Gates, police chief during 1992 riots, dies
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Daryl F. Gates, the blunt former Los Angeles police chief who waged war on violent gangs and skirmished with city leaders until his handling of the Rodney King police beating and ensuing riots forced him to retire, died yesterday of cancer. He was 83.
Gates died at his Newport Beach home with his family at his side, according to a police statement. His brother said recently that the former chief had bladder cancer that had spread.
One of the most polarizing figures in modern law enforcement, Gates served as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department for 14 years beginning in 1978, an era of tumultuous change as the nation’s second-largest city faced a surge in well-armed gangs, a burgeoning illegal drug trade and growing racial conflict.
He initially ran a police force that was enjoying a reputation as the embodiment of the professional, just-the-facts “Dragnet” mythology. Yet he left office with city blocks in ashes amid accusations he allowed a pattern of abuse of minorities to flourish among the rank-and-file.
“He was a man of deep convictions,” said former police chief William Bratton, who left the department last year. “He was very happy to stand up for them, whether you liked them or not. And he enjoyed being in the middle of the bull’s-eye. He thrived on it.”
Gates’ critics and admirers remain as far apart as ever.
“I don’t remember much that was good about him,” said Ramona Ripston, the longtime executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “I think in many ways he gave policing a bad name. He certainly didn’t believe in civil liberties.”
Others saw a cop’s cop who sought to protect his department from political interference and corruption, even though his “shoot-from-the-lip” style repeatedly stirred anger and kept him at odds with the city’s first black mayor, former police lieutenant Tom Bradley.
Gates was credited with developing the policing plan, including a terrorism task force, that brought off the