Chief’s Free Lodging Was Not Solicited, Holden Says : Police: Williams ‘was comped on four occasions’ in Las Vegas, the councilman says he was told in private talks. He also vows to quiz Police Commission members on their own receipt of freebies.

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams has told one of his most vocal advocates on the City Council that he and his wife on four separate occasions received complimentary accommodations in Las Vegas but insisted that he did not solicit the freebies.

Councilman Nate Holden, in an interview Monday, disclosed details of his private talks with the embattled chief shortly after holding a news conference where he vowed to quiz Police Commission members about their own Las Vegas activities.

A month ago, the five-member commission voted unanimously to reprimand the chief for allegedly lying about his receipt of free accommodations in Las Vegas.

Mayor Richard Riordan last week upheld the reprimand, prompting the chief to appeal to the City Council to overturn the commission’s action. The council is scheduled to meet in closed session today to begin its review of the appeal.

Holden, in an interview with The Times, said the chief told him last week that “he was comped on four occasions” in Las Vegas. But, Holden said, Williams also assured him that he did not solicit the free accommodations.

“He was accused by the commission . . . of soliciting and receiving [as a result of the solicitation] free accommodations in Las Vegas,” Holden said. “He told me he received free accommodations [and] . . . the records showed he received complimentary accommodations. But they were not solicited.”

Holden said the free lodging obtained by the chief was widely available to the public. “The facts, as he explained them to me, are the same as what he said at his news conference,” Holden said.

At a May 24 news conference where he responded to the reprimand, Williams said he had not lied to the commission and insisted that he had “never solicited any form of gratuity or received any complimentary benefit in the city of Las Vegas, from any hotel, which is not available to the general public.”

He said his dispute with the commission was a result of “nothing more than misunderstanding and miscommunication, or a difference about semantics.” During the news conference, the chief did not acknowledge taking any free rooms.

Williams declined to comment Monday on Holden’s account of their talks.

Meanwhile, Holden said he will demand that the police commissioners, when they appear before the council to explain their reprimand, divulge if they have ever received freebies in Las Vegas.

“You cannot live in a glass house and throw rocks,” Holden warned the commissioners. “They should not hold the police chief to a standard that they themselves will not be measured by.”

A spokeswoman for the police commission, Elena Stern, maintained that Holden’s bid to refocus the inquiry on the commissioners is “an unhelpful, diversionary tactic that helps nobody.”

On Friday, responding to Times questions about commissioners’ activities in Las Vegas, commission president Enrique Hernandez Jr. and commissioner Bert Boeckmann said the issue of commissioner conduct was irrelevant. Truthfulness was the issue, Boeckmann said.