Williams’ Rift With Board Widens

Widening the break with his civilian bosses, Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams has informed the city’s Police Commission that he no longer wants a special meeting that had been scheduled for next week to discuss his 1995 performance evaluation in closed session.

According to sources close to the chief, Williams informed Police Commission staffers late Thursday of his determination to skip the meeting. Williams has applied for a second five-year term as LAPD chief. The Police Commission is weighing that application.

Williams’ decision not to attend the meeting, which he originally requested, comes in the wake of a stinging letter to the commission in which his lawyers denounced the evaluation process as a sham and rejected the commission’s criteria for judging the chief.

In that letter, Williams’ attorneys said they believed the Feb. 4 meeting was “not a true opportunity for Chief Williams to have his issues considered by the commission, but rather, window-dressing designed to sanitize the record and convey the mere appearance of due process.”

*

Nevertheless, Williams’ lawyers said Tuesday in their letter that the chief was willing to participate in the meeting despite his reservations. But by Friday, one of his lawyers, Johnny Darnell Griggs, said the chief saw no reason to go forward with the session “based on the totality of the circumstances.”

“We just felt that in light of other factors . . . this was not a meaningful exercise,” Griggs said, citing a long delay in scheduling the session and the commission’s treatment of an earlier evaluation.

Commission President Raymond C. Fisher said Williams had not informed him of the reason for opting out of the long-scheduled, twice-postponed session set up to review Williams’ 1995 evaluation.

“The chief has not talked to me about it,” Fisher said. “Whatever his reasons, he has opted out.”

According to Fisher, the session had been scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, in part so one commissioner could return from San Francisco to attend. Fisher added that the chief and the commission had agreed to conduct the meeting informally, without their lawyers present.

Already, many city officials worry that the chief is setting the stage to sue the city if he is not rehired. The latest move raises new questions about what some see as a rapidly deteriorating relationship between the chief and the board.

Fisher would not comment on the prospect of litigation, but said the letter from the chief’s lawyers was “so hostile and demeaning to the work of the commission that it does make it difficult to have this kind of meeting.”

LAPD rules make it a serious offense for a police officer to disobey an order from a supervisor, but Williams’ decision not to attend the meeting does not cross that line. The commissioners are Williams’ bosses, but the session was set up at Williams’ request, and he was not ordered to be there.

His decision to back out marks a break with practice, however.

Although the chief and commission have disagreed on a number of subjects, there has been little evidence of personal rancor. Williams regularly attends both the public and closed meetings of the Police Commission, and those sessions have never been openly contentious.

Even during a heated dispute in 1995 over the commission’s decision to reprimand Williams after concluding that he had lied to the board about accepting free accommodations in Las Vegas, the chief and commission continued to work together, meeting regularly on a host of topics.

Griggs, however, emphasized that the chief was not signaling any unwillingness to continue working with the commission in the regular business of the Police Department. Williams reiterated that sentiment late Friday through a department spokesman. “We’ve got a job to do,” Williams said of himself and the commission.

The regularly scheduled meeting of the Police Commission remains set for Tuesday, and Williams is expected to attend that session, provided that he has recovered from an illness that has kept him out of the office much of this week.