Officials Plan for Battle Over Future of Chief

Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams has a month and a day to decide whether to wage a difficult campaign to keep his job or to leave the Police Department he has run for more than four years. And with the deadline fast approaching, a complicated end game is taking shape among top city officials, the chief, the city attorney’s office and the Police Commission.

Each group is lining up lawyers--the chief’s attorney already has requested numerous documents from the commission--and officials throughout city government are trying to figure a smooth way through what could emerge as the most divisive LAPD controversy in years.

Neither Williams nor his lawyer, Johnny Griggs, will comment on the chief’s plans, but evidence of the gamesmanship now unfolding emerges from interviews with top city officials and LAPD leaders.

Some city officials are weighing the merits of paying Williams anywhere from about $80,000 to $250,000 in return for him leaving without a fight and accepting one of several offers that have been extended to him, including a high-level job in the Clinton administration’s drug policy office. Others are resisting that course, arguing that any payment to Williams would set a bad precedent and amount to an admission of wrongdoing on the city’s part.

And still others believe the chief should stay for another term. For that to happen, Williams would have to persuade either a majority of the five-member Police Commission or 10 members of the City Council to support him for a second term.

At the moment, Williams appears short of the votes he needs in either body. But at least publicly he has not given up hope, and some community leaders are rising to his defense. A group of religious and community leaders has scheduled a breakfast next week at the Los Angeles Convention Center to pay tribute to Williams.

Steven Jacobs, a Woodland Hills rabbi and one of the event’s organizers, said 2,000 people are expected.

“There has been a concerted effort to discredit the chief,” Jacobs said. “This effort to replace him comes at a critical time in the life of our city. . . . I think it’s the wrong move.”

With so many variables in play, officials throughout Los Angeles city government nervously await the chief’s next move. What, they wonder, will Williams do?

The chief isn’t saying.

Once open about expressing his desire for a second term and his optimism about getting one, Williams in recent months has taken to answering questions about his prospects by saying he believes his term will be renewed if officials judge him on his record. Williams, who has until Jan. 7 to make his decision on seeking a second term, declined to comment for this article.

Police Commission President Raymond C. Fisher said Williams has not told him whether he intends to apply for a second term; likewise, Mayor Richard Riordan said the chief has not talked to him about his plans.

The chief’s silence has fueled speculation and debate over the merits of rehiring him for a second term.

Williams’ backers cite a decline in the city’s reported crime and in civilian complaints as tributes to the chief’s effectiveness. They argue that although the LAPD remains troubled in some respects, Williams deserves more time to unravel the department’s problems.

Opponents counter by pointing to a series of alleged missteps, most notably Williams’ clash with the Police Commission over accepting free accommodations in Las Vegas, his failure to credibly explain why arrests have fallen so dramatically in recent years and the halting progress of many highly touted reform measures.

Under the rules established by a 1992 charter amendment, the Police Commission is charged with considering whether Williams should be reappointed. If Williams applies by the deadline, the commission has 90 days to rule on his application.

Commissioners will not say how they intend to vote, but they have clashed frequently with Williams. Performance evaluations obtained by The Times make clear that the board has voiced its displeasure with certain aspects of his leadership. The commission also has upbraided him for allegedly lying during the Las Vegas investigation and for symbolically questionable decisions such as his choice of a more expensive official car than the vehicles provided to his subordinates.

Under the charter rules, if the commission turns down Williams’ request for a second term for any reason, the City Council could elect to intervene. That requires 10 votes of the 15-member council, however, and Williams so far seems short of that goal. The council has overridden the commission before--most notably in 1995 after the panel reprimanded Williams in the Las Vegas matter.

This time, however, “they don’t have the votes to overturn it,” said Richard Alatorre, an outspoken critic of the chief. “I think you’re going to see people who supported him very vehemently last time not supporting him this time because of the integrity issue.”

Although Alatorre said he was prepared to vote against Williams should the issue come to the council, most members were reluctant to say how they would vote. But many expressed either general support or concern about the chief’s performance.

Council members have moved steadily away from the chief during his five-year term. But in interviews this week, several of the more liberal council members praised his performance, noting that crime is down and the public’s view of the LAPD has improved greatly since the 1992 riots.

“I don’t, frankly, consider how well he gets along with the commission as a meaningful criteria--it’s a stupid criteria,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg. “The real criteria [are] people’s attitude toward the Police Department and whether crime is down.”

Council members Mike Hernandez and Marvin Braude--a former chairman of the Public Safety Committee and frequent Riordan ally--agreed.

“All I can judge the chief by is the crime statistics in my district and his response to issues. On that basis, I don’t have any complaints,” Hernandez said, adding: “Once you create a vacancy, you have to replace it, and there’s no guarantee you’re going to get anything better.”

Other council members, however, said the chief has never managed to win the support of his officers and that the department suffers internal turmoil because of a lack of confidence in his leadership among both rank-and-file and command officers.

“We’ve never seemed to get beyond the issue that he came from the outside,” said Councilman Richard Alarcon. “There is some dissension. It’s continued to wear on the camaraderie of the department.”

If Williams’ critics have their way and the chief is nudged aside, the question then becomes: How to make the transition as uneventful as possible?

Williams in the past has threatened to sue the city, at one point going so far as to file a $10-million claim alleging that city officials had violated his privacy by releasing documents from his personnel file to The Times. That move antagonized council members and others, and Williams ultimately withdrew the claim.

The chief’s actions in that case have made some council members and others wary of the possibility that he may resort to legal action if he tries to keep his job and fails. At one level, the prospects of a lawsuit seem remote. By charter, the commission has the right not to reappoint the chief for any reason; it does not need to state a cause or find that he has failed to perform his duties.

But there are potential wrinkles. Williams was appointed to his office before the charter amendment took effect, and some officials worry he might argue that its provisions do not apply to him. If successful, that would grant Williams civil service protection and make it harder to remove him from office.

Still, that might be an uphill legal argument. Williams’ own public comments have long demonstrated that he accepted the charter amendment as governing his term of office.

“I had--along with the other final candidates--been asked ahead of time to agree to relinquish civil service status in the event voters passed the charter amendment,” Williams wrote in his recently published autobiography. “Since I had not been civil service in Philadelphia, I readily agreed.”

There may be other legal claims for the chief to pursue, but many council members and others see the real threat as political. Although polls show that his popularity has declined in the last year or two, Williams remains a recognizable and generally liked public official, his job approval rating exceeding that of the mayor and other city politicians. That makes pushing him out a dicey political task, and some council members who favor his rejection for a second term nevertheless would prefer to have the Police Commission make the final decision.

The most appealing option for many of the players, however, seems to be a cash offer that would encourage Williams to leave without rancor.

But again, that option provokes a variety of responses.

Critics say any offer makes it seem that the city is admitting wrongdoing in its handling of the chief, a proposition that many officials find unpalatable.

Proponents, however, argue that it makes good sense to ease Williams out as quietly as possible. Some of them suggest offering Williams the equivalent of about six months’ salary--the chief makes $173,000 a year, so that comes to roughly $87,000. Under that scenario, Williams would finish his Los Angeles tenure early next year, leave for his new job and be paid as if he had served to the end of his term in June.

Another idea being discussed is to offer Williams roughly $250,000--the five-year difference between his current salary and one of his Washington offers, which would pay about $120,000 a year. That would “make him whole,” meaning that Williams would make the same money over the next five years that he would have made had he stayed in Los Angeles.

Police Commission President Fisher said he has heard those ideas and amounts discussed but has not participated in any talks, and he declined to comment on the notion of a buyout. Still, some key officials like the idea of avoiding a debate that could harm both Williams and the city government.

“I would like to resolve this in a way that does not unnecessarily demean Willie Williams,” said Councilman Alarcon. “Certainly I do not want to see a raucous debate about whether the chief is a good person.”