Hill Says She Will Resign From Police Commission

Deirdre Hill, president of the Los Angeles Police Commission and the only African American on the board, announced her resignation Tuesday and said she would join the campaign for Democratic candidates in California, a decision that significantly alters the commission makeup at a crucial time.

As of June 20, Hill will leave the commission and assume the title of deputy campaign director for Victory ‘96, the coordinated campaign for Democrats seeking office on the 1996 ballot, chiefly President Clinton. In a statement, state Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres welcomed Hill and two others to the campaign, saying he was “proud of the talent, diversity and experience this group brings to Victory ’96.”

Hill’s resignation, privately forwarded to Mayor Richard Riordan on Tuesday, caps three productive and controversial years with the Police Commission, a period in which she and other board members have pressed hard for police reform and occasionally have clashed with Police Chief Willie L. Williams. The commission is likely to come under increasingly close scrutiny, especially as it contemplates whether to give the chief a second five-year term.

Art Mattox, the commission’s vice president, will fill out the remainder of Hill’s presidency, and the board will select a new president this summer. Mattox said he and his colleagues would miss Hill, with whom he has served since 1993 when both were appointed by Riordan.

“She was part of that original team, and I will miss her professionally and personally,” Mattox said. “I’m very sad to see her go.”

Hill’s departure creates a delicate situation for Riordan, who already has seen two police commissioners resign. He must fill another vacancy on his most important commission just as attention is beginning to focus on his reelection prospects. Moreover, Riordan’s relations with the African American community are fragile, and he will be under pressure to find another African American to sit on the five-member board.

In a statement released by his office, Riordan praised Hill’s work as a commissioner and said he would immediately begin the search for a successor. The mayor said he hoped to announce a nominee “in the coming weeks.”

As president, Hill, 35, generally has been seen as a careful leader--determined to force the LAPD to respond to civilian oversight and yet committed to preserving working relations with the chief and his command staff.

“If nothing else, I hope to some extent I have been a stabilizer,” Hill said in an interview Tuesday.

Quiet yet steely, Hill launched her presidency with a rare appearance at a meeting of Chief Williams’ command staff, an all-male group that had rarely, if ever, been addressed by a leader of the Police Commission. Her appearance, which was not publicized, came soon after the commission and chief had been locked in a stormy controversy over the board’s reprimand of Williams for allegedly lying about accepting free accommodations in Las Vegas.

“I told them we had our differences with the chief,” Hill recalled Tuesday. “But I said that we expected to work with him, we expected him and his staff to carry out our direction, and we weren’t going to allow any infighting to keep us from achieving that.

“I think they responded well,” Hill added. “I think they respected it.”

During her three-year commission tenure, Hill pressed hard for creation of a unit to investigate and root out sexual harassment and discrimination. That took years to accomplish because of a series of bureaucratic and political obstacles. Hill described the battle as “an unbelievable ordeal,” but one that is finally on the verge of concluding.

Among other things, it was Hill, along with Mattox, who made the difficult decision in 1994 to place that unit under the supervision of the Police Commission rather than the chief. Williams opposed that move, but the commission backed Hill’s recommendation--an early sign of the group’s tepid faith in Williams’ leadership.

As president, she also oversaw the painstaking and ultimately successful search for the commission’s first inspector general. Last month, the commission selected Kathy Mader, a prosecutor from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office; Mader begins her new job June 28.

“Those are important accomplishments,” Hill said of the inspector general and the antidiscrimination unit.

But she added that the demands of serving on the board, combined with the political nature of her new job, compelled her to resign rather than serve out the remaining four years of her recently renewed term.

“I expected that this would be a small time commitment, that it wouldn’t be as intricately involved in the management of the department as it is,” Hill said. “And although I knew it was politically and socially important, I didn’t fully realize how central the department was to the city. . . . I learned that ‘Where goes the Police Department, there goes the city.’ ”

Some of the board’s moves antagonized Williams, but Hill toed a moderate course with respect to the chief. She joined with her colleagues in reprimanding him for allegedly lying during an investigation into his acceptance of free Las Vegas accommodations. She also privately criticized fellow board members for chastising Williams when he upgraded his official police vehicle--a move the board took in Hill’s absence.

Hill’s role was made all the more difficult by the fact that she was the only black member on the board during a time of frequent conflict with Williams, the department’s first African American chief.

“The chief has had so many issues that he has come under fire on--and the African American community sees him in some ways as being victimized,” she said. “I hear that, probably more than anyone else.”

Hill’s departure makes her the third person who has served as commission president under Riordan to leave the board early. Commissioner Gary Greenebaum, who was Riordan’s first commission president, stepped down along with Commission President Enrique Hernandez Jr. last year in protest when the City Council overturned their reprimand of the chief.

Their resignations rocked City Hall, particularly because they used their departures to voice their displeasure with the City Council, which voted to overturn the reprimand without ever reviewing the commission investigation--a decision that some council members have come to regret.

By contrast, in her interview with The Times, Hill expressed only mild unhappiness with the council. She worried, for instance, that council members sometimes focused so narrowly on personalities that they overlooked important policy implications, including the need for the commission to assert strong civilian oversight of the Police Department.

Even though Hill leaves without the rancor of her predecessors, her departure nevertheless creates a racially sensitive issue for Riordan. In the interview, Hill said she hopes the mayor will appoint another black member to replace her, but she declined to endorse a successor.

Noelia Rodriguez, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said no replacement candidates have been identified so far.

Greenebaum praised Hill’s leadership, particularly her ability to reassert the commission’s authority in the wake of the City Council vote to overturn the reprimand. Now that she is leaving, Greenebaum added that he considered it important that Riordan find a qualified replacement who is black.

“If he asked my advice,” said Greenebaum, a leading police reform advocate who has worked closely with Riordan, “I would say that I feel it is important, given the history of the department in terms of its ability to deal positively with racial issues, for the Police Commission to have a representative of the African American community.”

For Hill, the shift to the Democratic campaign moves the young lawyer to the profession of her family: She is the daughter of state Sen. Teresa Hughes (D-Inglewood), and Hill grew up in and around her mother’s campaigns. Until now, however, Hill has steered clear of partisan politics, instead practicing law with the firm of Saltzburg, Ray & Bergman.

She will return to her law firm once the fall campaign is over, but until Election Day, she will be responsible for working with local officials, labor representatives and others across the state, though primarily in Southern California.

Hill said she looks forward to those new tasks and to working for the Clinton’s reelection. In particular, Hill said she hoped to involve women and families in the Democratic effort.