Frustrated Police Chief Chastises Top Staff at Meeting, Sources Say : Law enforcement: Willie L. Williams reportedly blames subordinates for failing to move more quickly to decentralize the LAPD and for being slow to embrace change.

Police Chief Willie L. Williams, in a stinging rebuke to his own high-ranking staff, upbraided top Los Angeles Police Department officials Monday for failing to move more quickly to decentralize the department and for being slow to embrace change, according to sources inside the LAPD.

The tense session took place at police headquarters and was delivered by the normally easygoing Williams, who summoned every top member of his staff--those with ranks of deputy chief or higher--and proceeded to express his concerns in strong language. Most of his top brass sat in silence, officials who attended the closed-door meeting said, as the obviously frustrated chief suggested that his subordinates largely were to blame for what he saw as the department’s failure to move more quickly to implement some aspects of community policing and to put more officers on the streets.

According to the sources, Williams sternly added that he was bothered by public perceptions that the LAPD’s top officials were not working as a team. Senior officers unwilling to back him, the chief said, are not welcome in the department and should consider changing careers.

“He made his displeasure abundantly clear, let me put it that way,” said one officer who attended the meeting. “He said he wanted to ‘kick-start’ the department, and he wanted some action.”

Assistant Chief Ronald Banks, the department’s No. 2 official, declined to discuss specifics of the session but said: “The tenor was him saying: ‘I’d like to get more help from you when I ask for these things rather than being told that this is the way we’ve always done things.’ ”

Williams was not available for comment.

Williams’ pointed message, delivered during an hourlong session attended by all but two out of more than a dozen deputy and assistant chiefs, was not lost on the group, several top officers said. But some of the officials who attended the meeting complained that their boss’s missive understated his own responsibility for effectively managing the LAPD.

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The chief has been at the helm for more than three years, and department insiders and many close observers have blamed him for failing to lead aggressively. According to critics, he often criticizes department policies but is less quick to propose ideas for implementing the reforms he backs.

Monday’s meeting, some groused, was more of the same: Williams complaining about a lack of progress while advancing few specific suggestions.

One idea Williams floated at the session, sources said, was breaking up more specialized LAPD units--divisions such as its anti-terrorist squad or its famed but recently maligned robbery-homicide unit. Such a move would speed up his commitment to returning officers to the field, a goal the chief shares with Mayor Richard Riordan.

Williams also complained that he was dissatisfied by efforts to empower so-called CPABs--community police advisory boards, a backbone of the department’s community policing program--and by a recent study of the number of cars that senior officers are provided and allowed to take home.

According to those who attended, Williams told his deputy and assistant chiefs that he was disappointed by the department’s past efforts to put more officers on the streets and directed his staff to prepare for a meeting next month at which he and his command staff are expected to hash out proposals during a special three-day session.

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In addition, Williams expressed dismay over the LAPD’s organizational structure, saying it places 17 layers between himself and an entry-level police officer.

That calculation considers each pay-grade advance as a separate level, but, ironically, it overlooks a level that Williams himself created when he added a third assistant chief and directed his other top subordinates to report to him through that person.

Asked about those and other specifics discussed at the meeting, Banks declined to comment, saying he did not want to interfere in plans for communicating the chief’s messages to the department at large.

“I don’t want to interject myself in that process,” Banks said. Specific proposals for change, he added, would only be finalized after further discussion between Williams and his top staff.

Speaking on condition that they not be identified, others who attended the session said Williams’ concerns partly seemed to grow out of the belief that the department was being excessively managed by City Hall, where officials have expressed a growing number of concerns about the chief’s stewardship.

Their complaints have ranged from questions about Williams’ integrity to unhappiness with the progress of highly touted reforms, such as the effort to more thoroughly involve the community in department affairs.

One consequence has been an increasing number of requests for information and response from the department.

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The sources who attended Monday’s meeting said Williams urged department leaders to move more quickly in some areas such as LAPD decentralization partly to get the mayor and City Council “off our backs,” in the words of one officer who attended the meeting.

Friction between Williams and his top staff is not new, although he generally has downplayed it, saying he believes the vast majority of his top deputies back him and his plans. All but two of the department’s top officials were promoted to the highest rungs by Williams since he took over in 1992.

To better coordinate the activities of his top staff, Williams has directed the deputy and assistant chiefs to join him at a three-day conference next month in San Pedro. Those sessions are intended to focus the department’s activities and coalesce the command staff behind a single set of goals. In some cases, that promises to be difficult because some of the missions highlighted by Williams and political leaders are at odds with one another.

Community policing, for example, generally is described by advocates as a decentralized system in which local police stations and their civilian advisory boards enjoy considerable autonomy. But implementing the program has required central organization and planning, creating tensions and confusion about how community policing should be managed.

Similarly, Riordan has strenuously argued for putting more police on the streets, while Williams has vowed to beef up Internal Affairs and other programs, some of which take officers out of patrol assignments in the short term.

Although department officials say some of the kinks have been worked out of the expansion efforts, the pace of growth remains a major focus both inside and outside the police force.

Since Riordan took office, the LAPD has hired officers at a rapid pace, but attrition has continued to take a toll on department expansion. Because so many officers are leaving, Riordan appears unlikely to achieve his stated goal of expanding the LAPD by 3,000 officers in four years, a central promise of his 1993 mayoral campaign.