PERSPECTIVE ON THE LAPD : Are We Doomed to Repeat the Past? : Reforms must go further. We need a mayor who can’t be upstaged by the City Council on matters of police accountability.

What is one to make of the startling resignations last week of Gary Greenebaum and Enrique Hernandez Jr., the past and current presidents of the Los Angeles Police Commission, and the men who have been that body’s vital force over the last three years?

The easy thing, of course, is to focus on the political intrigue surrounding Police Chief Willie L. Williams’ now famous and apparently innocent trips to Las Vegas, and on the Police Commission’s reprimand of Williams for allegedly lying to the commission. Or to speculate on just what really prompted the City Council’s vote overturning the reprimand.

But that would ignore the central question of why we seem to be back to Square One, with police commissioners again resigning and a police chief again under siege, stubbornly holding on while under attack from a mayor and his appointed commissioners who desperately want him gone.

For more than 40 years, from the ascension of Bill Parker in 1950 through the forced retirement of Daryl F. Gates in 1992, Los Angeles had the cart--in the person of the chief of police--leading a weak horse--the mayor and his police commissioners. Now, just at a time when the Christopher Commission reforms have rightly diminished the once unassailable powers of the chief, we have the City Council--a diffuse creature with 15 heads collectively accountable to no one--as the cart propelling the LAPD in this city. We seem doomed to repeat the same scenario, one just past and one in 1992, again and again in the future.

If you are an advocate of police reform, recall your outrage after the beating of Rodney King, when all Mayor Tom Bradley could do was ask for Gates’ resignation and then stand impotently by as Gates defied him. Remember your anger when the Police Commission then suspended Gates, and the City Council, in turn, voted to rescind that suspension, just as the council has now with Williams’ reprimand.

Unquestionably, Williams has been under tremendous pressure from people who don’t want him to succeed. Undeniably, he faced formidable tasks in trying to transform a calcified, bureaucratic behemoth set in its ways and fiercely resistant to change. But it is also clear that whether or not Williams lied, the incident is being used by a unanimous commission to say something else about Williams: The members think he is not the right guy for the job.

It may well be that the reprimand and an earlier leaked negative evaluation of Williams had political motivation--that Greenebaum and Hernandez and the other commissioners were appointed by a Republican mayor who didn’t like a liberal chief. But Greenebaum can’t be regarded as a conservative appointee. He campaigned hard for the Christopher Commission reforms and as a commissioner worked hard to see them implemented.

Nor could the more conservative Hernandez, who wanted to ensure civilian control and police accountability--which are at the heart of the matter-- be considered an enemy of reform. Those, after all, were the overreaching issues that caused the crisis over Gates’ suspension after the King beating. And they were the core components of the Christopher Commission’s reforms.

And for good reason. After Bill Parker became LAPD chief in 1950, no one person was accountable for the actions of the department. Parker and his successors had ironclad Civil Service tenure, along with contempt for civilian authority, and were never truly accountable--ever.

It’s no secret that Hernandez and Greenebaum felt that Williams had been inept in restoring morale, in instituting the Christopher Commission reforms and in making happy the man who appointed them to the commission: Richard Riordan.

As a candidate, Riordan promised to add 2,500 to 3,000 officers to the department and to restore the LAPD’s luster. But Greenebaum and Hernandez felt that by not getting the job done, Williams was not only undermining the mayor but ultimately letting the window of opportunity for reform slip away.

Yet the City Council has once again interfered in civilian oversight of the LAPD--despite the expansion of the commission’s power and despite the removal of rigid Civil Service protection for the chief.

The reason the council can get away with it is that the mayor is still not structurally in charge of the LAPD, even though he heads the city and is its chief administrator. Greenebaum’s and Hernandez’s resignations have only underscored that point, and made it apparent that the Christopher Commission reforms have not gone far enough.

We will continue to see such crises unless we have a new, bolder Charter reform that goes beyond the Christopher Commission and places the mayor squarely in charge. Part-time police commissioners with full-time jobs will never be the match of professional politicians or of an LAPD hierarchy that former Police Commission President Stephen Reinhardt once called “the masters of the half-truth.”

A strong, dedicated commission can perform an important function, keeping the department under close scrutiny and subordinate to civilian control, arbitrating between the public, the chief and the rank and file and lobbying for public support. But the commission must be openly representative of the mayor and answerable to him, with the City Council interjecting itself only in limited, extraordinary circumstances.

Then and only then will we have a direct line of accountability from the people through the mayor and his commission to the chief of police. Tom Bradley should have had the right to fire Daryl Gates in 1992, when Gates was leading us all down the path to racial insurrection and folly. By the same token, Richard Riordan should clearly have the right through his commissioners not only to reprimand Williams, but to get rid of him and bring in his own person.

If the Charter was so revised, we could hold one civilian--the mayor of Los Angeles--accountable come Election Day. Until then, we will continue to address the excesses of the past without dealing with the key issues of today--issues that have sullied the reputation of both Los Angeles and its Police Department throughout this decade.