L.A. Police Chief Skids Into Retirement

LOS ANGELES - There will be no buildings erected in his honor, no triumphant farewell with resounding testimonials from a grateful city.

Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates was once hailed by President Bush as "an all-American hero." But a successor, Willie Williams, took the oath of office yesterday and Gates will retire this weekend in disgrace.

"How else can you look at it?" asks the LAPD's former spokesman, retired Lt. Dan Cooke. "They have thrown out all the good things he's done. Now they're only going to remember the bad."

Cooke says the media "stripped the man of everything" and politicians "did their level best to cut off his legs."

Others say only Gates is to blame.

"Gates brought all this on the department and himself," says best-selling author Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD detective. "Personally, I really like the guy. But I'm afraid he brought down my department."

After 14 years as chief, Gates leaves a demoralized force, tarnished by claims of brutality and racism, by the videotaped beating of Rodney King and blamed for letting the ensuing riots in South Central Los Angeles get out of hand.

"Under his watch, South Central L.A. became a killing field," said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky. "That's his legacy."

WON'T BOW OUT QUIETLY

Now, the man who recreated medieval battering rams to break down the doors of drug dealers has refused to bow out of his $168,000 a year job gracefully.

"I've got a lot more things to say, and I'm going to say them," Gates, 65, vowed Tuesday at his retirement party, a barbecue attended by thousands of officers and their families.

On Thursday, Gates gave a sentimental farewell to his officers, saying he has no anger or bitterness and urging them to support Williams.

Speaking in a videotaped message, Gates acknowledged, "It has been a tough, tough year" and added, "There were two beatings in this town, the Rodney King beating and the LAPD."

Gates once was a mythic figure in law enforcement. He was smart, good-looking, authoritative and outspoken, even when that got him into hot water.

He pioneered programs such as SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) and DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), both emulated nationwide.

His officers loved him to the end, even chanting "Four more years, four more years!" at the retirement party.

But Gates fought running battles with his bosses on the city's Police Commission as well as members of the City Council, who he referred to as "crummy little politicians," and was involved in a feud with Mayor Tom Bradley.

Gates and Bradley, a former LAPD lieutenant, didn't speak during his last year as chief.

Ask political insiders what toppled Gates and you hear three words: pride, arrogance and ego. His was a case of hubris, the overweaning pride that blinds a man to his own failings.

"I think in the latter stages of his career he enjoyed confrontation. He enjoyed being one against the many when the many were politicians," said Wambaugh.

In his autobiography, "Chief," Gates tells of working to erase the perception that he was a clone of his mentors, Chiefs William Parker and Edward Davis.

`SHOT FROM THE LIP'

He found a new style as the chief who "shot from the lip." His public pronunciations made headlines, although he insisted he was often misquoted.

Only a month after his 1978 installation, Gates was quoted as calling Latino officers "lazy."

"I hadn't said that at all," he writes. "I had said that as a group, Latino officers seemed less inclined to advance, satisfied as they were with being detectives. No matter. Suddenly I was labeled a bigot."

In 1982, The Los Angeles Times reported Gates had said more black prisoners than white died from a police chokehold because their "veins or arteries do not open as fast as they do in normal people."

Even Gates' political opponent Yaroslavsky says that was "a bad rap," that he was misinterpreted. But the "black and normal" controversy haunted Gates for years.

BEGINNING OF THE END

Gates eventual downfall came through what many perceived to be a racist act - the March 1991 videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King by four white police officers.

Bradley and Gates exchanged their final words April 2 last year when Bradley asked him to retire. "Mayor . . . I will not resign," said Gates.

But in July, 1991, an independent commission formed in the wake of the beating, urged him to retire, and he agreed.

Gates came under further pressure to leave following three days of bloody rioting that started April 29 when a jury in suburban Simi Valley acquitted three of the officers in the Rodney King beating and were undecided on the fourth.

Sixty people died in the rioting, the worst U.S. urban unrest this century, and property damage totaled more than $1 billion.

Gates was held responsible for the chaotic way in which police responded to the lawlessness. It took six hours to get officers to the riot hot spots.

The high point of his career was the virtually crime-free 1984 Olympics. He mused recently that it would have been the perfect time to leave.

-- Material from Reuters is included in this report.