Conference of Police, Minority Groups Begins : Dialogue: Blacks, Latinos and Asians gather with representatives of county law enforcement agencies in the wake of Rodney G. King beating. Neither Chief Gates nor Sheriff Block is present.

An unusual two-day conference of Los Angeles County police officials and representatives of minority groups got under way Friday amid predictions that black, Latino and Asian delegations would unite in seeking changes in police attitudes and procedures.

The meeting was called by the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Justice Department, which has been active behind the scenes seeking to ease tensions in Los Angeles in the wake of the March 3 police beating of Rodney G. King.

Jarone Johnson, Western regional director of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said that until now blacks have most frequently been alone in trying to change insensitive police policies toward minorities.

“Now, with a common approach, we believe someone will start listening to us,” the NAACP official said after conferring with leaders from the Latino and Asian communities who had been responsible for putting together those ethnic delegations. Johnson was responsible for putting together the 20-member black delegation to the closed-door meeting, which is being held at a San Pedro hotel.

The delegations were designed to be broadly representative of the respective ethnic communities, with some focus on particular groups, such as Samoans in the Asian group, that have had recent difficulties in police relations.

On the first day of the conference, each ethnic delegation met by itself, as did a 15-member contingent representing the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Assn. At today’s meetings, the various delegations will meet together and compare points before issuing a joint public statement at the conclusion. About 75 people attended Friday’s sessions.

The woman who put together the Latino delegation, Gloria Romero of the Hispanic Advisory Council to the Los Angeles Police Commission, said she had been told that the opening discussions in all groups had been unusually comprehensive.

“We discussed a whole range of issues,” she said of the Latino meeting. “Communications, recruitment and training of police, their conduct and misconduct, filing complaints. It was all in the context of the racial situation nationwide.”

She described the discussion in her group as “logical, reasonable, conservative by no means and at times passionate.”

The Community Relations Service--a Justice Department division that specializes in conciliating diverse groups in racially tense situations--paid the meeting’s expenses, including meals and meeting rooms.

Two CRS aides were on hand Friday to facilitate the dialogue. They were Julian Klugman, chief of the agency’s San Francisco regional office, and Vermont McKinney, a staff member who was once a militant leader in the Los Angeles black community and has been acquainted with high-ranking LAPD officials for more than 20 years.

The police delegation originally was to have included 20 of the county’s 47 police chiefs. However, Klugman and McKinney said that actually only about a dozen chiefs were present, and they would not release their names.

Not present were Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, although both sent their representatives.

Assistant Los Angeles Police Chief Robert L. Vernon, attending for Gates, said the blame for Gates’ absence was really Vernon’s, because he had not told Gates about it in time to avoid a scheduling conflict. Vernon said that the LAPD was represented by a higher-ranking officer than the Sheriff’s Department, which sent a division chief and two captains.

Duane Preimsberger, the sheriff’s division chief, said: “The meeting was put together in a fairly rapid fashion and Sheriff Block has a rather busy schedule and couldn’t be here.”

Vernon said later that the separate meeting of the police officials had started off with a vote to say nothing further to the press until a news conference scheduled for today.

Bong Hwan Kim, president of the Asian Pacific Planning Council and the man who put together the Asian delegation, called the absence of Gates and Block “unfortunate.”

But the NAACP’s Johnson said he was just as glad Gates was not present. “I don’t think he would have added anything to the conference at this time,” he said.