Ex-LAPD Chief Gates’ Son Arrested

Lowell Gates, the 48-year-old son of former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, was arrested Sunday on several drug charges, authorities said.

The younger Gates was taken into custody about 9:45 p.m. by sheriff’s deputies in Lakewood, said Deputy Scott Gage, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

He was being held on suspicion of felony possession of a controlled substance and two misdemeanor charges -- suspicion of being under the influence of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia, Gage said.

Gates was jailed at the Twin Towers jail downtown, with bail set at $10,000.

The elder Gates, who headed the Los Angeles Police Department at the time of the police beating of Rodney King as well as the riots that followed the initial exoneration of the officers charged in the beating, did not return phone calls seeking comment late Sunday.

Lowell Gates has a history of run-ins with the law -- often for drug offenses -- dating back nearly three decades.

In his book “Chief: My Life in the LAPD,” Daryl Gates wrote that his son was high on heroin while attending his 1978 swearing-in as chief.

That same year, Lowell Gates was arrested on suspicion of possessing narcotics and ordered into a drug diversion program. The next year, he was fined $275 and served 48 hours in jail after being arrested for drunk driving and public intoxication.

Throughout the years that Daryl Gates was overseeing a massive crackdown on drug offenders, his son continued to have run-ins with law enforcement.

In 1980, he was sentenced to 90 days in jail for parole violations, and in 1985 pleaded guilty to robbery and theft charges. In 1998, six years after his father retired, Lowell Gates was sentenced to 90 days in jail for being under the influence of cocaine.

Even as his son struggled with drugs, Daryl Gates continued to take an unyielding, tough position. He caused an uproar in 1990 while testifying before a U.S. Senate committee when he said casual drug users “ought to be taken out and shot.” Although many area officials wrote it off as another “Gate-ism” -- a purposefully provocative statement he seemed to make to draw attention to problems -- he publicly defended the remark.

Still, after years of such hard-line statements, the elder Gates portrayed himself in his 1992 book as being deeply affected by his son’s troubles.

“I live day to day, wondering whether my son’s going to make it,” he wrote. “I will probably go to my grave believing there was something I could have done to prevent it -- knowing, after all the analysis I’ve done, that there wasn’t a thing I could have done. Still, I can’t help thinking that I failed too.”