Council Overturns L.A. Police Panel’s Reprimand of Chief : LAPD: The 12-1 vote is a rebuke to the commission and mayor and an effort to end furor. Council acted without reading the report that led to the disciplinary move.

In a stunning rebuke to Mayor Richard Riordan and his police commissioners, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday voted to overturn the reprimand of Police Chief Willie L. Williams--a move the council took without ever reading the report that led to the discipline.

After a closed-door session that stretched over 3 1/2 hours, the council voted 12 to 1, with only close Riordan ally Richard Alatorre dissenting, to try to put the brakes on the furor over the commission’s reprimand of Williams for allegedly lying about accepting free accommodations in Las Vegas.

“The last thing our city needs is for this controversy to continue,” council President John Ferraro told reporters after the vote. Council members said the controversy was painful and distracted them from more pressing civic issues. Few relished grappling with the politically sensitive and legally delicate matter.

In addition to overturning the reprimand, the council decided to keep files of the commission action confidential and won a broad agreement from the chief that he would not sue the city for the commission’s investigation and subsequent reprimand, including for the alleged “improper release of personnel information.”

Chief Williams, who scheduled a news conference and then abruptly canceled it Tuesday, had no immediate comment. Aides said he would publicly discuss the matter today.

Council members acknowledged that they will take some heat for deciding the issue without looking at the report that has generated so much municipal hand-wringing and antagonism among Los Angeles’ top officials.

But several said that looking at the file would only have prolonged a matter they were anxious to dispose of immediately.

“The Police Department and the city should not be held hostage by a reprimand which is really a non-issue,” Councilman Richard Alarcon said.

Some council members insisted that they were not ducking their responsibility, and there was a clear sense of relief that a potentially divisive controversy had been averted.

“Nobody wanted to look at the file,” said Councilman Hal Bernson. “I was concerned about our not looking at it, but many of us felt it was not worth it. It didn’t seem to be a capital offense, and if we had [continued] it would have been very divisive to the city.”

Still, Bernson added, if he were Williams, he would have declined “to take the agreement. It doesn’t vindicate him, but it’s settled, finished, and that’s what everybody wanted.”

In a deferential gesture to the mayor, who last week upheld the reprimand, the council also “affirmed the right of the Police Commission and the mayor to take the actions they took with respect to the chief.”

Despite the council’s rebuke, the mayor sounded a conciliatory note, saying: “Everyone in this process has legally defined roles and responsibilities.” He said there are “no winners in this process, and those who jump to seek political advantage have missed the point.”

He praised the commission, whose members he appointed, for “exercising its independent judgment” and said neither he nor the board members were to blame for the leaks that brought the controversy into the open.

Riordan upheld the disciplinary action after reviewing the results of the commission’s investigation, meeting with the five panel members and discussing the matter with Williams. His decision inflamed tensions between two of the city’s most popular and most visible public officials--the wealthy businessman-turned-mayor and the city’s first black chief, brought from Philadelphia to reform the department.

Police Commission President Enrique Hernandez Jr. said the council’s action would, to some degree, undercut the panel’s management of the Police Department. But he added that he accepted the vote as a part of the political process.

“To the extent that our action is reversed, yes, it undermines the effect of the commission’s action,” he said. “We think we made a fair and good decision, but we recognize that the City Council’s responsibility is broader than ours. We respect their efforts to resolve this matter.”

Hernandez added, however, that the council’s vote does not address the substance of the disagreement between the chief and his civilian bosses. Williams had said he was pursuing his appeal to restore his integrity, Hernandez noted, but the council acted without ever reviewing the contents of his personnel file.

“It would appear to me,” the commission president said, “that the only six people who have reviewed the facts are the five commissioners and the mayor. And we all reached the same conclusion.”

Police Commissioner Deirdre Hill put it more bluntly: “The City Council took the easy way out by not dealing with the facts. . . . Now, we have to be able to get over this and go on.”

In prepared statements, the commission and the mayor pledged to continue working with Williams to improve the LAPD.

Inside the department, some officers were relieved that the matter finally appeared to be drawing to a close. But others were outraged by the council’s action, saying that its failure to even address the substance of the allegations against Williams revealed the blatant political motives of the council members.

“This is all political considerations,” said Sgt. Charles Duke, a senior SWAT officer and an outspoken critic of the chief. “They don’t have the integrity or the guts to make a decision that’s in the best interests of the department. This sends a message to the department that, hey, you don’t have to tell the truth.”

Some senior members of the Police Department were amazed by the council’s action, saying it would not clear the chief’s reputation or restore his ability to manage the department.

The council’s swift dispatching of the matter--the vote came the first day the matter appeared on its agenda--had its genesis more than a week ago, once the mayor announced he would uphold the commission and Williams vowed to seek vindication by putting his case before the council.

Several of the lawmakers began quietly floating suggestions to end the crisis and avoid being caught in a prolonged and messy showdown. Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, a staunch Williams supporter who helped line up backing for the plan to end the controversy, said there were eight votes going into Tuesday’s closed session and the others quickly came around.

“Frankly, by the time we took it up, we had a sense that the mood of the council was to resolve this. . . . Had we not done it, I’m afraid we all would have regretted it,” Ridley-Thomas said. “The fact of the matter is, it became abundantly clear we had considerable liability.”

The mayor was never consulted, Ridley-Thomas added, because his decision to uphold the commission was interpreted as a signal that he had made up his mind.

It was the council, not the current mayor and commission, that was in office during the 1992 riots and other fallout from the 1991 police beating of black motorist Rodney G. King. “This mayor and this commission have not had the bitter taste in their mouths of a city government coming to a screeching halt” over police conduct and management issues, Ridley-Thomas said.

Ferraro said the resolution Tuesday was put together primarily by him and council members Bernson, Jackie Goldberg and Ruth Galanter. They called the vote their best attempt at ending an escalating, potentially explosive controversy that has kept City Hall in an uproar in the month since the Police Commission reprimanded Williams.

The chief vehemently denied any wrongdoing, blaming a misunderstanding, and threatened to sue because details of a confidential personnel matter had been leaked.

Williams’ supporters viewed the reprimand, along with leaked reports of commission criticism of the chief’s leadership, as signs that the mayor wanted the chief to leave. Riordan has denied this, although several people close to the mayor have privately expressed dissatisfaction with Williams.

On Tuesday, the council was to have discussed several procedural matters, including which outside law firm to hire for advice and how to keep the confidentiality of Williams’ files, which he has refused to make public.

The council had two choices, Ferraro said in a prepared statement. One was to “hire an attorney and conduct its own review of the commission action, a move guaranteed to be costly and which could only prolong these days of controversy. The other choice was the action we took--to put an end to the matter, close the chapter. It would ill serve the people of the city of Los Angeles for the council to permit the escalation to continue.”

Several council members joined Ferraro in a brief news conference after the vote, all defending the action and some accusing the news media of blowing the controversy out of proportion.

“We do not need a controversy--you do!” Ferraro said to reporters. “We have better things to do in city government,” he added, saying that interest in the case had distracted the council from bigger issues.

Noelia Rodriguez, Riordan’s press secretary, insisted that the council action was not a repudiation of the mayor. “This is not a criticism of the mayor because they did not look at the facts of the file.” Even if he had known what the council was going to do, the mayor still would have found that the facts warranted a reprimand, Rodriguez said.

Alatorre, the only council member to vote no, also said the action could not be seen as a slap to the mayor. Alatorre asked: “How can it be a rebuke if they don’t even know” what the commission and mayor based their decision on?

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg defended the council’s decision to take the action without reviewing the file. “It’s a personnel matter. It should never have been out there, and it won’t be anymore.”

Times staff writer Jim Newton contributed to this report.