LAPD Reportedly Drifts as Chief Williams Struggles : Law enforcement: He denies that the department is languishing. Basic policing is largely unaffected.

As Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams fights the most serious battle of his professional life, the department he commands is drifting toward paralysis, some of its top leaders frozen by uncertainty, divided loyalties and fading confidence in their boss, according to sources in and around the LAPD.

Basic policing is largely unaffected: Arrests continue unabated, detectives still are out solving cases and crime is down citywide, as it is across the nation.

But sources say ambitious Police Department missions such as the effort to implement community-based policing are handicapped by rifts at the top ranks of the department and by dwindling confidence in Williams--a problem that dates back for more than a year but which has become worse in recent weeks. In addition, sources inside the department and observers say Williams has become isolated from much of his command staff, seeking advice only from a select few.

Williams--in his first interview since being accused of lying to the Police Commission about receiving free accommodations at a Las Vegas hotel and since documents detailing the commission’s dissatisfaction with his leadership were made public--acknowledged that relations with a few members of his top staff are tenuous. But he said he believes that most of his subordinates support him, and he vigorously denied that the department is languishing.

“I think at least 90% of the command staff come in and do a good job every day and to some degree or another actively work to support me as the chief of police and me as Willie Williams,” the chief said. “There are differences of opinion about style, decisions and direction of the organization. That’s going to always be here.”

Acknowledging some dissent among his high-level officers, Williams added: “It may be there, but it’s not having a major impact on the positive, upward movement of the department. That’s the bottom line.”

Some of Williams’ top aides agree, but all acknowledge that the last few weeks and months have been trying ones for the organization: “There are a lot of people, including myself, who wish this would just go away,” Assistant Chief Bayan Lewis said of the recent controversy surrounding the chief.

These months have been the most difficult of Williams’ long career, one that stretches over more than three decades and two very different police departments--Philadelphia, a classic East Coast force and the LAPD, the preeminent West Coast department, which has traditionally prided itself on independence from the city’s political Establishment. In that time, Williams has said repeatedly in recent weeks, never has he lied to his bosses or violated the public trust.

And yet, sources say Williams has been reprimanded for allegedly lying about accepting free hotel accommodations in Las Vegas. Internal police documents obtained by The Times, meanwhile, reveal that the commission has also expressed serious reservations about his management abilities--reservations that date back more than a year. Finally, sources say the city Ethics Commission is also inquiring into the Las Vegas matter.

On Friday, Williams asked the City Council to review his reprimand, which Mayor Richard Riordan upheld earlier in the week.

Because of those developments, some LAPD insiders note a growing perception that Williams may be a lame-duck chief--destined to serve two more years at most--and that his successor is probably going to come from within the ranks of his deputy chiefs.

Within the Police Department, two candidates are most often discussed as possible future chiefs, Mark Kroeker of South Bureau and Bernard Parks of Special Investigations. Some attention also has focused on a less experienced but in some ways better-known colleague, Deputy Chief David J. Gascon, who is responsible for overseeing plans to expand the LAPD.

All three have their own overlapping camps of supporters--Gascon and Parks are longtime friends, Kroeker and Parks are mutual admirers and Gascon is one of the few top staff people whose advice Williams solicits--but those around them are moving cautiously for fear of alienating one or another of the deputy chiefs.

The situation has grown so tense that sources say Kroeker recently contemplated leaving the department, only to receive a phone call from Riordan urging him to stay, a call that Kroeker will “neither confirm nor deny.”

Although Williams insists that his ability to manage his command staff is unhindered by the recent controversy--all but two of his 10 deputy and assistant chiefs were promoted to their posts by Williams--other members of the inner circle say there have been explosive blowups recently between Williams and his deputies.

On April 18, the Command Officers’ Assn.--the labor organization that includes LAPD captains, commanders, deputy chiefs and assistant chiefs--met for its regularly scheduled session. During the meeting, conversation turned to a long-rumored set of transfers involving high-ranking officers within the department.

According to officers who attended, Police Commission President Enrique Hernandez Jr., who had been invited to address the gathering, assured the officers that no transfers would be carried out until Williams had discussed them with the involved officers. But moments later, Kroeker, who was the ranking officer at the session, displayed a copy of a memo outlining the transfers and noting that some were scheduled to go into effect that night.

Officers were incensed--Cmdr. Jim Jones of the Narcotics Bureau retired rather than accept his new post--and Williams later was furious with Kroeker for revealing the transfers during the meeting.

“I was outraged when it was determined that people . . . were being notified that they were being transferred as if you were reading a shopping list,” Williams said in the interview with The Times. “My displeasure was expressed to my senior assistants and to the command officer involved who read it.”

Williams maintains that the notifications should have been made personally by individual supervisors. But others say the chief had promised to make the notifications but had failed to do so.

In any case, Williams said he apologized to the involved officers and that he directed Kroeker to do the same. Kroeker declined to comment for this article, but sources said he was deeply distressed by the confrontation. That incident and its fallout were part of what caused Kroeker to contemplate leaving the LAPD, the sources said.

It was then that Riordan, who is said to admire Kroeker’s management style and his enthusiastic embrace of community policing, intervened to urge the deputy chief to stay. Kroeker agreed, but his relationship with Williams remains chilly, other police officers say.

As the controversies surrounding Williams have grown, some sources say he has grown increasingly isolated, relying more heavily on his three assistant chiefs and cutting off contact with many others.

The result, according to some, is a situation reminiscent of the closing months of now-retired Chief Daryl F. Gates’ tenure, when Gates became locked in a bitter struggle with City Hall and the Police Commission. Gates ultimately lost that contest, grudgingly retiring after an epic struggle with the city’s power structure.

“He’s increasingly reclusive, just like Gates was in the last year,” one high-ranking Police Department official said of Williams. “Folks are looking at each other and saying: ‘Here we go again.’ ”

Williams’ last three weekly command staff meetings have been canceled, and many top officials say they have had infrequent contact with the chief as he battles for political rehabilitation.

Exactly who Williams relies upon for advice during this period is difficult for many to discern. His lawyer, Melanie Lomax, appears to be one source of guidance, but her position is deeply resented by many LAPD officers, who recall her tenure as a police commissioner--one marked by her combative struggles with then-Chief Gates--and who view her alliance with Williams with great suspicion.

Inside the department, Williams has surrounded himself with three principal advisers, all of them assistant chiefs. Foremost among them is Ronald Banks, a personable but controversial figure within the LAPD, who serves as Williams’ chief of staff but who many other officers view with suspicion because of his close contact with the chief.

Asked about Williams’ relationship to the rest of the command staff, Banks would only say: “That depends on who you ask.”

Another assistant chief, Frank Piersol, is a gregarious, friendly officer, but he controls little of the day-to-day operations of the department. His counterpart, Operations Director Lewis, commands 80% of the LAPD and may be the most respected of the assistant chiefs, but he intends to leave after another two years; in the view of some observers, that has rendered him something of a lame duck as well.

Lewis frankly acknowledged the difficulties facing the department but said his authority has not been weakened by the prospect of his departure in two years, and he emphasized that he believes the chief will persevere.

“It seems like the whole process is in chaos,” said Lewis, a 32-year department veteran who is among the best-liked senior officers at the LAPD. “The political process is in chaos, the community is in chaos. . . . We’ve got to get the ship going in the direction we want it to go in and please the community, or someone is going to do it for us.”

Nevertheless, Lewis said he believes some officers misunderstand Williams, mistaking his style of leadership for a lack of assertiveness.

“I don’t believe the rank and file sees him accurately,” Lewis said. “All they see is the backbiting and the nit-picking that goes on around here. . . . There’s nothing wrong with his style of leadership. It’s just not a style that we’re used to because he hasn’t grown up here.”

Similarly, Piersol acknowledged that these are stressful times for some officials but emphasized that the department has grown used to working through crises in recent years, as it has bounced from the Rodney G. King beating to the 1992 riots to the forced departure of Gates.

“There’s a certain level of dysfunctionality,” Piersol said of the recent turmoil, “but given our experiences in the past, we know we can’t let this distract us too much.”

Piersol also downplayed suggestions that Williams does not reach out to a broad group of advisers, saying that the chief is always to some extent isolated from much of the department. That, Piersol said, is simply the result of the fact that the LAPD employs more than 10,000 officers and civilians, few of whom have direct contact with the chief.

For his part, Williams said that he continues to meet with officers at all levels, to tour police stations and to meet with subordinates as needed. “I’m keeping to my schedule,” he said.

Others around him say, however, that the chief’s meetings are sometimes dominated by fear, with some senior officials reluctant to raise opposition to Williams’ suggestions because they worry about retaliation. At least some officers perceived the recent transfers as partly motivated by a desire to punish critics of the chief--a fear grounded in Williams’ decision to demote Parks last year, a move that stunned many LAPD veterans as well as some City Council members and community leaders.

As the chief works to marshal the loyalty of his senior staff, his bosses--the members of the Los Angeles Police Commission--are watching anxiously from the sidelines.

Their dissatisfaction with Williams’ management is evident in their memos to the chief--one from May, 17, 1994, told Williams that “you seem unable to move the department, to have your decisions understood and followed in a timely manner, if at all”--and they have questioned him about his efforts to win the hearts and minds of his own command staff.

But the commissioners, however privately critical of the chief, remain publicly supportive.

“The chief has assured the commission that he is functioning well with his command staff and that his ability to lead the department is unhindered,” said Police Commission President Hernandez. “I’m accepting Chief Williams’ statement at face value.”