Report Applauded in Minority Communities : Neighborhoods: Blacks and Latinos say police racism and excessive force were common knowledge. Many activists call for Chief Gates to resign.

“I would love to drive down Slauson with a flame thrower . . . . We would have a barbecue.”

For members of the Christopher Commission, that computer message from an anonymous police officer represented hard evidence of racist attitudes within the Los Angeles Police Department.

For African-American customers at the Park-N-Shop fish market and liquor store at Slauson Avenue and Figueroa Street on Tuesday, the words sparked anger, but no surprise.

“It’s terrible,” said Ellis Lloyd, 40. “They’ve got a bad understanding of the community. Any time they stop you, they think you’re a criminal. Anything you say, they tell you to shut up. It’s really hard here.”

“It’s just coming to daylight, that’s all,” said R. B. Wilson Jr., a 30-year-old airplane mechanic. “It’s always been there.”

As news of the commission’s findings circulated through the city on Tuesday, it drew a swift, strong reaction from residents of minority communities and from activists on both sides of the battle over whether Police Chief Daryl F. Gates should step down.

If there was a common sentiment, however, it was that, for all its detailed examples of racism, sexism and anti-gay attitudes within police ranks, the report did not say anything that many Angelenos did not already know or suspect. For many, it just said it forcefully and officially.

“They (the commissioners) won’t find anyone in poor communities that will be surprised by what they’ve found,” said Father Gregory Boyle, pastor of the Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights.

Even such adversaries as Gates and Ramona Ripston, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, agreed that the report did not contain extraordinary revelations.

“We are not startled by any of the things they found. Most of what was found we already knew,” Gates said. Corrective measures, the chief insisted, have already been implemented.

“There is nothing new in this report,” Ripston echoed at her own press conference. “Those of us who talk to the victims of police abuse know that there is racism in this department. What is different is that prestigious civic leaders now understand what people in the minority community have been saying for years.”

But civil rights and minority activists argue that the fact that Gates agrees that the report isn’t startling provides all the more reason for him to resign. They saw it as a profound condemnation of the policies and practices of the Police Department and its chief.

Many activists, politicians and ministers from the African-American and Latino communities expressed surprise and pleasure that the report was hard-hitting. While the report was diplomatic, they said, it also was clear in asking that Gates should be--in their phrase--a “man of his word” and resign.

“The commission report verifies and confirms allegations made by the community over a number of years,” state Sen. Diane Watson said. “The question is, who will provide the leadership to make those changes? And I hope the guy who has led it (the department) for 13 years and called these things aberrations would do the right thing and step aside. . . . We have to keep the pressure on him. I will only be placated when Gates has left.”

Alice (Sweet Alice) Harris of the Parents of Watts community organization said people have struggled for years to bring police abuse to the attention of city officials.

What the commissioners heard, “We’ve seen it,” she said. “We lived it out here.”

“It is amazing how long it took for this to happen, for someone to look at and see what they’ve been doing,” Harris added. “It wasn’t any secret because we’ve been telling this to them all the time. It just took that videotape to reach the hearts of these people. Thank God for whoever invented the videotape.”

Gay activists also were surprised and pleased at corroboration of their longstanding allegations of discrimination, harassment and brutality against lesbians and gay men.

“It’s a vindication of what we’ve been saying for 15 years and the computer tapes are certainly the smoking guns we’ve been looking for,” said Roger Coggan, director of legal services at the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Hollywood.

Gates’ supporters saw a different message in the report.

Peggy Rowe Estrada, president of the Citizens in Support of the Chief of Police, said she had read only the summary of the report, but from that believes “there are small amounts of problems in the department that have to be fixed.”

Although she agreed that Gates must bear some blame for these problems, “I believe it’s his responsibility to stay in office and make those changes. . . . Who better to make changes in the Police Department than the chief of police who’s been doing it for 14 years?”

She agreed with critics that Gates “sets the tone” for the department, but her observation is: “He sets the tone in that the LAPD is the finest in the nation.”

Another Gates supporter, police reservist Eric Rose, decried the commission’s suggestion to limit a police chief to two five-year terms as “a thinly veiled attempt to force Chief Gates out of the back door. Since Chief Gates has done nothing wrong in his management of the LAPD, except for some management flaws, this call for him to find a successor is really scandalous. It’s going to polarize the department and harm its morale.”

Back at the Park-N-Shop, R. B. Wilson Jr. said he feared that whatever becomes of Gates, racist police practices will endure.

“Daryl Gates, being the intelligent guy that he is, he will work it out some way, somehow to deal with his officers so that they discipline us in a different way,” Wilson said. “Still the brutality will go on. . . .

“All we’re asking for,” Wilson pleaded, “is the respect to be treated like citizens. All blacks and Mexicans are not bad.”

Times staff writer Scott Harris contributed to this story.