AFTER THE RIOTS : Leaders of Riot Response Probe Have Top Credentials : Williams: A black, the No. 2 member of the team has led Newark’s mostly white police force and heads a think tank with a strong reputation.

Hubert Williams, named second-in-command of the probe into the Los Angeles Police Department’s handling of the riots, heads the Police Foundation, a Washington think tank with a reputation for spawning innovative, progressive policing.

Williams, 52, came to the post in 1985 after advancing in 12 years from a beat cop in the Newark, N.J., force to the department’s police director, a job he held for 11 years.

On his way to the top police post, he earned a law degree at night from Rutgers University Law School. His bachelor of science degree is from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The combination of education and experience put him in a good position when the predominantly black city of Newark was looking for a black man to head its largely white police department.

“Don’t paint him as a benefactor of affirmative action, because that would miss his intuitive powers,” said a longtime colleague, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That law degree helped him get that top job in Newark, and he knew it would.”

The colleague noted that Williams still takes a ribbing about the cover photo of a Sunday newspaper supplement that showed him with academic robes thrown back to expose a police revolver on his hip.

Williams has systematically sought and achieved a voice in making criminal justice policy.

He serves on the boards and committees of the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s advisory committee on alternatives to imprisonment, the National Advisory Committee on Innovations in State and Local Government, the advisory board of Rand Corp.’s drug policy research center, John Jay College’s advisory board, and on the board of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.

For Williams, a founding president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officers, the question of race and its relationship to policing appears to be among his primary concerns.

He participates in the national executive session on policing at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he has exchanged ideas with two other notable conference members--outgoing LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates and the incoming chief, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Willie Williams.

In a paper for the session that he wrote with former New York Police Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy, Williams contended that colleagues had given a “disturbingly incomplete” analysis of the strategic history of American policing.

“It fails to take account of how slavery, segregation, discrimination and racism have affected the quality of policing in the nation’s minority communities,” Williams and Murphy wrote.

Williams’ tenure at the Ford Foundation-spawned Police Foundation has drawn criticism from some colleagues and competitors who contend that the quality and importance of the research done there has declined in recent years.

But a Williams admirer said the criticism misses the point that Williams has been concentrating on fund raising to achieve independence for the foundation, which like many such groups finds itself pressed for money.

And it overlooks Williams’ strength, the admirer maintains. “He’s good at figuring out what a situation is, but not so strong on academic analysis.”

Profile: Hubert WilliamsBorn: Aug. 19, 1939, in Savannah, Ga.

Education: BS degree, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 1970; law doctorate, Rutgers University Law School, 1974; research fellow at Harvard Law School Center for Criminal Justice, graduate of FBI national academy.

Career highlights: Newark, N.J., police officer, 1962-73; director of Newark Police Department, 1974-85; president, Police Foundation, Washington, 1985-present; founding president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officers.

Personal: Married, two daughters and a son.