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.
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. 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.”
Gates later came out of retirement to become chief executive of Global ePoint Inc., a small City of Industry surveillance technology company targeting the homeland defense and law enforcement industries.
• Read the Los Angeles Times obituary.
• Read a 2007 Q&A with Gates in the Los Angeles Business Journal.
