Help Wanted

Willie L. Williams failed. Not as badly as some detractors would have you believe and not without registering some important accomplishments, but he nonetheless failed. And as a result, the Los Angeles Police Department squandered five critical years, depriving the city a rare opportunity for police reform. The former police chief failed because although well-meaning, he is not a leader. He failed because he never grasped Los Angeles politics, because he felt threatened by talented subordinates, because he didn’t care about winning the loyalty of his staff, because he didn’t seek or take good advice, because he mishandled a key set of 1994 staff changes, because he twice hired bumbling lawyers and because, by the end, the job simply overwhelmed him. He also failed because he lied. * In his aftermath, Williams’ critics are tempted simply to sigh and move on, just as his supporters struggle to misplace the blame. Fact is, Williams undermined himself. But city leaders did not always serve him well, either. Those same leaders now are engaged in the selection of Williams’ successor. The city’s five-member Police Commission is identifying its three top candidates and forwarding those names to Mayor Richard Riordan, who then will choose (with City Council confirmation) a new chief. As these officials contemplate their choice, the history of the chief they let go in May provides blunt and important lessons for each, as well as for the next man to occupy the sixth-floor office at Parker Center, LAPD’s historic headquarters. * If officials learn from the lessons of Williams’ tenure, the next chief may succeed in doing what Williams could not. If they don’t, the new chief, too, will fail.

A Deferential Commission Serves No One

Willie Williams came to Los Angeles in 1992 as the man of the moment. The LAPD was a mess, the rest of city government not much better. The Rodney King beating in 1991 searingly illuminated the department’s tendency to excessive force; the 1992 riots calamitously demonstrated the consequences of its unwillingness to use enough. Chief Daryl F. Gates postured and fought until he could no more, then retired in disgrace, a once-admiring city tired of his bravado.

Given the chance to hunt for a new chief, the Police Commission wanted someone to restore calm, someone committed to a different style of policing. And given the heightened sensitivity to racism in the LAPD, preferably someone black.

Williams fit the bill. He talked a good game on community policing, a style of law enforcement that emphasizes problem solving and community relations. Though not much of a street cop--he began his career as a park guard before rising to Philadelphia police commissioner, and never passed the California peace officer test--he had a knack for calming people. I once watched protesters disrupt a meeting, which Williams attended, with anti-police chants. By session’s end, they had climbed down the bleachers and asked Williams for his autograph.

The new chief reached out across Los Angeles and caught the city’s fancy. He was the darling of The Times editorial page and City Hall. The Police Commission had hired him and now it adored him.

A year after taking command, Williams was allowed to rate his own performance. The resulting document, one of hundreds of internal police files leaked to me during my four years as The Times’ lead LAPD reporter, says volumes about Williams’ ego, even more so about the deference his bosses were prepared to show him.

After giving himself high marks in every category, Williams concluded: “I believe that I have met all expectations placed upon me as the chief executive in the Police Department in areas such as: restoring community confidence; developing emergency plans; and refocusing department management to work as a team. I have, as an executive, exceeded the usual expected standards.’

Williams signed that document on May 7, 1993. Police Commission President Jesse Brewer, the thoughtful and decent man then in charge of that board, sent it along to Mayor Tom Bradley with one additional note, commenting that Williams’ “ability to outline and grasp essential issues confronting the LAPD has been remarkable.’

The unwillingness to examine critically Williams’ performance was an understandable mistake by well-meaning people who wanted badly for the chief to succeed. After long tumult, the commission was grateful for the peace that seemed to follow him. But the easy acceptance of Williams’ own evaluation was an abdication of the commission’s duty to supervise the chief of police, and it had a devastating side effect: It signaled to Williams that the commission intended to defer to him, not manage him. No wonder the chief, when later under the scrutiny of Riordan’s Police Commission, would find actual oversight insulting and baffling.

Riordan’s first commission president, Gary Greenebaum, is exactly the type of boss Williams should have wished for. Kind and smart, he was an unabashed Williams admirer. But Greenebaum is more than just a gentle rabbi. He pledged to advance police reform at LAPD, and set out to fulfill that promise.

The Police Commission wanted its own unit to address discrimination and sexual harassment; Williams resisted. The commission wanted a rigorous analysis of the status of police reform; Williams would not or could not produce one. The commission wanted resolution to long-simmering concerns about the speed and adequacy of police shooting investigations; Williams stalled. The commission desperately wanted evidence of progress on community policing; Williams did not provide it.

By May 1994, exactly a year after his flattering self-appraisal, Williams got a very different evaluation from his new bosses. The commission correctly commended him for rebuilding public trust in the Police Department, but this time did not shirk from addressing his weaknesses.

“Consistently, you seem to lack focus and discernible purpose in managing the Department,’ commissioners unanimously concluded. “It is often unclear throughout the ranks exactly who is in charge and who is making decisions affecting the operations and direction of the LAPD. Often, you seem unable to move the Department, to have your decisions understood and followed in a timely manner, if at all.’

The tone of that document was biting, and it no doubt stung Williams to read it, first in his personnel file and later in The Times. It sent a new message: The commission would hold him to a high standard.

If the next commission is to hold its new chief accountable for progress, it must take that same kind of hard look at his performance from the start. It cannot let a chief dominate it, as Gates did through most of his tenure, nor can it be awed by its chief, as the commissioners initially were by Williams. A strong, fair commission will help its chief succeed.

A City Council That Meddles Can Only Muddy the Waters.

Willie Williams likes a bit of the good life. He likes a good cigar. He likes to travel. He likes to drive a big car and impress visitors with a big office. And he enjoys an occasional trip to Las Vegas.

Trouble was, he liked to stay there for free.

Williams’ Vegas getaways were no secret at the LAPD. In October 1994, Williams and his wife were in Vegas when an assailant shot and killed Officer Charles Heim in Hollywood. Williams elected to finish up the weekend rather than come home to comfort the men and women of the Hollywood Division. It was an astonishingly insensitive decision, and it prompted a civilian employee of the station to fire off an angry letter to the chief. Rather than ignore it, Williams shot back, telling his grieving subordinate that he was “appalled that you would write such a venomous letter without bothering to check any of the facts.’

That episode shocked some of Williams’ colleagues. It also triggered a low rumble in the ranks: Why was Williams spending so much time in Vegas?

In December, the grumblings found purchase in a letter to the Police Commission. Williams characterized it as an anonymous attack. It was not. Signed by retired Deputy Chief Steve Downing, it, among other things, informed the commission of rumors that Williams had been receiving freebies, including tickets to Universal Studios and accommodations in Las Vegas. If true, such would violate LAPD policy.

The Police Commission demanded answers. Williams denied the allegations, then reiterated in a sloppy memo: “I have never accepted without cost lodging, meals and or show tickets at any Las Vegas Hotel. Whenever I stayed in Las Vegas I paid all bills due from my personal expenses . . . I find these allegations outragious [sic] and request that the Borad [sic] of Commissioners advise me if there is any need of further correspondence or explanation from me.’

The allegations, however, were at least partly true.

After a long investigation, the commission determined that on five occasions Williams or members of his family had not “paid all bills due from my personal expenses’ because Caesars Palace had allowed him and his wife, Evelina, to stay for free. Williams argued that he had not received anything other members of the public were not entitled to, that his wife had earned the rooms through her slot machine play. But the value of the rooms, the fact that he had received free accommodations over two New Year’s weekends and a notation on one bill indicating that it had been personally referred by Henry Gluck, Caesars’ CEO, all raised questions.

In any event, that was beside the point. The commission had asked whether he had received anything for free. Williams said he had not. He had.

Confronted with that, Williams changed his story. He said he had only denied soliciting free rooms, not accepting them. When that didn’t fly, he argued that there was a difference between a “comped’ room and a “free’ room.

The commission had had enough. The five members unanimously voted to reprimand Williams, not for accepting the rooms but for lying when asked about it.

In fact, the commission let Williams off easy. Not only did it lightly punish him on that count--most LAPD officers found guilty of making false and misleading statements get suspensions, not reprimands--it also failed to sustain the allegation that he had solicited and received free tickets from Universal Studios. That charge was ruled “not resolved’ despite sworn testimony from an aide to the chief, who said Williams had personally asked him to pick up free tickets for friends and family members, and who said he had performed similar errands for Williams on a number of occasions.

Williams could have and should have left well enough alone. Instead, he appealed the reprimand to a notoriously indiscreet and mercurial body--the L.A. City Council.

The council waded into the matter bent on crafting a solution that would make the issue go away without exposing council members to fallout. It devised a novel solution: overturn the reprimand but vote without bothering to look at the evidence. In effect, the council said that it would not sanction discipline, however mild, against an official more popular than itself.

It is a measure of Williams’ shortsightedness that he considered the vote a victory. To the contrary, it broadcast the council’s cynicism and did nothing to vindicate the chief.

Even more damaging, the vote eviscerated the Police Commission, which had investigated, deliberated and unanimously formed its response, only to have the council overturn it without so much as looking at the facts. How was the commission now to hold Williams accountable when the chief knew the council would come to his aid, no questions asked?

Whatever hope the council had of burying the Las Vegas controversy evaporated Sept. 15, 1995, when The Times published the investigative file the council had refused to open. It showed the receipts from five trips to Las Vegas. It laid out Williams’ shifting statements to the commission. It illustrated why the commission had concluded Williams’ statements to the board were, in its words, “inherently implausible and not true.’ The story in that morning’s paper and a subsequent piece on “60 Minutes’ profoundly humiliated the council and the chief.

Williams’ response? He filed a $10-million claim against the city and its taxpayers, charging that the government violated his privacy by allowing me to get copies of the Police Commission records. Williams eventually withdrew that complaint in return for a City Council motion directing City Atty. James Hahn to find the person or persons who gave me the documents. The council agreed, and Williams’ lawyers leaned on Hahn to flush out sources. But 109 interviews and more than 1,000 document pages later, Hahn gave up. In one final indignity, the city attorney’s confidential report, printed on special paper and handled with utmost delicacy, was leaked the same day it was transmitted to the council, the chief and his lawyers.

That ended the Las Vegas episode, but the council still managed to stage one last debate over Chief Williams--whether to pay him off to send him on his way.

To call that day a circus is to demean the world’s lion tamers and clowns.

For starters, council members shut out the public. Behind closed doors, they insulted the president of the Police Commission and each other and interrupted their own speeches to bring up petty, irrelevant grievances. Councilman Nate Holden, nominally Williams’ biggest council supporter, flitted between the council chambers and the press room. Eventually, he was baited back into the chambers and tricked into voting in favor of giving Williams a buyout. That ended the matter, but so twisted was the debate that Holden fumed about voting to give the chief the money Williams wanted while Riordan, nominally Williams’ nemesis, praised the council for letting the chief leave with dignity in the form of $375,000.

When it debated the buyout, the council simply looked silly. But when it overturned the 1995 reprimand, the council reinforced Williams’ worst instincts, divided him from the rest of the Police Department and undermined the Police Commission. A chief who can use the council to avoid taking direction from the commission is a chief without bosses.

Politics Aside, the Mayor Needs to Speak Up

Like most city officials, Mayor Richard Riordan started as a Williams admirer. The mayor had Williams and his wife to his Brentwood home for dinner, and Riordan liked what he saw. Even when Williams crossed the new mayor early by questioning Riordan’s plan to expand the LAPD by 3,000 officers in four years, Riordan continued to embrace him, introducing him publicly as the best police chief in America. Privately, Riordan also spoke highly of Williams.

Within a year of taking office, however, the mayor was exasperated. Riordan had given Williams more money, more people, new technology. Williams could not translate all of that into more officers on the street. Callers to 911 faced long, terrifying waits on hold. Police drove in beat-up cars, wielded outdated equipment and worked in deplorable conditions. Some officers--not all, but too many--developed a new work ethic and coined a snide nickname for it: driving and waving.

Police reform, meanwhile, plodded along. To this day, the LAPD likes to brag that its officers use less force than in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but that is a deliberately deceptive boast. For starters, the department has no credible way of tallying complaints that come from the public. What’s more, those that are recorded demonstrate that police, just as they did during the days of Rodney King, use force on roughly 1% of the people they arrest. The real change is that they arrest fewer people. Far fewer.

For Riordan, this was perilous. The mayor had promised Los Angeles a safer city and a vastly expanded force, but LAPD was doing little to uphold that vow. Yes, crime was dropping. But it’s dropping everywhere. There was--and still is--no evidence that the LAPD’s efforts had anything to do with it.

Privately, Riordan worked on Williams. But Williams has what may be the most frustrating habit of insecure managers: He agrees with everything, then does nothing. No matter who made a suggestion, Williams would dutifully take notes on his ubiquitous yellow legal pad, then fail to follow up. Riordan is a chess player: He likes a contest, respects an opponent, can handle an argument. Williams never argued. He just didn’t deliver. That stifled both debate and progress, and it drove Riordan nuts.

But the mayor, too, is hardly without blame. Not speaking out about problems with Williams may be understandable politically: Riordan never had the chief’s public popularity, and it’s possible that attacking Williams would have done little to change his behavior and only diminish Riordan’s authority. But Riordan’s silence mystified the public. It would hear the mayor was unhappy with the chief but could hardly be expected to understand why, since Riordan would not discuss his displeasure.

Now, with the imminent appointment of a new chief, Lesson One for Riordan is easy, at least in principle: pick a good chief, one with knowledge of the LAPD and the city’s politics, one with vision, one who is committed to reform and dedicated to making it happen, not just to talking about it.

But that’s not all. As Riordan began to do June 30 in his second inaugural address, he also must lay out how he intends to judge the new chief’s work, be it specific crime reductions, benchmarks for police reform or target dates for new facilities.

The mayor has appointed strong police commissioners--departing president Raymond C. Fisher stands as one of LAPD’s steadiest leaders and his colleagues showed resolve in handling their confrontations with Williams. The commission, not the mayor, should set LAPD policy. But commissioners must not feel restrained from collaborating with the mayor, and if the next chief begins to fall behind the stated goals, Riordan must speak out. It will help the Police Department, keep the chief on the right path and allow the public to participate in discussions about police priorities.

It might even help the mayor’s image.

A New Chief Must Seek Out Sound Political Advice

Willie Williams spent the first year or two of his tenure reaching out to the public with skill and effectiveness. He helped revitalize the LAPD’s relationship with many residents, particularly blacks. He calmed a nervous city at a time when the community badly needed it.

But Williams never cared much about winning the loyalty of the LAPD. He saw talent as a threat rather than a resource. He tried cajoling and demanding, but only after it was too late. He was not personally corrupt, but he allowed the Police Department to be corrupted by politics, acceding to political interference when he thought it would win him personal support, then complaining that politicians wielded too much influence.

Equally important, he turned away from those who could have helped him.

Former chiefs Ed Davis and Tom Reddin, two of the most thoughtful men in modern American policing, were available. Reddin lives less than five miles from police headquarters; Williams never called. Davis invited Williams to join the pilgrimage of LAPD officers and others who travel to the former chief’s Morro Bay home for sips of his wisdom and his single malt scotch. Williams ignored him, too. John Ferraro, the wily City Council president whose service to Los Angeles stretches over decades, never got a call. Neither did other key council members.

These people were not stonewalling Williams; they wanted to help. Williams just never bothered to ask. Evidence that Williams failed to study the LAPD’s history or seek out those who could fill him in? On his last day at work, I remarked to Williams that his administration bore some resemblance to Reddin’s: Williams took over just after the 1992 riots, Reddin just after the 1965 Watts riots; both inherited departments accused of racism; both took over with reform mandates; both had short tenures. When I pointed out the similarities, Williams looked at me quizzically and remarked: “I don’t know Mr. Reddin. I hadn’t heard that.’

It was not just chiefs or sitting politicians whose ideas Williams wouldn’t heed. Tom Bradley tried to advise Williams, but the chief dismissed much of what Bradley suggested. Former Police Commission head Jesse Brewer, once Williams’ biggest champion, eventually gave up as well, having failed time and again to get Williams to take his advice. (Brewer died in 1995.)

Instead, Williams’ inner circle included a prominent minister, an activist or two and a few top aides. None had the reach or knowledge an outsider needed to understand Los Angeles or its police department. Then, desperate for good advice, Williams turned to lawyers. They were no help, their efforts netting Williams little but embarrassment.

As political advisors, lawyers and subordinates are no substitute for men and women who themselves have walked the corridors of power. The people whose advice Williams took had none of that experience. Those he ignored were rich in it.

Williams’ successor is not likely to be as naive about the city’s or LAPD’s politics. If nothing else, Williams proved that it is impossible for a chief to succeed without being both cop and politician.

This idea doesn’t sit well within the LAPD. Disdain for politicians runs deep at Parker Center, where officers have more history spying on political leaders than admiring them. But Davis, the most successful chief in the department’s modern history, also was its most skilled politician. He worked City Hall during his rise through the ranks, and he went on to become a state senator. He was easily the match for the politicians around him. He succeeded because he knew whose advice to take and because he was a politician, not just a cop.

A Simple Truth: Personal Integrity Counts

Keen political advisors, particularly former chiefs, likely could have steered Willie Williams clear of a number of gaffes, the most striking of which occurred Sept. 12, 1994. In that one day, Williams shuffled his top staff, undercut his credibility within the department, alienated one of his top deputies and infuriated City Hall. It marked the beginning of his long fall.

Rumors had long circulated of friction between Williams and Assistant Chief Bernard Parks, his second in command. Though Williams denied them, a showdown seemed likely. It occurred that September afternoon.

Parks had been out of the country on business and returned to Los Angeles on a Sunday. By midmorning Monday, Sept. 12, Parker Center was in a tizzy. Parks had not shown up for work and was instead huddling with lawyers. Senior LAPD officers gathered in the corridors to gossip. Williams had not spoken to Parks, but the chief, warned by an aide that The Times was going to run a story the following morning about an impending shake-up, decided to break the news at a press conference.

It was a strange performance. The same Willie Williams, who in his self-evaluation 16 months earlier, gave himself high marks for forging an effective management team now conceded to reporters that his top staff was not working together. The same Williams who trumpeted the department’s ability to respond to disasters now sacked the man in charge of those efforts. The same Williams who highlighted the LAPD’s progress toward community policing now said he was not satisfied that it was coming along quickly enough. Parks, he said, was being demoted immediately.

The other staff changes weren’t much better. Williams announced that he was promoting Deputy Chief Ron Banks, giving new influence to an official held in low esteem by key players at City Hall. And Williams promoted then-Cmdr. David J. Gascon, a well-deserved move but one that pulled the department’s most visible figure out of contact with the media and the community just as Williams was about to embark on the most difficult phase of his administration. Parks’ demotion angered his many supporters, police and politicians alike. Gascon’s promotion left Williams’ flank exposed.

One name, meanwhile, was notable for its absence. Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker, one of the LAPD’s most skilled and veteran leaders, wasn’t so much as mentioned. The passing over of Kroeker did not surprise LAPD insiders: Williams had long envied Kroeker’s reputation and felt threatened by Riordan’s admiration for him. During Williams’ tenure, Kroeker would be the only top LAPD official who never got a promotion.

By the time Williams stopped talking Sept. 12, his credibility within the LAPD was shattered, his support at City Hall crumbling.

All Williams got in return was a nominal demotion of Parks, and he even managed to undercut that. The spot Williams chose for his now-seething deputy was the Bureau of Special Investigations, which oversees Internal Affairs. That vested Parks with the authority to launch and oversee the LAPD’s most delicate investigations, including those of police officers. It’s as if a Soviet leader had taken his worst enemy, poked him with a sharp stick and then put him in charge of the KGB. (Parks survived the demotion and, along with Kroeker and Gascon, is among those being considered to succeed Williams.)

The September fiasco haunted Williams to his final days. It helped create the pressure during the second half of his administration, and Williams, when under pressure, sometimes lied. He lied during the Vegas investigation and initially got away with it, keeping his job and shrugging off the reprimand he deserved. But as one top city official observed in its aftermath, lying is a habit. And Williams found it a hard one to break.

* He told the City Council that the LAPD had a list of more than 100 potential problem officers. When I asked for the list the next day, the department conceded that it did not exist.

* He told Rod Bernsen, a tough Fox television reporter and retired LAPD sergeant, that he had repaid a group that sponsored a trip he took to Berlin. He had not. (He later did, but only after investigations by state and local agencies.)

* He told activists that he would back a proposed court order imposing new hiring and promotion restrictions on the LAPD. Then he told his bosses that he had no position on the proposal.

* He told a group of supporters that he would back a modified work schedule for police. Less than an hour later, he told the Police Commission that he had not taken a public position on the idea. Trying to sort out the truth on that issue, a commission aide called me. I played him a tape of Williams stating his position that same morning, and asked the aide for comment. His response: “Uh oh.’

Each lie was widely reported; each took a toll. Even though none was individually so harmful, collectively they raised legitimate questions about Williams’ credibility. The chief of police, after all, commands an armed, 9,000-officer army. It’s critical to be able to trust his word. It’s distressing, even alarming, to think him a liar.

It seems obvious, but telling the truth, on matters big and small, will save the next chief from indignity and preserve his effectiveness. Truth, as they say, has its tactical advantages.

In the End, A Chief Must Stand for Something

The next Los Angeles police chief must have political savvy and a reformer’s zeal. He also will need a determined Police Commission to hold him responsible, a mayor to guide him and a City Council unwilling to bail him out. Yet, even that may not be enough.

To succeed, a chief has to stand for something. A chief with integrity and vision can withstand political pressure, inspire the rank-and-file and make real change. Certainly, no chief ever had a better opportunity to do that than Williams, whose public approval rating was so strong through most of his tenure that he easily could have muscled City Hall.

But Williams never had a case to make.

Was he the community policing chief? Why, then, does that philosophy remain nearly as vague today as it was when he took over?

Was he the chief who would curb the use of force? Why, then, do officers today use force in roughly the same percentage of cases as they did in 1991?

Was he a law-and-order chief? Why, then, have arrests plummeted, along with the percentage of cases detectives solve, the number of traffic tickets motorcycle cops write and the number of field interviews officers conduct?

Was he the chief to clean up the department’s internal workings? Why, then, do discrimination and sexual harassment complaints continue to pit the LAPD’s officers against one another in alarming numbers?

Four-and-a-half years after Willie Williams came to Los Angeles, the LAPD surveyed its top brass, asking them for their opinions on the department’s plan for the future. Those polled were not part of any entrenched old guard angry at Williams. Each had decades of LAPD experience, but with the exception of Kroeker, everyone interviewed had been promoted by Williams at least once. They were his team.

Yet these top leaders said that after four years of Williams’ leadership, after staff retreats and command staff meetings, countless public forums, City Council hearings and consultant reports, they still had no real idea of what community policing meant or how to implement it. They complained that the LAPD’s mission was unfocused. They commented that the LAPD’s strategic plan, which Williams touted as evidence of his success, “had no impact on their job.’

“There is no vision,’ the report said, “of what the Department should be in the future.’

That is why Willie Williams failed.