Gates Announces April Date for Retirement as Police Chief : Law enforcement: Embattled leader tells of his decision in letters to city officials and in message to officers. He says he will stay longer if successor is not chosen.

By RICHARD A. SERRANO

July 23, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

After 13 years as chief of police--and with the last four months mired in the Rodney G. King scandal--Daryl F. Gates announced Monday that he will retire in April as head of the Los Angeles Police Department.

The embattled police chief, his voice choked with emotion, announced his departure on a videotape for his 8,300 officers, saying that he opposes the idea of an interim chief and will remain in office until a permanent successor is selected. He said he will stay past April if the selection process takes that long.

“I agree that the transition should begin immediately,” said the 64-year-old chief. “Let’s get on with it.”

While addressing his troops, Gates was suddenly overcome with emotion. His lips quivered and he struggled to regain his composure, then he uncharacteristically fell silent for several moments.

“I’ve been honored,” he said softly, “to lead the most effective, most clearly committed and the most honorable group of police officers and civilian personnel to be found in any police department in the world.”

The chief put his retirement promise in two letters, one to the city Personnel Department and the other to City Council President John Ferraro, who had announced this month that Gates had agreed to retire by the end of this year.

In his letter to Ferraro, Gates pledged to “devote all my energy” to implementing and supporting those recommendations by the Christopher Commission to reform the Police Department that “are ultimately deemed appropriate.”

Although Gates’ announcement was cheered by many at City Hall and among community leaders who have cried out for his resignation since the March 3 beating of King, some observers pointed out that because of the continuing volatile situation, there was no hard-and-fast guarantee that Gates would leave in April.

The uncertainty centers on whether Gates is legally bound to follow through on his promise, or could once again change his mind and stay longer, as he has several times over the years.

Selection of a new chief will take at least six months, according to the city’s Personnel Department, including four or five months to advertise the job and winnow a list of candidates to 12 or 15.

Under the proposals by the Christopher Commission, appointment of a new chief would be made by the mayor from a list of up to six names submitted to him by the Police Commission. In contrast, the City Charter now allows the Police Commission to appoint a chief from a list of six candidates compiled by the city’s Civil Service Commission.

Gates’ pledge to relinquish his $168,793-a-year job is not binding, according to city officials who said there is no way to force an employee to stick with a promise to retire.

A retirement is not official until the Board of Pension Commissioners approves a pension--a pro forma move in Gates’ case once he decides to submit a pension application. At any time before the pension board’s final approval, an application can be withdrawn. Officials said his annual pension would amount to $118,156, or 70% of his salary.

Gates on Monday took a parting shot at elected officials for “politicizing” the King beating and for calling for his ouster.

“Why I became the lightning rod, I don’t know,” he said. “I believe I’ve been a very good chief.

“But I think the political leadership in many respects has been a total, complete and abysmal failure. It has set off divisiveness that was unnecessary. . . . It just got out of hand. And when things get out of hand, that should be the responsibility of the leadership. And there wasn’t any. It was a vacuum.”

Mayor Tom Bradley, obviously pleased with the day’s events, called a news conference Monday afternoon to express his delight. The mayor had first called on Gates to resign April 2.

“We have gone through 4 1/2 months of agony, of trauma, in this city,” Bradley said. “I am pleased that at long last we have a date to which we can now look forward to the replacement of Chief Gates.”

He added that “there has been a growing consensus” in the city for Gates to step aside. “I think that that volume of evidence became so clear that he has finally decided that he will hang ‘em up,” the mayor said.

The Christopher Commission report, he said, was “the final nail.”

Bradley said a nationwide selection for a new chief will begin immediately, and that he believes the city “will be able to meet” the April deadline to find a replacement.

Ferraro, a Gates supporter who 10 days ago announced that the chief had agreed to retire by the end of the year, said Monday that that agreement allowed for “a little wiggle room.”

During a City Hall news conference, Ferraro displayed a two-page letter from Gates dated Monday and said: “It’s a ‘Dear John’ letter. Sometimes those ‘Dear John’ letters are very sad and this one is very sad for a lot of us.”

“The department’s been very efficient, very innovative,” Ferraro said. “It is a department that people around the country look to when they want to find out how to do things.”

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, long a Gates critic, said the chief’s decision to leave would begin to help mend the divisiveness in Los Angeles that began with the King beating.

“I think it’s a good result for the city,” he said. “He had to be out of the picture . . . in order for the city to come together again.”

Yaroslavsky said there is “no question” that the Christopher Commission report “and only the report” was the factor that motivated the chief to announce his retirement. The report urged that Gates begin the process of stepping down so that a search for a new chief could begin.

The past several months have been marked by political wrangling and bitter calls for Gates to step down. The high-charged situation has pitted the mayor and Gates against each other in a public power struggle over control of the Police Department. In the past 10 days, the chief’s opponents have pressed Gates to set a retirement date.

“I’m saddened by the fact that you have had to succumb to this wave of hysteria that has arisen over this unfortunate incident,” Councilman Hal Bernson, a Gates supporter, told the chief Monday evening during a City Council committee hearing on the Christopher Commission findings.

Gates has consistently denied any responsibility for the King beating and said the Christopher Commission’s findings of excessive force, racism and mismanagement within the department were isolated incidents. On Monday, he reiterated his position and said that many problems highlighted by the Christopher Commission “were not brought to my attention” in the past.

Regardless, observers said Gates’ legacy will always be tied to the scandal over the beating, despite his innovative style of leadership that brought about the DARE educational program and the SWAT team--two projects that were adopted by police departments around the country.

Gates, in his letter to Ferraro, said “it is to be emphasized that my retirement plans do not depend on the success or failure” of any City Charter amendments arising out of the Christopher Commission recommendations, including the suggestion of two five-year terms for future chiefs.

“Until these amendments are drafted, I will withhold my endorsement or opposition,” he said in the letter.

“However, I recommend that the Police Department not be politicized as in the days of the scandal-plagued Mayor Shaw Administration. Our department has been the most honest in the United States since the days of Chief William H. Parker, insulated from improper political manipulation.”

He said it was “logical” that City Council deliberation over the proposed Christopher Commission changes and a search by the city’s Personnel Department for a new, permanent chief “proceed in an orderly fashion simultaneously.”

With that in mind, Gates explained why he chose April as his date for leaving the chief’s sixth-floor office at Parker Center:

“I have various estimates of the length of time each of these processes might take,” Gates wrote. “Given the uncertain time line, I have selected the month of April, 1992, as the month I will retire. As time moves forward, a specific date will be set.

“If a permanent chief has not been chosen by that date,” he added, “I will delay my retirement until that selection has been made.”

Gates said he sent a separate letter Monday to the city personnel office, advising those officials of his retirement plans. Officials said they had not received it by mid-afternoon.

Gates’ pledge Monday, unlike much of the rhetoric that has centered on his future as chief since the King beating, seemed clear and hard-fast.

“I hope we can get back to business as we ought to,” he said. “I hope it will be a very positive transition. It can be and it should be. If everybody pulls together, it will be.”

The chief said he has been planning for some time to step down in 1992, and that his wife, Sima, is eager for him to retire. “She doesn’t want to applaud me because she’s afraid I’ll change my mind,” he said.

He also took exception to critics who have asked that he immediately resign.

“When they have put in the amount of time and service to the people of this city that I have, then maybe they can come forward and speak,” Gates said. “Until that time, I would suggest they just hold their tongues.”

Later Monday, after attending a hearing at City Hall, Gates denied emphatically that the Police Department keeps written files on politicians. “The only files are in my head,” he said. “I am writing a book. You can’t be chief without learning things. I don’t write them down, but I do have a good memory.”

Reaction to Gates’ retirement announcement was swift.

Warren Christopher, who headed the independent commission that reviewed the Police Department, said he was “pleased . . . that the transition can now begin.”

“It is vital,” he said, “that a nationwide search for his successor begin immediately.”

Retired California Supreme Court Justice John A. Arguelles, a Gates appointee to the Christopher Commission, said:

“I’ve always felt that Daryl Gates was a man who loves the department. It has been his life. He wants the Los Angeles Police Department to remain at the forefront of the respected law enforcement agencies of the world.”

Assistant Chief David D. Dotson, who had criticized Gates in his testimony before the Christopher Commission and who has expressed a desire to succeed him, said he greeted Gates’ decision to step down with mixed emotions.

“I don’t want to be critical, but I see a lot of opportunities (for improving the department) that could not be achieved with the current leadership,” Dotson said.

Several of Gates’ top aides and some police chiefs around the nation are expected to apply for the chief’s job.

Among Gates’ supporters, Wachs said he admired the chief’s willingness to stay during the selection of a successor.

“I hope that people will now stop focusing on an individual and begin concentrating on the positive and constructive changes that could bring us together as a people, restore credibility and raise the Los Angeles Police Department to an even higher level of excellence and esteem,” he said.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, another Gates supporter, said his announcement “is approximately the same time line he would have set if there had been no Rodney King incident.”

“I like today’s statement because it is clear, unequivocal and has a date attached,” she said.

Among his critics, Michael Woo, the first councilman to call for Gates’ immediate resignation, said: “It’s wonderful that the chief has finally seen the light.

“What we’re seeing today is truly historic,” Woo said. “It’s the changing of an era. It’s a change from the Parker era to the era of accountability.”

Danny Bakewell, president of the Brotherhood Crusade, said it was “dangerous” to trust that Gates will leave as he said in April, cautioning that the chief may withdraw his promise to retire.

“Daryl Gates has proven time and time again that his words cannot be blindly trusted,” Bakewell said. “Therefore, we cannot blindly trust his so-called timetable for resignation or retirement.”

Police Commissioner Stanley Sheinbaum said the chief’s letter clears the way to start “the long, complicated process” of selecting a new chief. “He goes out on a high, especially now that he’s provided a clear date,” Sheinbaum said. “He has done it with dignity.”

Melanie Lomax, who announced that she is leaving the Police Commission in the wake of criticism from the Christopher Commission, said an April departure date for Gates seemed appropriate.

“In terms of his retirement,” she said, “it’s a very welcome development. A development that’s overdue. . . . A development that will be very beneficial to the city.”

Times staff writers Edward J. Boyer, Jane Fritsch, Eric Malnic and Frederick M. Muir contributed to this story.

Gates on Leaving the LAPD

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates told Los Angeles Police Department officers and city officials Monday that he plans to retire in April, 1992, after 14 years on the job. After the police beating of Rodney G. King, critics have called repeatedly for Gates to step down. Among his statements over the years: Shortly after Gates’ appointment as chief, he tells the Police Commission that he will not stay longer “than three to four years.”

1984: Gates says: “I’ll stay until the end of the (1984) Olympics.”

1987: Gates suggests that he will leave the force after Pope John Paul II’s visit to Los Angeles.

1988: Gates reverses himself, talks about exceeding former Chief William H. Parker’s tenure of almost 16 years.

1991: May 29: Gates says he will “leave the department” if his leadership is at fault.

July 9: After Christopher Commission report suggests that Gates step down, Gates vows not to step aside, but says “if the people of Los Angeles believe as the (Christopher) Commission believes that a chief should be restricted to two five-year terms, then the people will have spoken and that will say volumes to me.”

July 11: City Council President John Ferraro and Councilman Joel Wachs say that Gates told them he will leave his post at the end of the year.

July 12: Gates tells reporters after a news conference in North Carolina that once City Charter amendments on the chief’s tenure are submitted to the voters, “then I may feel that may be time to announce a date of resignation, but it’s got to go on the ballot first.”

July 13: In a phone interview, Gates says: “I will retire. Sometime in ’92 or (early) ’93. I have always said that I’m not retiring until an orderly process is completed.”

July 14: “I’m not setting a date. I can’t set a date. I don’t know when the council is going to get this thing on the ballot. . . . I’ve said over and over again . . . let the process go forward, let’s stop all this nonsense.”

July 16: Gates tells LAPD officers that they will be the first to know when he decides to step down.

July 19: Speculation surfaces that Gates is drafting a tentative letter of retirement that links his departure only to the hiring of a new chief--and not to a special election on charter reforms.

July 22: In a roll call video, Gates tells his charges: “I have chosen the month of April, 1992, to retire. . . . That’s it, April, 1992 . . . and maybe that will stop all the nonsense that’s been going on.”

Compiled by Times researcher Cecilia Rasmussen