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Williams and LAPD: This Bad Marriage Needs to End : A quick settlement is in the interest of both chief and city

It’s all too clear that Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams and his civilian bosses, members of the city Police Commission, have reached the point of no return. This week the commission is expected to elect not to renew Williams’ five-year contract. If that happens, his lawyers say they will sue, based on their belief that the chief’s rights as an employee were breached.

The war of words escalated last week when Williams’ lawyers asked that the commission be removed from the role of deciding his fate, drafted a lawsuit and set the price for withdrawing it at seven figures.

Enough.

This is a bad marriage, a dysfunctional relationship. It needs to end. As in any divorce, neither party is blameless. In a nutshell, Williams says he has done the best he could given the hostility he encountered from his own subordinates, and he points to his high opinion poll ratings among the people of Los Angeles. The commission, appointed by the mayor, points to several concerns about Williams’ management and low morale within the LAPD.

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Williams did an admirable job of boosting public confidence in the LAPD after the indefensible 1991 beating of Rodney King and the 1992 riots, during which the LAPD response was initially slow and ineffective. But it’s also true that Williams didn’t do other things that good leaders must do: spend time with and inspire the rank and file, galvanize support in the organization as well as among the citizenry. It was an extraordinarily tough task for anyone who came from outside the LAPD; his outsider status meant the long knives were out for him early on. But Williams had a lot of goodwill--if not within Parker Center, then certainly in Los Angeles at large--that he failed to marshal into a strong leadership mandate.

The situation is thick with irony: Charter Amendment F, passed after a long and bitter struggle with former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, was supposed to ensure that no other chief could in effect hold the city hostage as Gates did. Gates had Civil Service protection and in effect could not be fired. Charter Amendment F removed the job of police chief from Civil Service protection. Yet despite that change, another police chief is battling another Police Commission, bringing the city back to a disturbingly familiar place. The relationship between Williams and his civilian bosses never recovered from a series of events in 1995: The commission reprimanded Williams for allegedly lying about receiving free accommodations in Las Vegas, the City Council intervened and overturned the reprimand, and then some information from Williams’ confidential personnel file was leaked to this newspaper and made public. Williams’ lawyers list the leaking of his personnel information and their allegation that the commission prejudged Williams among the reasons they threaten a lawsuit.

Williams’ lawyers are aggressively attacking the very process that the Christopher Commission and Charter Amendment F set up, but they have also made it clear that they are willing to settle out of court. That would be preferable to a lawsuit, since the chief has nothing to gain in a long court case except legal bills and more potentially career-damaging allegations. Settlement would also be preferable for the city, which would be forced to pay outside legal counsel because the city attorney has a conflict of interest since the office has represented the chief in cases alleging officer misconduct and it also advises the City Council. A prolonged legal battle would waste money that could be better spent on any number of public safety priorities, such as putting more detectives on the street, improving the LAPD crime lab or buying more computers. A prolonged fight also would stoke a controversy with undeniable racial overtones.

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Williams’ lawyers already have approached the person best suited to broker a settlement between the city and Williams, Councilman Richard Alatorre. Alatorre is not only chairman of the City Council’s powerful Budget and Finance Committee, he is also a strong ally of Mayor Richard Riordan, long seen as the person in City Hall most interested in seeing Williams leave. A settlement of Williams’ legal challenge would allow the chief, the Police Department and the city to move on. Alatorre has the right idea: “What I would like to see happen would be to not have a protracted battle on this issue. . . . I believe everyone has a right, if it doesn’t work out, to depart with dignity.”

Mayor, Police Commission, City Council, Chief Williams--make that happen. Divorce is always painful and full of regrets. But sometimes it has to happen.

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