Boss Got Break They Wouldn’t Get, Officers Say

From where some Los Angeles police officers sit, there is no question the chief exists on a different plane. The City Council’s stunning erasure of his reprimand only reinforced for many the notion of a double standard of justice in a department where officers say they are dunned with stiff penalties for the seemingly mildest of infractions.

“I got five days for saying gal ,” said Detective Bill Smith, describing a suspension he received as a patrol officer in the late 1980s. The way he tells it, he was addressing a prostitute he had arrested. She had fallen asleep in the back of his car as he transported her to jail.

“What I said was, ‘Come on, gal, let’s get going,’ ” Smith said. His superiors said it was racist. “They said it was the same as calling a black male ‘boy.’ . . . They held it was improper police terminology. You can see how hard I got hit. And I didn’t even lie.”

Smith chuckled. “I wonder if I called the City Council if they would throw it out.”

On Wednesday, Smith and other officers who have paid the price for violating the LAPD’s rules of conduct were variously annoyed, cynically resigned and amused by Chief Willie L. Williams’ bureaucratic redemption.

In a rebuke to Mayor Richard Riordan and his police commissioners, the council on Tuesday overturned the commission’s reprimand of Williams. The council’s 12-1 action was an attempt to quash the political furor over the commission’s reprimand of Williams for allegedly lying about accepting free accommodations in Las Vegas.

“I don’t like it but that’s politics in the city,” said Smith, who works out of the 77th Street Division.

Another detective, who said he got a two-day suspension for failing to hand out his business cards at a domestic violence incident in November, was so appalled he said he was considering quitting the force.

“I got two days off without pay,” said the detective, a seven-year veteran who said he had a sterling record up to that point and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “And the chief of police lies and gets off scot-free.”

And in a department with strict rules about transgressions, few are more serious than making false or misleading statements to a superior or supervisor--the charge that confronted Williams.

“If I had done the same thing, I would probably be fired,” mused Officer Joseph Walker. A 25-year veteran of the department, Walker said he received a 30-day suspension for falsely reporting his location to a supervisor and not working that day--charges he denied.

Instead of getting a three-hour appeal hearing in front of the City Council, as Williams did on Tuesday, Walker said he has spent three months waiting for the transcripts of his LAPD Board of Rights hearing just so he can appeal through Civil Service or legal channels.

Yet Walker is far from being alienated by William’s “political clout.” In fact, he sees Williams as a newly kindred soul.

“When he went through this whole thing, I thought: Now he’ll see what it’s like to be jacked around like I was,” said Walker. “He’s suffering humility right now. Maybe he’ll become more sensitive to the peon and not so concerned about the hierarchy.”

But in a department where officers chafe at the notion that a stranger can call, accuse them of any misconduct and activate an investigation, most simply see a chief getting breaks none of them would get.

“Every police officer on the job who’s accused of [lying] will say, ‘How can you suspend me if the chief doesn’t get disciplined?’ ” said Lt. Dave Hepburn, the acting officer in charge of the LAPD unit that represents officers charged with infractions. (“Say ‘acting,’ ” Hepburn specified when giving his title. “Otherwise, they’ll charge me with making a false or misleading statement.”)

Hepburn said that in April alone, four officers were found to have made false statements. Three were given five-day suspensions and one was discharged.

Few officers who had been disciplined said they cared that Williams got free rooms in Las Vegas.

“I don’t care if Willie Williams took free rooms or not,” said Detective Smith. The issue is whether the chief--the man to whom disciplined officers often address appeals of their own infractions--is guilty of the infraction of lying.

“Willie Williams says it’s a question of semantics,” said Smith. “If you use that as a defense in a Board of Rights hearing, they tell you your statements are self-serving and you’re not accepting responsibility.”

On top of that, said another once-disciplined officer who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, such discipline is meted out with the attitude: Take your suspension and shut up.

Williams hardly did that, noted another disciplined officer. Instead, “he not only gets to go to the Police Commission, he gets to go to the mayor and to the City Council.”

The fact that Williams got a hearing before the City Council irritates some officers. “We can’t take our disciplinary action to the council,” said one lieutenant who had a personnel complaint sustained against him. Just as galling to them is the fact that the City Council didn’t even read the report on Williams.

“We are a fact-finding organization,” said the lieutenant. “We write about facts in arrest and crime reports. And now our own august body says facts are not important.”

As frustrated as he is, the detective who was disciplined for not handing out business cards remains committed to being an officer. Even as he considers quitting, he is gearing up for a promotion he believes is imminent. In one conversation, he talked freely on the record. An hour later, worried his quotes could hurt his career, he called and protectively asked for his identity back.

“I love this job,” he said. He even finds Williams personally likable. But as for this last turn of events, he said, “This is a morale buster.”

Not all who had been given punishment were so critical of Williams.

“I kind of like the guy,” said Robert Deamer, a patrol officer in Van Nuys who received a two-day suspension for leaving the division one day last year to pick up plaques for two police officers who were quitting.

Deamer chalked up the rank-and-file’s anger to the fact that Williams is an “outsider.” He could muster no outrage over the department double standard.

“There’s always a double standard with people of rank,” he said. “You tell me Daryl Gates never took anything free?”

Times staff writers Jean Merl and John Johnson contributed to this story.