Gates

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By ELIZABETH HAYES

Staff Writer

Seven years ago, Daryl F. Gates spent much of his time defending the LAPD’s handling of the riots.

Today, the retired Gates lives a relatively quiet life far from the controversy that dogged the last years of his career. His days are filled with speaking engagements, golf games and consulting work on the development of police-themed video games.

Now in his 70s, Gates is tan and healthy thanks to his long-time penchant for jogging. But it’s clear that he still misses being L.A.’s top cop.

“It was 43 years of my life,” he says.

Gates came of age as a commander during the 1965 Watts riots and retired after 14 years as chief in the wake of the 1992 riots, which were sparked by the acquittals of four police officers in the beating of Rodney King.

In between came the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the arrest of Charles Manson. Gates says he’s particularly proud of the LAPD’s work during the 1984 Olympics.

“It was a tremendous career,” Gates says. “I policed the city with fewer than 7,000 police officers. I didn’t have the benefit of a mayor like Richard Riordan. I had a mayor (Tom Bradley) who was not interested in seeing the Police Department grow.”

But for his many critics, the defining events of Gates’ career remain the beating of King and the riots that followed, which Gates dismisses as the work of “some people who didn’t like the justice system and became terrorists.”

Despite Gates’ uncompromising defense of his department, a commission headed by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher was convened to investigate the LAPD and its practices. The resulting report called for sweeping changes that were never fully accepted by Gates.

“The only thing wrong with the Police Department was a guy by the name of Warren Christopher, who cut it to pieces and almost destroyed it with some stupid recommendations,” Gates says. “It was a sign of the times, a way of getting rid of me.”

However, Gates concedes that the LAPD reacted too slowly when the 1992 riots erupted. But he insists it wasn’t the fault of his officers.

“My command officers were worried about moving in too quickly,” Gates says. “They thought, if we’re too forceful and aggressive, we’re going to be criticized again.”

Under Gates, the LAPD developed a reputation as militaristic and insular. But Gates points out that he was among the first top police officials in the nation to implement community-based policing in the early ’70s.

And although he made several notorious comments over the years about minorities, he defends his record there as well, saying that he brought in more women and minorities than any other chief in the history of the department.

“We were a department that paid close attention to our business, which was doing something about crime, gangs and homicides. We were proactive,” he says.

While described by some as egotistical and irascible, Gates showed a more introspective side of himself in his best-selling autobiography, “Chief: My Life in the LAPD.”

“I was too combative. In retrospect, I should have been far more diplomatic,” he wrote.

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