Gates Rips Critics of His Command Plans : Police: Chief criticizes his own bureaucracy and says he is trying to ensure the success of the community-based project by taking control.

Accused of circumventing the Los Angeles Police Commission by personally taking command of a new community-based policing program, Chief Daryl F. Gates on Sunday slammed his critics, saying he is only trying to ensure the project’s success and keep it from getting mired in bureaucracy.

Gates also offered uncharacteristically harsh words about the command structure of his department, suggesting that it is top-heavy and needs to be “cut away.”

Although some top officials have charged that Gates is improperly seizing control of the community policing program, the chief said his move is aimed at decentralizing its implementation. Under his plan, Gates said, he will be able to work directly with station captains instead of filtering everything through his many commanders, deputy chiefs and assistant chiefs.

“We have all these layers of bureaucracy and the captains can’t get a damn thing done,” Gates said in an interview. “If you knew you had to go through three layers to get to the chief of police, don’t you think it would be a little discouraging right from the outset? It would be impossible. And I won’t allow that to happen.”

The move comes in the final months before Gates’ planned retirement--which he said Sunday is now set for June instead of the earlier-announced April--and as he prepares to publish his autobiography. It would appear to signal a new tone for the chief, who has been assailed for bloating his management ranks.

“People have grumbled about my top-heavy superstructure in the past and I’ve protected it in the past,” he said. “Now modern management suggests some of it be cut away and I’m listening to modern management.”

City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who has been critical of the number of administrators at Parker Center, said he welcomed the talk of streamlining but wondered why Gates had waited until the end of his career to start discussing the possibility of trimming fat.

“After resisting in the most vitriolic ways and getting into wars with me and other members of the council over streamlining, I find it incredible that he is now a born-again streamliner,” Yaroslavsky said. “I don’t know enough about what he’s proposing to do . . . but it’s nothing compared to what needs to be done.”

Gates did not detail any proposal for reducing the size of his command structure.

He revealed his plans for bypassing the usual chain of command, however, during two staff meetings with his top brass last Thursday. He said that beginning Jan. 26 he will directly supervise operations at five of the department’s 18 divisions--Northeast, Southeast, Pacific, Harbor and Foothill.

He blamed an unnamed deputy chief for leaking news of the program before he had a chance to present it to the Police Commission and City Council, which last month adopted the community-policing concept as a way of improving relations in the aftermath of the Rodney G. King beating.

“For God’s sake, I had a staff meeting, which I am entitled to do,” Gates said. “Obviously, one deputy chief is whining about it and that’s unfortunate. . . . There was no need for this uproar, no need whatsoever. I absolutely resent it.”

The chief came under attack from several council members and police commissioners--and at least one high-ranking police official--who were surprised to learn of his plans. Some contended that the chief was attempting to derail a program he has never enthusiastically embraced, while others argued that he was overstepping his authority by taking control without consulting the Police Commission.

Gates, 65, who has been chief since 1978, accused them all of trying to run his department through the media.

“Until they know what’s going on, they ought not to comment,” Gates said. “Stanley Sheinbaum (the Police Commission president) could have picked up the phone and said what is this all about. And I would have said this is what it’s all about. . . . But, no, he doesn’t. He pops off in the media.”

Sheinbaum, who will push to discuss the matter as a special item on the agenda of Tuesday’s commission meeting, said journalists acquainted him with the chief’s plans. He said he would have preferred for Gates to first bring his ideas before the commissioners, the department’s policy-makers.

“I fear that he may be damaging the thing that everybody wants--which is community policing,” Sheinbaum said in an interview Sunday. “For him to be sitting at the level at which he’s at, trying to do something at the community level, I don’t think is something he can pull off.

“In the past, he’s never been a great supporter of the concept,” Sheinbaum added. “Suddenly, he’s going to show us how it can be done, and he’s choosing a very bizarre way of doing it.”

Commissioner Jesse A. Brewer, a former assistant chief, also remained skeptical. While conceding that the department may have too many layers of bureaucracy, he contended that Gates is running the risk of alienating his top brass, whose support Brewer believes the chief will need if community policing is to succeed.

“If we’re going to have community-based policing in the department, we want to get as many people involved in the very beginning,” Brewer said. “Now, the staff above captain will be in the dark. They’ll be left out.”

A spokesman for Mayor Tom Bradley said Bradley would have no comment and referred all inquiries to the Police Commission.

The community policing concept, recommended by the Christopher Commission after the King beating, is intended to bring officers in closer contact with the people they serve. Instead of a detached, “just-the-facts-ma’am” approach, officers are encouraged to walk beats and interact with the community, which in turn will have a greater say in how it is policed.

“For community policing to work, you have to decentralize, you need to create flexibility and autonomy on the street level,” said James Lasley, a criminal justice professor at Cal State Fullerton who has worked closely with the LAPD’s top brass in assessing the program’s potential. “As I see it, Gates is trying to put more trust in those who perform street-level activity. He wants those divisions to control themselves.”

Gates, acknowledging that his approach will leave some top commanders on the fringes, said he has grown frustrated by the sluggishness of the existing structure in implementing new ideas.

“Either we will do it this way and move forward,” he said, “or it will take forever.”