Gates Bitterly Steps Out of Spotlight : Retirement: Outgoing head spends the day fighting with council, predicting a tough time for Williams and scourging department ‘traitors.’

On a day when Los Angeles was abuzz with a new man and a new era in local law enforcement, the symbol of the old guard--Police Chief Daryl F. Gates--was tangled in the controversy of his tattered legacy.

For nearly four sometimes testy hours behind closed doors Wednesday, Gates sparred and debated with the City Council over a series of police brutality lawsuits that could cost the city $1.75 million in damages.

Several council members, angry that none of the officers involved in the incidents had been disciplined by Gates, summoned the chief for a private explanation about a litany of cases. There was the kidnaper run over by a police car, an HIV-positive hemophiliac beaten for drinking beer in a park and youths repeatedly kicked in the groin for allegedly burning a car in the Tujunga Wash.

About 3:30 p.m., after lunch had been delivered to the council chambers, a subdued Gates emerged from a rear door to the glare of television cameras and a pack of reporters.

It was as if nothing--or everything--had changed in the year since the videotaped police beating of motorist Rodney G. King, the subsequent Christopher Commission finding of brutality and racism in the LAPD, and the ultimately successful drive to remove Gates from office.

There stood Gates, once again, defending his stewardship of the LAPD.

“I have never had any problems with the council,” Gates told reporters in one of his trademark impromptu news conferences in the middle of a City Hall hallway. “They are always pleasant to me.”

In fact, the council is not always pleasant to the chief--in the last year, they have rarely even been civil--and Gates, as he often does, was poking fun at this infamous sparring. But with the arrival of Willie L. Williams from Philadelphia hours earlier, the Gates era in Los Angeles, with all of its quirks and idiosyncrasies, was winding to a close.

Reporters were not interested in the chief much beyond his retirement date, which he set for the end of June. They only wanted to know about the new guy.

Gates obliged, describing Williams as a “very nice man,” but going on to criticize the Police Commission for selecting a candidate from outside the LAPD. He then predicted that Williams will have a tough go of it in Los Angeles.

“It is not going to be easy for anyone who comes into this city,” Gates said. “I think this past year has been a very, very difficult year. And I think it has had a very telling impact on the ability of this department to operate and operate effectively.

“I think a new chief is going to be walking on eggs to a large degree. It is going to be very difficult for him to recover from this past year. There will be many, many problems he will have to face.”

It was a candid and solemn assessment of the road ahead, and one that said as much about Gates as about Williams. Gates professed to feel “tremendous relief” at the prospect of retiring. But once away from the klieg lights and fury of reporters screaming questions, he confessed to also feeling sad and embittered.

“It is very sad, I think, to leave at this particular time, with the kind of situation that I am leaving,” he said after walking across Los Angeles Street to his Parker Center office. “The department is understaffed, underbudgeted, accusations have been hurled at it unnecessarily, and arbitrarily, and I think unfairly. And officer morale is down, and where there is no real understanding of what this department is all about. I can see dedication and commitment being diminished.”

“There is so much good in this department that it is beyond belief that there could be so much criticism.”

Before closing the door to his sixth-floor office, Gates took a parting shot at some of his top-level assistants, several of whom delivered crucial testimony last year to the Christopher Commission about problems within the department and with Gates’ leadership. He called those who turned on him “traitors” and said they “screwed up royally” at a time when the department needed them most.

“I am very bitter, yes. Very. Very.”