NEWS ANALYSIS : Pivotal Year Lies Ahead in Push for Reform of LAPD : Police: A new era of law enforcement could begin, or divisions exposed by the King beating could widen.

If 1991 was a year that saw a movement for police reform born on a cool March night in Lake View Terrace under the hidden eye of an amateur video cameraman, then 1992 promises to be the year that changes the equation of police accountability in Los Angeles.

Before the March 3 beating of Rodney G. King, the Los Angeles Police Department’s reputation was such that it had come to be celebrated in popular fiction--from “Dragnet” to “Lethal Weapon”--as the epitome of the modern urban police department. The events of this year shattered that reputation, and the tumult does not figure to fade in the year ahead. Nineteen ninety-two could be the year that a new kind of cop is created here, or it could be a year when the divisions exposed by the King beating widen further.

Freshman City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, one of the leading voices for police reform, defined his goals this way in a recent speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles:

“The overall objective is effective law enforcement and police accountability. And until we have police accountability, we will not have the kind of effective law enforcement that we deserve. That’s what we need to focus on.

“This is not about LAPD-bashing. This is about making our community what it ought to be.”

But Lt. George Aliano, who served more than seven years as head of the police union until he stepped down in July, sees something else:

“The sharpies saw an opportunity to do something,” said Aliano, who is not entirely hostile to reform in the department. “They used that videotape to do their own beating on us. It was used as a stick. It was used as a club. . . . They got their claws, finally, on the LAPD and they’re going to change the system forever.”

The tone and prospects for police reform will be evident in the first six months of the year.

* In February, criminal trial is set to begin for the four LAPD officers charged with beating King.

Conviction was once considered a sure bet on the strength of the videotape, which recorded the officers pummeling the motorist as he writhed on the ground. Some observers in the legal community and within the LAPD now believe that guilty verdicts may not come that easily. Despite the widespread outrage generated by the King beating, juries have in the past been reluctant to convict police officers acting in the line of duty, these observers say. They note that a group of LAPD officers was acquitted in the notorious 39th and Dalton vandalism case, in which rampaging police destroyed the apartments of several families in a drug raid. Skeptics also point to the refusal of the Los Angeles County Grand Jury to indict any Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs involved in a series of recent questionable shootings.

There also are perceptions that the shift of the trial to largely white, conservative Ventura County may help the defense seat a more sympathetic jury.

* Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, whose continued presence in office came to symbolize the LAPD’s reluctance to embrace reform, is scheduled to retire in April, and the process of selecting a new chief has begun. Despite his promise to step down, Gates has made veiled references about staying on. The situation could present serious problems for the city, which could reach the awkward position of naming a new police chief when there is not a vacancy.

Stanley Sheinbaum, who as president of the Police Commission is the chief’s boss, said that he has been unable to get a firm commitment from Gates on his departure date.

But if Gates refuses to leave in April, Sheinbaum said, “then we’ll be at a point where he will be damaging the city and the Police Department. The city government as a whole will realize that something will have to be done about him.”

* In June, voters are scheduled to decide on key police reforms suggested by the Christopher Commission, which was appointed to review the department’s activities after the King beating.

These watershed recommendations would change the way the city chooses and monitors its police chiefs and would strengthen the Police Commission, the first line of civilian oversight of the Police Department. But if Gates, either as chief or private citizen, campaigns against the reforms, the election could prove alarmingly divisive for the community. Gates already has expressed hostility toward many of the proposals.

Coincident with these calendar-marking events will be a continuing series of decisions by the LAPD brass, the Police Commission and the City Council affecting the way the LAPD polices the city, and the way city leaders police the police.

These issues range from the seemingly routine effort to increase training for patrol officers to the fundamental changes implicit in the move toward community-based policing, which, if fully implemented, may mean a shift away from the response-driven, “crime busters” approach championed by Gates.

Other proposals include increasing the number of officers in the Internal Affairs Division, which investigates police misconduct, and improving methods for handling citizen complaints. These proposals are aimed at making the department more responsive to allegations of abuse, but will be seen by some officers as caving in to second-guessing and reducing their effectiveness.

Many of these decisions will be far-reaching and controversial. In addition to potential political opposition, they could run up against an entrenched LAPD bureaucracy, the need for negotiations with the Police Protective League and the fiscal realities of a recession-impaired municipal budget.

The Impetus for Reform

How far the police reforms go will depend entirely on the depth of public interest, according to Laura Woliver, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina who has become an expert in the area.

Woliver, who is finishing a book called “From Outrage to Action: The Politics of Grass Roots Dissent,” has studied a Rodney King-like episode in Milwaukee, where a young black man was killed by a group of white officers a decade ago. That and other cases triggered criticism that eventually led to limits on the terms of future police chiefs.

“If the public continues to be outraged over the Rodney King affair,” Woliver said, “and if the public demands that changes be made in the Police Department, then true change will come about.

“As long as the level of pressure for reform continues, there is no way the city can resist their demands.

“Because just as in Milwaukee, the incident itself is merely a catalyst. People and community groups had long been alleging that these kinds of police abuses were occurring in Los Angeles, and now the videotape was their proof. They were able to stand up and say, ‘Look, here it is.’ ”

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, had long been a critic of some LAPD tactics. But even she and her staff were stunned by the impact of the videotape.

“It was really one of those unexplainable things,” Ripston said recently. “Sometimes, something just captures the imagination of everyone.”

Inside Parker Center

At Parker Center, the downtown police headquarters, there was a perception from the first airing of the videotape that it had wide implications.

That first week of March, Rick Dinse was promoted from captain to commander. He was to become the LAPD’s point man, both in overseeing the criminal and administrative inquiries into the officers present at the beating, and in coordinating the investigation this summer with the Christopher Commission.

Reluctant to pass judgment on the four indicted officers, or a dozen other bystander officers who have faced administrative charges for doing nothing to stop the beating, Dinse nevertheless recalled how his gut churned at his first sight of the flickering image of Los Angeles police beating King.

“I thought it was a shocking videotape,” he said. “My investigative side immediately kicked in and at that point I believed I had to find out what happened here.”

As protest marches and rallies intensified outside police headquarters, Dinse and others knew that unlike other incidents of police abuse--the shooting of Eulia Love and the 39th and Dalton vandalism case--this would cut much deeper.

“Rodney King himself became a small part of it, if not all but forgotten,” Dinse said. “I felt from the beginning this was going to be a monumental case. I wasn’t sure how big it was going to be. But I knew as it went on that it was going to surpass everyone’s expectations.”

Dinse spent weeks working with Christopher Commission staff members and expected the commission’s final report in July to be hard-hitting. But he never expected the blow to be so crippling.

He still harbors ill feelings that the commission overlooked the department’s achievements, and instead keyed on what he considered “isolated” problems of some individual officers who have used excessive force or expressed racist attitudes.

He believes the commission dealt the police another unfair blow by releasing computer messages they deemed racist along with transcripts of testimony from high-ranking police officials, some of it critical of Gates and the LAPD.

“I felt sure they would find some weaknesses,” Dinse said of the Christopher Commission. “But they never even sought out our strengths.”

However, Chairman Warren Christopher and others on the commission have maintained from the beginning that the purpose of the review was to make recommendations for improving the LAPD.

In the first pages of its 228-page final analysis, the commission said that “this is a blunt report,” and added that “it will be said, and rightly so, that this report does not devote enough attention to the good work done by the men and women of the LAPD.”

Citing evidence of brutality, racism and mismanagement, the commission recommended a “new standard of accountability” for the Police Department. A special ad hoc committee was created on the City Council to begin studying the recommendations. Gates and the Police Commission issued their own--and sometimes opposing--pronouncements on the recommendations.

Likewise, the Los Angeles Police Protective League has weighed in, challenging many of the reform proposals as subject to negotiation under the union’s contract. Just this month, the union’s Board of Directors warned the LAPD’s 8,300 sworn officers that “optimism is waning” that the labor group will be able to stop the reform movement, and that the result could be a reduction in arrests and an increase in crime.

“Some of their recommendations are going to do more harm than good,” league President Bill Violante said in the union’s December newspaper.

The changes, he added, “will cause a disservice not only to Los Angeles police officers, but to the citizens they serve. Care must be taken not to turn the city over to criminals and gangs.”

Cliff Ruff, the league’s legal director, predicted a “bleak future ahead” for the patrol officer on the beat.

“These have been tough times for law enforcement officers, and the upcoming year holds many uncertainties for us,” Ruff wrote in the newspaper. He urged his fellow officers to rally around the defense of the four officers charged in the King beating. “This will, undoubtedly, be their last Christmas on the department,” he wrote, “and their families need your assistance and support now.”

But Aliano, the former league president, is warily optimistic.

Now that much of the angry protest has died down, Aliano believes the months ahead can see some constructive changes that the public “wants and deserves.”

“It’s going to be a different Police Department,” he predicted. “But the public will have to decide if it’s a better department. We can be made to heel. And we should be responsive to the public. But we shouldn’t be constantly under attack.”

One officer, a sergeant with 10 years’ experience who spoke on condition of anonymity, said street cops feel less appreciated, and the atmosphere makes them less likely to take risks. “The best policy is not to get involved. Do your work, but why risk a confrontation or getting hurt?” he said.

The Pace of Reform

Police Commission President Sheinbaum said it may take several years before the department is finally over the scandal and has implemented all the reforms on the table. He sees Gates’ departure and a toughened-up Police Commission as mileposts for 1992, with accompanying “ratcheting” of the department’s effectiveness and clarification of its overall mission.

‘It’s like trying to turn around an ocean liner,” he said. “It is a very slow process.”

That is just the point that frustrates the ACLU’s Ripston, who believes city government is reacting too slowly to the Christopher Commission recommendations. Her worst fear is that the public may lose interest. “Why hasn’t the council moved faster?” she asked. “How much time do you need?”

But Ridley-Thomas, a member of the City Council’s ad hoc committee on the Christopher Commission reforms, argued that City Hall is responding in a timely fashion. He said the council has temporarily approved many of the recommendations and that ballot language is being drafted for the June election.

He also denied that the public, at least in his 8th District in South-Central Los Angeles, have lost interest. He said he is still stopped several times a week by citizens who want to know when Gates will be gone.

He said it is “shameful” that Gates is waffling about his April departure date. And he said it will be a disgrace if LAPD supervisors do not adequately institute the reforms.

“For them to do anything else,” Ridley-Thomas said of the Parker Center administration, “only reinforces the notion that they believe they are above the law.”

Gates declined to be interviewed for this article. But Dinse said the department is reacting positively to the changes and wants to provide the best service to the public. But his main concern is that the LAPD may be under pressure to do too much at once, and that with limited resources and a small number of field officers, it may be difficult to both adequately police the city and enact new community-driven programs.

Already, he noted, the department is planning to upgrade its training program and improve its internal disciplinary system, and is putting in place other new projects to enhance public trust. But with City Hall asking for budget cuts next year, and many neighborhoods demanding more street cops, it could become a delicate juggling act to satisfy everyone’s wishes.

“We are not giving lip-service to all of this,” he said. “We are taking these things seriously. We are moving ahead.”

Ed Davis, a former Los Angeles police chief and now a state senator, predicted that it could take years before the public is satisfied with its new Police Department. He predicted that Gates’ successor--whether chosen from within the LAPD or outside of Los Angeles--will mostly be remembered for how he or she wrestles with implementing the reforms.

“Just don’t look for big changes right away,” Davis said.

Others, such as attorney Stephen Yagman, don’t expect changes at all. Yagman, who has spent years representing plaintiffs in police abuse cases, contends that soon after the Christopher Commission report was issued in July, police officers began to step up their contacts with the public and an increase in abuses began.

Asked to identify the winners and losers in the yearlong drama of the King affair in 1991, Yagman said, “Nobody won, because nothing has changed. And nothing will.”