'Chief: My Life in the LAPD'
By Daryl F. Gates with Diane K. Shah
Bantam Books, $22.50
Daryl F. Gates, the soon-to-be-retired chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, is not a man to mince words. From Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, on down, Gates takes issue in no uncertain terms with virtually everyone who ever disagreed with him. It is hardly a surprise: If one thing is clear from his just-published autobiography, it is that Gates and his mouth are no strangers to controversy.
The book, as one might expect from an autobiography, paints a sympathetic picture of Gates' career and promotions from rookie police officer to head of the force. Gates explains well the difficult position police often find themselves in: serving a public that often seems neither to understand nor care about the constant danger threatening the police.
But Gates, too, fails to appreciate the view of a public that holds its public servants to a high standard. Gates, for example, notes with a smirk that the Los Angeles Police Department continued to bug private homes "for our own edification" even after the California Supreme Court declared it an unlawful search and seizure in the '50s. And he concedes that his controversial policy of harassing patrons of questionable "massage" parlors probably was "bordering on civilly improper practices, if not restraint of trade." But he "refused to back down."
Gates also proudly notes his use of military vehicles and near-use of grenade launchers and fragmentation grenades in his near-literal version of the "war on drugs." He describes how he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that, in his view, casual drug users "should be shot." In a subsequent Los Angeles Times interview he was asked, "Chief, you really didn't mean that we should take casual drug users out and shoot them, did you?" "Yeah, Ron," he replied, "I did." Gates then expresses astonishment that anyone would be upset by the comment.
Gates also describes his running feud with Mayor Bradley, most liberal politicians and, especially, the American Civil Liberties Union, which he describes as "self-serving hypocrites."
The book apparently was written after the Rodney King beating but before the jury rendered its acquittal of the defendants. Gates devotes a couple of short chapters to the incident, expressing horror over the officers' conduct and detailing the ensuing eruption within the city government.
Describing an incident that occurred just after his appointment as chief, Gates, after making it clear that one of his officers was at fault, gratuitously notes that "taking the blame is part of being the boss." He describes part of his job as "to take the heat for it."
Curiously, these same sentiments are notably absent from his discussion of the Rodney King controversy. Far from it, he makes it clear that he would not accept responsibility, nor allow Bradley to force his resignation. Rather, he battled the Police Commission over the issue for nearly a year before finally submitting his resignation. By that time, he notes, "11 months after Rodney King, harmony in the city had finally been restored - at least for the moment."
If only things had been that simple.
