2 Quit Police Panel, Saying Council Has Stymied Reforms : LAPD: Reversal of Chief Williams' reprimand destroys department's accountability to civilian authority, Enrique Hernandez Jr. and Gary Greenebaum charge.

By JIM NEWTON

June 30, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Frustrated and furious about what they see as a crippling blow to their oversight of the Los Angeles Police Department, the two leading members of the city’s Police Commission resigned Thursday, accusing the City Council of carelessly wielding its power and of destroying the prospects for LAPD reform.

In an exhaustive and sometimes emotional interview, Enrique Hernandez Jr. and Gary Greenebaum, the board’s current president and immediate past president, respectively, said they had mulled their decision for more than a week, talking it over with a few trusted friends and with Mayor Richard Riordan. Ultimately, however, both men decided that last week’s City Council vote overturning their reprimand of Police Chief Willie L. Williams made it impossible for them to continue serving on the five-member civilian board charged with setting policy for the Police Department.

“We saw the ugly side of Los Angeles politics,” Hernandez said. “It’s really with great, sad reluctance that I resign. I think I could serve the city well, but I can’t serve under these circumstances.”

What especially galled the commissioners was that the council voted without reviewing the commission’s reasons for its reprimand, which sources said the board approved unanimously after concluding that Williams had lied about accepting free accommodations in Las Vegas. The council’s decision to overturn the commission without investigating the board’s work, according to Greenebaum and Hernandez, gutted the commission’s authority and undermined the most important premise of police reform: that the chief and department need to be accountable to the civilian Police Commission.

“I feel saddened by what I consider to be the fact that police reform in Los Angeles is dead by virtue of the council vote,” Greenebaum said during the commissioners’ two-hour interview with The Times, the most candid and critical assessment ever offered by board members of the LAPD and the prospects for reform. “They [council members] have said, in effect, that avoiding this problem short-term is more important to them than police reform long-term.”

Added Hernandez: “If you truly believe in those reforms, this is a death blow.”

The two men formalized their resignations in a letter to the mayor that they delivered personally late Thursday. A copy was obtained by The Times.

Although Riordan was unavailable for comment, a source close to the mayor said he had regretfully accepted the resignations, which are effective immediately.

The sudden departure of the commission’s most recognized figures potentially creates a ripple effect of political fallout.

Riordan, whose chief of staff also announced his resignation this week, now confronts two crucial vacancies in the management of the city’s most closely watched department. At the same time, the council must consider two new commission nominees in the face of the public condemnation being leveled by the outgoing commissioners.

A Critical Juncture

Hernandez and Greenebaum were appointed by Riordan to the commission in 1993 and brought to their work far different backgrounds and temperaments--one is a hard-driving, successful Latino businessman, the other a soft-spoken rabbi and leading community activist.

Nevertheless, they have developed a close working relationship and friendship during the past two years, and on Thursday, they submitted their resignations jointly, an act that completed a transformation for both men: They joined the commission with strong council backing and as ardent admirers of the chief; they left distressed about the LAPD under Williams and bitterly disappointed in the council that approved their nominations.

Their resignations come at a particularly delicate time. Williams, who is struggling to emerge from weeks of controversy surrounding the reprimand, has often pledged his commitment to adopt wide-ranging reforms of the LAPD and at the same time to work with Riordan on expanding the size of the department. But both missions have been proceeding more slowly than backers had hoped, frustrating the Riordan Administration, as well as some council members and community activists.

Within the LAPD, meanwhile, many officers remain skeptical of Williams, a guardedness that has contributed to the department’s morale problems.

In the interview, both commissioners avoided criticizing Williams directly and stressed that their anger about the council’s decision to overturn the reprimand was directed at the council, not the chief. But the commissioners said that even after three years of the chief’s leadership, the department is burdened by indecision, abysmal morale and tepid commitment to reform--problems for which they said Williams must take some responsibility.

“Chief Williams has been in Los Angeles now for three years,” Hernandez said. “At some point, he has to take ownership of this department.”

In internal LAPD memos obtained by The Times, the commissioners have criticized what they see as Williams’ ineffective management skills, charging that he lacks focus, that he has failed to communicate a clear sense of direction for the LAPD and that he has not set the best example for his department. The commissioners would not elaborate on those criticisms in the interview, but said they remain concerned about the mood of police officers and about their sense that the department is floundering.

“When I think of the department, I think of people,” said Hernandez. “I’m afraid that the people who are working there are more pessimistic about the future. I think about the officers who are actually out there, and I think they are in a more troubled state than they were before.”

Greenebaum agreed: “I think if you asked members of the LAPD what’s expected of them, I don’t think they know anymore. This department lost its vision somewhere along the line. . . . The command staff is in disarray. I don’t think that they can articulate where things are going. They don’t know what direction they are expected to take.”

Greenebaum, who served as commission president in 1993 and 1994, added that his criticism was not directed toward rank-and-file officers, most of whom he said consistently impressed him with “their professionalism, their skills and the appropriateness of the way they act.”

But the success of the LAPD, both commissioners said, depends on its ability to transform itself into a more community-oriented department. And that reform effort, both agreed, cannot be accomplished unless civilians exert strong leadership over the organization and its chief.

“Reform comes down to one word,” said Hernandez. “Accountability.”

That view was a centerpiece of the so-called Christopher Commission, which studied the department in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating. That blue-ribbon panel’s report concluded that the Police Commission lacked real power to manage the LAPD.

“The Police Commission,” that report concluded, “must be provided with adequate staff resources and the ability to hold the police chief accountable for following and implementing its policy directives.”

Voters apparently agreed and approved Charter Amendment F, which implemented some of the Christopher Commission recommendations and gave the Police Commission the power to hire and fire the chief of police. Williams was the first chief hired under the new rules; he has served three years of a five-year term, renewable at the discretion of the commission.

In addition to restructuring the office of the chief and attempting to empower the Police Commission, the Christopher Commission proposed a host of reform measures, some widely accepted, others deeply controversial.

Four years after the panel’s report, many measures remain stalled or moving ahead slowly. Among them are proposals to create new training programs in cultural awareness and other subjects and installation of a department-wide computer system to track all complaints against police.

In his public statements, Williams enthusiastically has embraced reform, and has made some changes to implement recommendations of the Christopher Commission. But other moves, such as the creation of a special unit to handle discrimination and sexual harassment complaints within the ranks, have been made despite Williams’ misgivings and after clashes between the chief and the commission.

Although progress has been made in other areas, Hernandez and Greenebaum said the council’s 12-1 vote to overturn their reprimand made it impossible for them to hold Williams accountable for his actions and removed their ability to aggressively insist upon progress. That was particularly true, they said, because the council made no effort to study the commission’s basis for its decision.

“Any suggestion that the Police Commission can hold the chief accountable is incorrect so long as the City Council is willing to overturn the commission without even understanding what the issues are,” said Hernandez. “The action by the council to reverse the commission as it did without looking at the record says that ultimately accountability is not a critical or necessary ingredient. . . . Accountability in my mind does not equate to making a decision based on avoiding the facts.”

Echoing those sentiments, Greenebaum added that he considered the council’s action evidence that despite their public statements supporting LAPD reform, the members of that body really are not committed to implementing the recommendations of the Christopher Commission.

“By making a decision to overturn our reprimand without having any facts, they in effect said: ‘We are going to use our power to wipe away the power of the Police Commission,’ ” he said. “By doing so, they have rendered the Police Commission incapable of pushing for reform, which is at the heart of the Christopher Commission recommendations and the heart of the Charter Amendment F, which the citizens of Los Angeles specifically voted for. So the council has really violated the will of the people and has left the Police Commission with no ability to serve its true function as a civilian oversight panel.”

Commission Praised

In contrast to their sharp words for the council, both commissioners effusively praised their commission colleagues for their devotion and determination to press on despite the council action. And they hailed Riordan, who met privately with them to discuss the reprimand of Williams and who, unlike the council, reviewed the chief’s personnel file before deciding what action to take. Riordan upheld the commission reprimand, prompting Williams to appeal to the council.

Hernandez and Greenebaum both credited Riordan with exercising political courage in upholding the reprimand of the popular police chief. And they both angrily dismissed the charges of some Williams backers that Riordan was manipulating the commission’s assessment of the chief.

“The suggestion that the five diverse police commissioners are anything but independent from the mayor, the suggestion that we are part of some sort of conspiracy, not only is completely untrue but is insulting to the way in which we have tried to be true to our mandate as police commissioners,” said Greenebaum, adding that it was “grossly unfair to this mayor.”

Asked his opinion, Hernandez simply nodded his head and said: “Ditto.”

As they spoke, the two commissioners paced Greenebaum’s Westside office, occasionally stopping to stare out the windows and acknowledging that even as they prepared to leave their commission duties, they will miss helping to lead the Police Department. It was a heady responsibility, both said, and one that often made them proud to serve.

But, faced with a council action that they said had left them helpless to continue trying to reform the department, both agreed the time had come to leave.

“It’s precisely because that’s why I wanted to be a police commissioner that I now feel that I have to leave the commission,” said Greenebaum. “I was really there to reform the department. . . . When the power to make any of those changes has been snatched away by the City Council, then my personal integrity tells me that it’s time to go.”