Gates’ Choice for Chief Has a Familiar Name

Guess who has expressed interest in becoming the next Los Angeles police chief?

None other than Daryl F. Gates, the Los Angeles Police Department’s controversial former leader, who recently logged on to the city’s executive search firm’s World Wide Web page and sent an electronic message saying he was thinking about applying for the job.

“I did it just to get their juices going,” said Gates in an interview Friday, adding that the message was his little prank. “I wanted to put them on edge and have them wring their hands and say, ‘Oh no, Gates is going to apply.’ ”

Not that he doesn’t want to.

“Hell, yes, I’d like to come back and straighten out the department for six months or so,” the 70-year-old former chief said. “But there’s not even a remote chance. . . . I’m not sure I could get one vote.”

Gates said he could not become a legitimate contender because changes to the City Charter have made the selection process, in his view, “too political.”

It might be a different story, he said, were the selection based strictly on merit.

“If it were an examination process, I could whip them all,” Gates said.

After he retired in 1992, a voter-approved change made the chief’s job a five-year contract position that can be renewed once at the discretion of the civilian Police Commission, which is appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council. During Gates’ 14-year tenure as the department’s top cop, the chief could only be removed “for cause” after an adversary hearing in which misconduct had to be proved.

Additionally, the selection of a new chief is now in the hands of the mayor, who selects a candidate from a list of three provided by the Police Commission. Before the changes, the chief was selected by the commission after a series of written and oral tests. The panel could only choose from among the top three scorers.

“The change is really the worst thing they could have done,” Gates said. “It is totally wrong.”

He said any chief hired under the new rules becomes a “toady” and is “like a monkey on a stick,” kowtowing to politicians.

Gates, who received an undisclosed number of votes from the department’s rank-and-file during a recent union survey on who should become the next chief, said he believes he still has broad support within the department and is the most qualified for the job.

But he said he won’t actually apply.

“I don’t do things that are useless,” he said.

He also won’t publicly say whom he supports for the job. However, he did say that he thinks it’s wrong for city leaders to be focused on only “two and a half” candidates from within the department, referring to Deputy Chiefs Bernard Parks and Mark Kroeker, the front-runners, and Deputy Chief David Gascon, whom Gates believes doesn’t have much chance. He said there are about 25 eligible candidates within the department who should be applying.

A representative of the Oldani Group Inc., which is conducting the city’s nationwide search for candidates, declined to comment about the applicants or process, referring all inquiries to the city’s Personnel Department.

A spokesman for the Personnel Department said he would not discuss who has expressed interest in the chief’s job.

Police Commission President Raymond C. Fisher said the panel would “certainly consider” Gates “on his merits” for the job, as it would anyone who is “genuinely a candidate.”

But he said the procedure is not anything to poke fun at.

“This is a serious process here, I don’t think it would be humorous for anyone to try and demean it,” he said.