Daryl F. Gates, Former LAPD Chief, 83

DARYL GATES, led the LAPD for 14 years and was at the helm when the 1991 beating of Rodney King occurred, and when the 1992 riots broke out in response to the acquittal of the officers who were accused of the crime. A controversial figure, particularly in communities of color around Greater Los Angeles, Gates' legacy also extends to the type of policing L.A. became known for -- a modern, almost "militaristic" force -- said critics. He oversaw the launch of the city's first Special Weapson and Tactics Team, better known as SWAT. The police force he built up was known colloquially as "The Hammer." As the entire region changed demographically, physically, ("white flight," out-migration, the city's inner-core emptying out), L.A. proper was, more than ever, a melting pot ready to boil over, during the fourteen years of his service He died Friday of cancer. He was 83.

-- L.G.

From the Los Angeles Times obit:

Daryl F. Gates, the rookie cop who rose from driver for a legendary chief to become chief himself, leading the Los Angeles Police Department during a turbulent 14-year period that found him struggling to keep pace with a city undergoing dramatic racial and ethnic changes, died Friday. He was 83.

Gates died at his Dana Point home after a short battle with cancer, the LAPD announced. (An earlier version of this story said Gates had died in Newport Beach.)

The controversial chief, whose tenure ran from 1978 to 1992, spent his entire four-decade career at the LAPD, where he won national attention for innovative approaches to crime fighting and prevention: He instituted military-style SWAT teams to handle crises and the gentler DARE classroom program to prevent drug abuse. These initiatives, emulated by police departments across the United States, and other advances, such as a communications system that reduced police response times, bolstered his reputation as an exemplar of modern law enforcement. President George H.W. Bush called him an "all-American hero."

A proud emblem of progress to some, he was a disturbing symbol of stagnation to others. When the city went up in flames over the acquittal of four white officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney King, he was castigated as a leader out of touch with the changing realities of the city, yet to the end he remained righteous about his authority to police it.

Faced with a proliferation of illegal drugs and street violence, he hammered gangs with police sweeps and broke into crack dens with an armored vehicle armed with a steel battering ram. He made no apologies for declaring that casual drug users should be shot.

By turns charming and brash, articulate and tactless, he generated controversy with gaffes about Latinos, blacks and Jews, most famously with a remark about blacks faring poorly under police chokeholds because their physiology was different from that of "normal" people. Fiercely loyal to his rank and file, he clashed frequently with elected officials, particularly when they slashed his budget or meddled in department discipline, and vowed he would never be bullied by "crummy politicians."

Throughout his tenure, he had a fractious relationship with Tom Bradley, the former LAPD lieutenant and councilman who united a diverse coalition of constituencies to become the city's first African American mayor.

Gates "fought vigorously to make sure the chief's duties were not encroached upon. That comes from understanding the struggles Bill Parker went through moving the department out of corruption," said City Councilman and former Police Chief Bernard C. Parks. He was referring to William H. Parker, the tough, reform-minded chief in the 1950s and '60s, who became Gates' mentor.

Parks said it was important to remember that the vilification of Gates after the King beating was not universal and that his accomplishments as chief mattered to large segments of the city long after he left the department.

"If you go to areas of the Valley, police organizations, officers' funerals . . . he gets the loudest ovation," Parks noted recently. "I've never seen a situation where . . . 18 years after retirement, officers who never worked with him cheer him as chief of police."

Yet others just as vehemently argue that Gates' strengths were outweighed by his weaknesses, particularly his failure to evolve with a city whose politics and social fabric had been transformed by the maturing of established minority communities and the flowering of newer ones molded by immigration.

"This L.A. was a changing city. . . . He never made the adjustment to the new L.A.," said Ramona Ripston, the longtime head of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

In 1991, the videotaped beating of King was replayed around the world, shattering the carefully nurtured myth that the LAPD of "Dragnet" fame -- professional, honest and humane -- never stooped to such behavior. Gates was slow to criticize his officers' handling of the incident and missing from his command post when the officers' acquittal provoked the worst urban violence in decades, causing at least 53 deaths and more than $1 billion in property damage, but he faced inevitable calls for his resignation with characteristic defiance.

Falling Down: Present Tense

TONIGHT, we are going to take a look at some footage -- a documentary and a feature film -- that speak to the readings this week -- L.A.-behind the curtain; the all-powerful Oz unmasked.

Ruben Martinez, Mike Davis and Wanda Coleman all wrote about the underpinnings of what led the 1992 riots (Coleman connecting the dots from the Watts conflagration in 1965) -- marginalization, limited economic opportunities, unbalanced distribution of wealth. The "melting pot" wasn't melting. It was a cauldron boiling-over.
This film, Falling Down, which came out in February 1993, touched on issues that led up to the 1992 riots. Miachel Douglas, a sort of Everyman who was employed by the defense industry, goes from comfortable to, well, crazed.
I haven't seen it since it's debut so it will be strange to look back at it. All that I remember at this point is the mood: The director, Joel Schumacher, was able to capture this ambient tension that was twisting around Los Angeles in the months leading up to and after the events of April 29th, 1992.

Below is Roger Ebert's assesment of the film, which as I recall, seems spot on:

Falling Down

BY ROGER EBERT / February 26, 1993

A lot of the reviews for "Falling Down" are going to compare it to earlier movies about white men who go berserk: "Joe," for example, or "Death Wish." Some will even find it racist because the targets of the film's hero are African-American, Latino and Korean - with a few whites thrown in for balance. Both of these approaches represent a facile reading of the film, which is actually about a great sadness which turns into madness, and which can afflict anyone who is told, after many years of hard work, that he is unnecessary and irrelevant.

The movie stars Michael Douglas, in a performance of considerable subtlety and some courage, as a Los Angeles man who a few years ago thought he had it all figured out. He was a well-paid defense worker, he had a wife and child, the sun came up every morning, and what was there to worry about? But already there must have been danger signals, and we learn later in the film that he had flashes of violence against his wife and child, that he is divorced, that a court order prevents him from approaching them.

On the morning the film begins, he is stuck in traffic on the freeway. Nothing is moving. Exhaust fumes rise all around him.

The director, Joel Schumacher, deliberately shoots this scene as a homage to the famous opening of Fellini's "8 1/2," but instead of finding himself floating up into the sky, like Fellini's hero, the man gets out of his car, slams the door, and goes walking alone across Los Angeles. This is not always a safe thing for a crew-cut white man, wearing a shirt and a tie.

The man has no name in the film; he becomes known to the police as D-FENS, after his license plate. He is already unhinged when he starts his walk, but eventually the tools of violence fall into his hands, and he uses them. In a grocery store, he asks for change for the telephone, and is refused by the Korean proprietor. He tries to buy a can of pop, but the change from a dollar would not be enough for a phone call. His frustration rages, until he grabs the owner's baseball bat and starts swinging, taking down piles of junk foods, cans of diet soda.

He keeps walking. During the course of his day he will meet, and confront, Latino gang members who want to steal his briefcase, fast food workers who tell him it's too late for breakfast, a neo-Nazi gun-shop owner, and other characters who seem placed in his way to fuel his anger.

Eventually he comes to the attention of the police, as Prendergast (Robert Duvall), a cop in his last day on the job, puts together scattered reports to deduct that the same goofy white guy is causing a series of disturbances. Prendergast is, in his own way, an example of the same syndrome afflicting the Douglas character. He feels impotent, unnecessary, obsolete. His superior officer tells him frankly he is sick of him. The story builds to a final confrontation between Douglas and Duvall - between a man who has snapped, and a man who has held together, under many of the same pressures. If this film had been made 10 or 20 years ago, it might have been an audience-pleaser in which we cheered as the white hero shot up druggies, or got vengeance on rapists. Schumacher and his screenwriter, Ebbe Roe Smith, have not made a revenge movie, and the film isn't constructed to inspire cheers when Douglas pulls the trigger. Maybe it will play that way for some audiences, but more thoughtful viewers are likely to pick up on Douglas's anomie - his soulsickness that has turned to madness, his bafflement at becoming obsolete and irrelevant.

Because the character is white, and many of his targets are not, the movie could be read as racist. I prefer to think of it as a reflection of the real feelings of a lot of people who, lacking the insight to see how political and economic philosophies have affected them, fall back on easy scapegoating. If you don't have a job and the Korean shop owner does, it is easy to see him as the villain. It takes a little more imagination to realize that you lost your job because of the greedy and unsound financial games of the go-go junk bond years.

What is fascinating about the Douglas character, as written and played, is the core of sadness in his soul. Yes, by the time we meet him, he has gone over the edge. But there is no exhilaration in his rampage, no release. He seems weary and confused, and in his actions he unconsciously follows scripts that he may have learned from the movies, or on the news, where other frustrated misfits vent their rage on innocent bystanders.

Nor does Schumacher build to some kind of easy audience-pleasing climax. The way the movie ends is the way it must, in real life - not the way it would in "Death Wish VII." And the values and style of the Duvall character reflect, not a triumphant cop, but simply a guy who still believes in trying to roll with the punches and make the best of things. "Falling Down" does a good job of representing a real feeling in our society today. It would be a shame if it is seen only on a superficial level.

Waiting for the Rainbow Sign: L.A. April 29, 1992

TIME PLAYS tricks.

It's impossible to believe that almost 20 years has passed since the L.A. Riots of 1992. This week we will look at a set of essays that look at what was brewing under the surface of airbrushed, nip-and- tucked L.A. for decades.

I found a bit of my piece I wrote for L.A. Weekly online over the weekend and it brought it all back in a rush...


from: "Waiting for the Rainbow Sign"

By midnight, no one phoning long-distance bothers with hello. Instead, they just ask, ‘Is it as crazy as it looks?’ I want to say, ‘It started long before all this . . .’ Long before this afternoon’s bewildering decision left me less astonished than strangely numb. Long before George Holliday ran tape capturing Rodney G. King’s struggle and submission. Long before Latasha Harlins, Eulia Love and Marquette Frye became cautionary symbols. Long before Watts shouted its existence into the sky in ’65, sending up searchlights in the form of flames...

Everything felt different for a long time after that: The way people interacted with one another -- or didn't. The texture of the city changed for some time after -- much like the way it feels after you've been in an argument with someone whom you love dearly yet are not what sure the first sentence out of your mouth might or should be.

Years later, essayist Richard Rodgriguez wrote of those three days in April 1992:

"It was the worst moment for Los Angeles. It was also the first moment, I think, when most people in L.A. realized they were part of the whole. The city that the world mocked for not being a city, for lacking a center, having only separate suburbs, separate freeway exits -- L.A. realized that it was interconnected. In fear, people realized that what was happening on the other side of town implicated them.”

A Letter from the Future -- Fifty Years After the L.A. Riots (Jinn Magazine 4/28/97)
-- by Richard Rodriguez

Rodriguez was right, though only partially. Three days after, the first day of "clean-up" community volunteers crossed the region attempting to pick up the mess as if one would be cleaning a negligent child's messy room. But it was a powerful symbol watching people working together. Eerily, however, there were little pods of town that seemed to be operating as if nothing happened: people near the water meeting for their lattes and such talking about work, childcare, and maybe, the "bad air" that the smoke, curling into the sky, was creating -- while others, not so far away, were digging through ash, rubble and worry.

But I guess that's L.A. -- a swirl of stories, a cacophony.

-- L.G.

photo caption: watching l.a. burn on t.v.
photo credit: dan graves, flickr creative commons