Mayor’s Tactics Are Unfair, Gates Charges

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates went on the offensive Wednesday night with a scathing attack on Mayor Tom Bradley’s call for his resignation.

“I know, clearly, there is an orchestrated campaign,” Gates said. “It is evident to everyone. I think the City Council is voicing outrage over it, and well they should. It’s not helping the city.”

Gates called the mayor’s tactics “unfair” in an interview Wednesday night after he appeared on ABC’s Nightline program. It was his strongest response to the mayor’s demand Tuesday for his resignation.

“The unfairness is that when the mayor talks about the healing process, how can you heal when you keep jabbing at the wound? You can’t heal,” Gates said.

What Bradley should have done, the chief said, was sit down with him and “figure out if we have a problem here.”

“That would have brought the city together,” Gates said. “That is true leadership. Unfortunately, the mayor is not providing true leadership.”

Gates said he supports an independent review of police conduct in the wake of the March 3 beating of motorist Rodney G. King. And, the chief said, if the inquiry finds that he has not exercised appropriate control over the department “I would say, ‘Mayor . . . I’m gone.’ ”

Gates said he believes some people are advising the mayor “improperly.”

“If the mayor’s really interested in healing the city he ought to go about doing that,” Gates said.

The chief questioned why Bradley would appoint an independent commission one day and then “preempt” the panel the next day by asking for his resignation.

He suggested that Bradley reacted to Councilman Mike Woo’s appearances in the black community last weekend during which he called for Gates to step down.

“I think that is nonsense,” Gates said. “Let’s . . . hold down the rhetoric, and I think we’ll all be better off.”

Bradley’s call for Gates to resign has turned the King affair into a fierce clash between two of the city’s most powerful figures and it threatens to further divide Los Angeles, community leaders said Wednesday. Gates’ remarks about the mayor Wednesday night only underscored that contention.

Moving rapidly ahead on an elaborate campaign that began a month ago, the mayor and his staff have cranked up the pressure on the police chief by fueling public criticism of him while working behind the scenes to seek his ouster, said City Hall sources who requested anonymity.

The climax of these efforts may come as early as today, when Bradley’s appointees on the Police Commission meet in a closed session.

But Gates, as he indicated with his latest counterpunch late Wednesday, has vowed to fight until the end.

Immediately after the mayor called for his resignation Tuesday, Gates alluded to the ethics controversies that have dogged Bradley for the last two years. Gates’ department is investigating campaign fund raising by the mayor’s aides and appointees, as well as allegations of corruption that involve Bradley himself.

Gates has hired an attorney to defend him against any possible disciplinary actions by the Police Commission.

And Eric Rose, who advised Gates during his exploratory campaign for governor in 1988, said he was “asked by the chief’s office” to handle media relations work for the newly formed Citizens in Support of the Chief of Police.

A police spokesman, however, denied that such sanction was granted to Rose, although he acknowledged that the chief’s office had discussed the possibility with Rose.

Bradley accused Gates on Tuesday of embarking “on a public relations campaign that has only deepened our wounds and widened our differences.”

But Bradley’s decision to call for Gates to step down after four weeks of refusing to do so is similarly disruptive, several prominent city leaders said.

“I think the strategy failed,” said Councilwoman Joy Picus, who favors the chief remaining in office. “The mayor has focused attacks on Daryl Gates . . . and further polarized the city.”

One longtime Bradley backer and city commissioner said: “I have not met anybody in the business Establishment who supports the mayor on this. . . . I think Tom made a terrible mistake.”

The city is already torn over the King beating, said Woo, the only other city official so far to call for Gates to resign.

“I think the mayor deserves credit for taking a courageous stand on a very controversial issue in this city,” Woo said. “He has been criticized throughout his career for not being outspoken enough. Now people criticize him for taking a bold stand.”

In any case, the escalation of a deeply personal and political battle between the city’s mayor and police chief is troubling to many city leaders.

“I have a lot of respect and admiration for both Chief Gates and Mayor Bradley,” said Richard Riordan, a prominent Los Angeles attorney and supporter of both men. “I think that it is very divisive for the city to personalize any fight between the two of them. We should be focusing in on the problem of racism and how we solve it rather than making it into a personal fight.”

Said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky: “I would like to see a cease-fire between the chief and the mayor for a while. As long as there is a contest of wills between them, the city is going to be increasingly divided.”

The mayor is “very comfortable” with his decision, said Mark Fabiani, Bradley’s chief of staff.

“He felt it is the only decision that is in the best interest of the city. And the complaints of some members of the City Council who have never had a negative word to say about the chief in their lives really doesn’t make any difference to the mayor,” Fabiani said.

Although the mayor and police chief have engaged in a feud that has spanned several years, the animosity boiled over last year when Gates said Bradley had written a “dumb letter” calling for an investigation related to alleged police vandalism at 39th Street and Dalton Avenue.

The furor surrounding the King beating provided Bradley with an opportunity to push for Gates’ removal, something the mayor’s office had been contemplating for some time, sources said. A behind-the-scenes campaign was launched immediately to pressure the chief into resigning.

Bradley sought to further pressure Gates on Monday by appointing a seven-member citizens’ commission to launch a wide-ranging investigation of the Police Department, including problems of police brutality. The mayor announced that Jesse Brewer, recently retired assistant police chief under Gates, would serve as one of three senior advisers to the panel.

But two sources told The Times on Wednesday that Brewer did not agree to serve the mayor’s commission in an official capacity. “He feels he got tricked,” said one source, who said he talked to Brewer about the subject and asked not to be named.

Another senior adviser announced by Bradley, criminologist James Q. Wilson, said Monday that he, too, had agreed to answer questions informally for the panel but was not asked to become an official part of the commission. He has refused to do so.

While Bradley has consistently denied any effort to sack Gates, his press conference Tuesday marked the first time that the mayor publicly called for the chief to step down.

Shortly after the announcement, Gates shot back at Bradley by bringing up City Atty. James K. Hahn’s findings after a 1989 investigation that the mayor had “clearly failed” to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest. The investigation involved Bradley’s ties to financial institutions that dealt with the city and his efforts to secure city funds for a scandal-plagued group formed to promote trade with Africa.

Gates’ department participated in that inquiry, which resulted in $20,000 in civil penalties against the mayor but no criminal charges.

For the last several months, the Police Department has been conducting a second investigation of political fund raising for the mayor’s campaigns and allegations of corruption that involve the mayor. One focus of the investigation is Bradley’s relationship with campaign fund-raiser Harold R. Washington, a developer-consultant who obtained a city-subsidized housing project. Informants have told police that Washington sought money for contributions or payments to Bradley and other city officials to help secure the project.

The police also are investigating possible conflicts of interest and misuse of city resources in the fund-raising activities of Bradley aides and commissioners.

Bradley, Washington and the mayor’s aides have denied doing anything improper.

Sources close to the investigation have insisted the Gates-Bradley clash has not affected the course of the current investigation, although one source acknowledged that the escalating political fight is making it “more ticklish.”

“No matter what you do, you’re open to charges” of either moving too aggressively against the mayor or holding back, the source said. “Nobody has pushed this one way or the other . . . we don’t want to get into that.”

Capt. Doug Watson, who heads the Bunco-Forgery Division that is conducting the investigations, said Wednesday that he has given Gates and other top department officials briefings on the inquiries. But he said neither the chief nor any other superiors have shown unusual interest or attempted to influence the investigation.

“It was already so sensitive” that the Bradley-Gates clash makes little difference, Watson said.

Bradley has no concern about the outcome of the police investigations as long as they are “handled objectively and professionally,” Fabiani said. “If they become the subject of political influence by the chief, the public will see through that in a split second.”

Times staff writer Louis Sahagun contributed to this story.