeles spoke of Williams in a way that conjured up an infamous bit of Nixon-ese: “ ‘I Am Not a Liar,’ Police Chief Declares.”

No, and also not a crook . . . and, more to the point, not a recipient of casino freebies or an unfocused and floundering administrator--no matter what the leaked personnel memos claimed. While Williams had issued a modified limited defense of himself on television the night before, there still was much left to ask the chief. He, however, apparently was not eager to elaborate. Smirking LAPD functionaries came out and informed the news crews that the chief had given them the slip. He already was inside.

Outmaneuvered but undaunted, the pack rushed into the ballroom and found Williams seated at a front table. Klieg lights flicked on. Cameras rolled. Questions were hollered. Who was behind the leaks? Did you lie to the Police Commission, Chief? Can you hang on? Williams only glared. “Get the press out of here,” he snapped at an aide, turning his broad back to the cameras.

His behavior was not that of a police chief about to participate in the happy ritual of heaping praise on L.A.’s finest. His behavior was that of prey, of one more public official caught in the cross hairs. And it was not pretty to see, for reasons that go far beyond the question of who picked up the tab in Crystal City.

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Only three years have passed since Los Angeles--torn apart by Rodney King and 13 months of subsequent revelations about police racism and brutality and, finally, a full-blown riot--summoned Williams from Philadelphia. He was supposed to mark the end of many things. The end of the old boy clique at Parker Center. The end of paramilitary police strategies. The end of midnight beatings--whether captured by amateur camcorders or not--and of crude computer chatter among officers about “gorillas in the mist” and “who be the parties?” and so forth.

In short, Williams arrived in Los Angeles as a symbol of hope, a hulking angel on a mission to reassemble a department thoroughly ripped apart in the final months of his predecessor. And now, halfway through his first five-year term, he instead finds himself stuck in a burgeoning scandal that, in many ways, smells a lot like the usual old business.

While a complimentary Las Vegas hotel room in no way compares to the King beating, the abundant indications of a coming political struggle over who should run the Police Department and how are depressingly familiar. These are questions supposedly put to rest three years ago. It was enjoyable, the period of calm that followed Williams’ arrival. No one seemed to miss the daily dispatches from the bloody war between City Hall and Parker Center. Now the struggle resumes. New players, same game.

Reading between the lines, Williams’ main sin appears to have been not treating police commissioners like his bosses. Moreover, he has been at odds with Mayor Richard Riordan over how to go about keeping the mayor’s central campaign promise to beef up police presence on the streets. The rank-and-file officers, finally, seem unsure whether Williams works first for them or for the citizenry. That the distinction still is made demonstrates just how big a task Williams took on in the first place.

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Whatever the pretense, someone has calculated that Williams is vulnerable. There is no other explanation for the public circulation of personnel records. The end game is obvious. Anyone who was around Los Angeles three years ago can explain. Listen, for example, to the elderly mother of a veteran officer who attended the awards ceremony Thursday.

“That they are picking on him over such little things,” she volunteered, “shows that really they are just out to get him.”

But don’t you wonder who ‘they’ is? her son was asked.

“Yes,” the cop in blue said quietly, “you wonder.”

Whoever “they” may be--and speculation runs from Riordan to loyalists of the previous LAPD regime--their gunning for Williams has commenced. And so the internal memos have started to leak. And so the LAPD old boys can be heard all over the radio, licking their chops, claiming to speak for cops “on the beat” who want Williams out. And so the political wind readers have begun to assess just what side to take: “The chief,” said a veteran of the battle three years ago, “has just one card to play, and that’s his popular support. There is no telling how this will turn out.” And so here we go again.