Word on Removal Spreads Quickly in South-Central L.A. : Reaction: Many in community approve of commission action. Others voice sympathy for embattled police chief.

Elnora Cole was going door to door, gathering signatures to remove Police Chief Daryl F. Gates from office, when she learned the chief had been put on a leave of absence.

“You have got to be kidding, I can’t believe it,” said Cole, a 71-year-old retired nurse. “This will make the city a better place. It will restore confidence in the police.

Cole savored the moment, and then resumed knocking on doors, gathering more signatures. Now, she said, was no time to stop: A temporary leave of absence wasn’t enough.

“He should have been fired,” Cole said.

From the moment a videotape showed black motorist Rodney G. King being beaten by white police officers, the incident struck a strong emotional chord in South Los Angeles, a section of the city where many residents say they have known victims like him. In a place where residents have long felt their complaints of police abuse have gone unheeded, ministers and community leaders have helped lead the call for Gates’ resignation.

When the Police Commission decided Thursday to put the veteran police chief on leave of absence, word spread quickly among the people who gathered in restaurants, browsed in bookstores and shopped at a Crenshaw Boulevard shopping mall.

A group of teachers were discussing the beating over lunch at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza when they got the news. They broke out in applause.

“The whole incident is confirmation that this sort of thing goes on all the time,” said Margaret Bibbins, a sixth-grade teacher at Woodcrest Elementary School. “Los Angeles has a history of police brutality.”

Bibbins said the children she teaches in South Los Angeles grow up knowing that the police can be brutal. “One of my students saw the police shoot a man. It’s something you don’t forget,” she said.

Dwayane Hester, a 21-year-old microbiology student at UCLA, said that while Gates might not be directly responsible for the beating, the chief has set a tone that allowed it to happen.

“If there was no videotape the whole thing would have been swept under the rug by the chief of police,” Hester said.

“Gates has to go. It starts from the top and the only way to change the department is to begin with the chief.”

But a black police sergeant in the Southwest Division had mixed feelings.

“I think it’s time for the chief to retire, but I don’t think he should be forced to go,” said the sergeant, who did not want to give his name.

“The chief is not the larger issue,” he said. “The problem is deeper, and changing the chief will not change the attitudes in the department.”

While few doubted that Gates bore some responsibility for the actions of his officers, some questioned the fairness of the commission’s singling him out.

“I know that he is over (police officers) but he can’t control them at all times,” said Sophia J. Ward as she sat on a bench and rested from a morning of shopping. “I feel he should have a chance. If he’s wrong, I’m sure he’s realized it, and if they’d give him the chance, he’d make things better.”

Carolyn Bruce, who sells T-shirts with religious slogans in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, said the suspension was good because it would give Gates time to reflect on his duties and his department, but that he should not be forced out.

“He’s only one person. He can’t watch everybody,” Bruce said, leafing through a newspaper on the counter of her booth.

Bruce said that while she sympathized with Gates, he needed to heed the voices in the community who believe it is time for change.

Most agreed with Elnora Cole, who predicted that the suspension would not slow down the movement to recall the chief.

“Gates should go,” she said. “I lost faith in him as soon as he said (King’s beating) was an aberration. We know it wasn’t.”