Deirdre Hill Reportedly Will Lead Police Panel : City Hall: She says focus should be on reforms. But troubled commission has lost two members to resignation.

Faced with the resignations of two colleagues and grave concerns about the fate of police reform in Los Angeles, attorney Deirdre Hill appears set to take over the helm of the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday, inheriting a board in the midst of a roiling city controversy.

In an interview, Hill declined to comment on whether she expects to be elected the new president of the Police Commission, but sources close to the board say her two remaining colleagues are prepared to make Hill the president who must attempt to guide the panel through its most difficult challenge in years.

“Our job is to keep the focus on reforms,” said Hill, whose election would make her the first African American woman to serve as the full-fledged president of the Police Commission. “It’s the responsibility of the commission to provide oversight irrespective of who the chief is, who the mayor is and who the commissioners are.

“The reason I’m continuing to stay on with the commission,” she continued, “is to pursue a reform agenda.”

That agenda is suddenly in doubt, however, as the commission in recent weeks has weathered a bitter dispute with Police Chief Willie L. Williams, a bruising confrontation with the City Council and, most dramatically, the resignations of its two leading members, Commission President Enrique Hernandez and Commissioner Gary Greenebaum. Responding to those resignations, Mayor Richard Riordan said he would appoint replacements by late July; until then, the commission will limp along at three-fifths strength.

Of greater concern than the commission’s depleted ranks, however, is why the departing board members felt they could no longer serve effectively.

As they left, Hernandez and Greenebaum credited their colleagues for staying with the board, but they also said the council’s decision to reverse their reprimand of Chief Williams without reviewing the chief’s personnel file had left the commission without real authority to manage the Police Department. And by stripping the civilian commission of its authority, the resigning commissioners said, the council had scuttled the prospects for genuine reform of the LAPD.

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The council voted 12-1 to overturn the reprimand--which sources say the commission unanimously approved after concluding that Williams lied about accepting free or so-called “comped” accommodations in Las Vegas. Williams denied lying or receiving anything not available to the general public, but the council did not review the allegations before voting.

Many supporters of police reform were dismayed by that vote, in part because they believe that the department needs to be accountable to its five-member civilian commission and in part because it triggered the resignations of two highly regarded commissioners.

“It is fair to say that the Police Commission is only now approaching the momentum necessary to assure that the resistance to change that seems so pervasive in the established power structure of the LAPD is overcome and that the unfinished business of reform is completed,” Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU’s Southern California chapter, wrote to Riordan. “With the departure of these two commissioners--most notably Rabbi Greenebaum, who forced the issue of the pace of progress on Christopher Commission items--we fear that the momentum of reform may be lost.”

Council members have angrily insisted that they did nothing to undermine LAPD reform, but Riordan and many community leaders, including some who support Williams, remain concerned.

“It’s going to be some troubling times ahead,” said Joe R. Hicks, a longtime proponent of police reform and the newly appointed executive director of the Los Angeles Multi-Cultural Collaborative, a private, nonprofit coalition of about a dozen Los Angeles community organizations.

“We have a police chief who appears to emerge from all this damaged,” Hicks said. “And we have a Police Commission reduced somewhat in stature. I think we have to watch and see how all of this shakes out.”

For many, the fracas carries reminders of the early 1990s, when the Police Commission and City Council locked horns over Police Chief Daryl F. Gates. By the time that confrontation was over, the council had blocked the commission from disciplining Gates, and a commission president and another board member had resigned. Ultimately, Gates retired as well.

Seeking to prevent a repeat of that faceoff, a blue-ribbon panel that studied the LAPD urged in 1991 that the Police Commission be more strongly empowered and charged with reforming the department. And yet, just a few years later, many see parallels to the Gates era and worry about the future of the commission, the department and the prospects for reforms, especially those intended to transform the LAPD into a more community-oriented organization.

Even the commissioners who elected not to resign admit to uncertainty about the future.

Art Mattox called the council vote an act of political cowardice but expressed optimism that the board can reassert its authority. Commissioner Bert Boeckmannsaid all members of the board were surprised by the council action and added that he thought it was too soon to tell whether the council had so badly undermined the commission’s authority that it could no longer effectively oversee the LAPD and its chief.

Although she decided to remain on the commission while her better-known colleagues resigned, Hill acknowledged that the council vote had raised serious questions about civilian management of the LAPD. Nevertheless, Hill, a young lawyer who was not well known in political circles until Riordan appointed her to the board, said she believes the commission needs to look ahead, not back.

“With regard to the decision of the council, I think we need to get beyond that,” she said. “Particularly in the community I’m from, the African American community, we desperately need public safety. But we need a department that works in conjunction with the community, not one that dictates to it. That’s what we need to keep pursuing.”

In addition to raising philosophical questions about how best to lead the LAPD, the recent controversy has strained relations between Williams and the rank and file, as well as between the chief and his commission bosses.

On the day of the council vote, for instance, Hill and Hernandez tried to meet with Williams to tell him that they were determined to cooperate despite the controversy. The chief kept them waiting outside his office until the commissioners eventually left without seeing him. Hernandez declined to comment on the incident; Hill acknowledged that it happened, but downplayed its significance.

For his part, Williams also has come in for a few slights. When he visited an LAPD officer in the hospital recently, for instance, the chief asked his injured employee whether there was anything he could do. Yes, the wounded officer replied jokingly, the chief could arrange to comp his hospital room.

Surprised, Williams mumbled a response and left the officer’s room, according to sources who later relayed the incident.

Awkward moments such as those reflect the lingering effects of the controversy and further complicate the question of whether Williams can effectively lead the LAPD for the remaining two years of his five-year term. But Hill said she believes the chief and commissioners can work together professionally--a view that Williams has expressed as well.

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Like Hill, Williams says he believes reform of the LAPD will continue, and he expresses eagerness to tackle new projects. Hill has a list of her own.

Among other things, she said she hopes the commission will adopt a new evaluation process for officers, create more defined and rigorous disciplinary guidelines, hire a long-discussed Police Commission inspector general to address problems in the department and complete implementation of a sexual harassment and discrimination unit that she helped create despite reservations from Williams.

Above all, Hill said, the mandate for both the commission and the chief is to painstakingly redesign the LAPD so it is more responsive to the community and more willing to work with the citizens it is charged with serving.

Hill said she believes Williams, a vocal backer of LAPD reform, shares those goals. And because of that, she expressed guarded confidence that the chief and commission can regain each others’ trust.

“Clearly,” she said, “when it comes to the reform agenda, neither the chief nor the commission can do it alone.”