Williams’ Personality Is His Shield

Police Chief Willie Williams’ smooth television appearances during the heavy publicity following Ennis Cosby’s murder raise the possibility that refusing him another term might be more difficult than his opponents think.

He looked competent and in command on CNN’s “Larry King Live” show last weekend--a new Williams, slimmed down, articulate, stern but warm.

With the glare of national and local media on him, the chief not only spoke movingly of Bill Cosby’s son, but also talked with great feeling of the murder on the same day of Compton high school student Corie Williams, 17, killed on a crowded MTA bus, and the death of Conception Madrid, 50, a hairdresser who was found strangled in her Van Nuys apartment. “Every death is one death too many in our city,” said Williams, pledging that each of the murders would get full LAPD attention. He recalled visiting the hospital after the bus shooting, and talking to Cosby on the phone.

Personality is Williams’ strong suit, and he’s been showing plenty of it recently. That was clear even before the recent murders, when he spoke at the Police Academy a few weeks ago to a group of men and women who had just completed training as police support volunteers. The room was packed with the grads and their families. The chief’s words weren’t memorable, but the crowd seemed impressed with his style--in charge, but not hard-line about it.

His predecessor, Daryl F. Gates, looked and acted like a chief out of “Dragnet,” the old television show featuring the never-smiling, hard-as-nails, mostly white Los Angeles Police Department of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Williams looks more like a chief for the cop shows of the ‘90s, with their racially diverse officers and commanders, men and women struggling with the human imperfections that bedevil us all.

In a very real way, Williams represents Everyman, not Superman, in an era where we’ve come to be more tolerant of flaws in our leaders.

Maybe that explains why the chief seems to be as popular with today’s public as some of his spit-and-polish predecessors were with theirs.

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Gates was a popular chief with a rock-solid hold on his job until he met his Vietnam, the 1992 riot, and his support melted away.

At that time, the chief had strong Civil Service protections, which in effect were removed from the chief in a police reform measure approved by the voters. It imposed a term limit on the chief and gave the Police Commission, appointed by the mayor, power to give him a second five-year term.

But Gates’ pre-riot popularity was so great that he might have been reappointed under the new procedure if he hadn’t lost control of the city during the riot.

As for Williams, the last Times poll, taken in June, showed that 56% of those surveyed approved of the job he was doing, a better rating than Mayor Richard Riordan’s. It’s 17% below the chief’s high of 73% in 1994 but above his score when he took over in 1992.

Williams, who is black, is especially popular with African Americans and Latinos, less so with whites. But even among whites, 49% approved.

These numbers help explain why most City Hall politicians are reluctant to take a stand on whether Williams should go. Not even Mayor Riordan, who has found fault with Williams from the beginning, will speak out.

But, while ducking the question of whether Williams should remain, council members will watch the commission’s process of judging the chief. If Williams isn’t retained, the pols don’t want to be accused of permitting him to be unfairly run out of town.

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Questions about whether Williams lied to the Police Commission about accepting free rooms in Las Vegas, plus strong criticism of his managerial ability, turned Riordan, several council members and some police commissioners against the chief.

Now, the Police Commission, meeting behind closed doors, is trying agree on criteria to judge Williams, attempting to reduce the process to an exercise in managerial logic.

When commission President Raymond C. Fisher delivers his reports on the commission’s private meetings to the press, he speaks like the lawyer he is--carefully and briefly. In fact, the commission reminds me of senior partners of a law firm, picking out the associates who will be elevated to partner--a process that is not influenced by public opinion.

Picking a chief, however, is much more complicated. It’s a political process and the commission must answer to a city that may support the chief for reasons too intangible for the commissioners’ managerial minds.

Dets. Andy Sipowicz and Bobby Simone of “NYPD Blue” aren’t perfect. Neither is their boss, Lt. Arthur Fancy.

But the public connects with them, just as it did with that grim-faced perfectionist, Sgt. Joe Friday, a few decades ago.