Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991 TAG: 9103170034
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
In the two weeks since officers pummeled 25-year-old Rodney King, community and civil rights groups have pressed their demands for Gates' resignation.
"The chief has to bear the responsibility for what took place in the Rodney King incident," said civil rights attorney Melanie Lomax, a member of the city's part-time Police Commission.
"His history of intemperate remarks gives the bad apples in the department some form of license to cross the line," she said.
Protected from immediate dismissal by civil service laws, Gates has responded to the demands for his ouster with characteristic defiance.
"Anyone who thinks I'm going to slink away is wrong," he declared after hearing 400 angry blacks and Hispanics demand his ouster during a Police Commission hearing last week.
"The more they scream for his removal . . . the more the quiet Daryl Gates is going to stay around," said Gates' predecessor, state Sen. Ed Davis. "Daryl Gates is a very fine chief of police."
In Bermuda, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Saturday that President Bush fully supports the Justice Department's decision to probe the "shocking" beating of King. Bush had singled out Gates for praise in a recent speech at a crime summit, a few hours before a videotape of the police beating was shown on national television.
Officers who stopped King for speeding, after what they claimed was a chase in which he reached more than 100 mph, clubbed him dozens of times with their batons, kicked him and shot him with an electric stun gun.
Gates, 64, chief for 13 of his 42 years with the Police Department, long has been the target of activists angered by his officers' strong-arm tactics and his alleged insensitivity to minorities.
Gates' gaffes include his assertion in 1982 that several blacks died as a result of police chokeholds because arteries in the necks of black people "do not open up as fast as they do in normal people."
When Hispanic officers complained in the 1980s that they frequently were passed over for promotion, Gates called them lazy.
Last September, he told a U.S. Senate committee that casual drug users "ought to be taken out and shot."
When he finally apologized to King, Gates noted he was doing so "in spite of the fact that he's on parole and a convicted robber."
Far more alarming to human-rights groups is what they contend is a history of brutality in the Police Department under Gates' tenure.
In 1979, police officers fired 12 bullets into Eulia Love. They later said the 39-year-old black woman had brandished a butcher knife when officers approached her about an overdue gas bill.
In August 1988, 88 officers ransacked several apartments on Dalton Avenue in south-central Los Angeles during a drug raid. The city eventually paid about $3 million in damages to the residents to settle a lawsuit.
In 1990, the city paid an estimated $8 million as a result of excessive-force lawsuits filed against the Police Department.
"The record is so crystal clear that it is unarguable," said Henry McGee Jr., a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Many rank-and-file police officers have a different view. All of the major officers' organizations have endorsed the chief's refusal to step down, including the Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers.
"I'm frustrated by what happened and at the same time I'm glad it came to light so we can take the ship we're on and adjust the course and provide a better service to the community," said Sgt. Emilio Perez, president of the 1,000-member Latin American Law Enforcement Association.
Despite the support, Gates' relations with minority leaders took another turn for the worse in a Friday meeting at his office. Gates opened the meeting by insisting the beating was an aberration and repeated his refusal to resign, said Mark Ridley-Thomas of the civil rights group the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Gates told reporters he had hoped Friday's meeting - one of a series held every other month - would lead to solutions. But participants decided to postpone future meetings indefinitely.
by CNB