Daryl Gates Dead at 83

Chief Gates

One of the most enigmatic performers as a police chief has died. Daryl Gates was head of LAPD during the advent of a Chemical Assault – Scorched Earth that also targeted then President Ronald Reagan in 1987. Gates will always be a controversial figure. What he understood about these events is now lost.

David Nollmeyer

 

Gates, who was chief of police in the United States' second-largest city from 1978 to 1992, died of cancer at his home in Newport Beach, California, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a brief statement.

As chief during the 1980s, Gates earned a reputation for dealing with gangs, drugs and street crime with a mix of tough, paramilitary force and innovation, establishing the first Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, unit and deploying helicopters to help patrol the sprawling city.

But he came under fierce criticism after the violent March 3, 1991, arrest of Rodney King, a black parolee whose beating by Los Angeles police was captured on videotape and broadcast around the world as evidence of LAPD racism and brutality.

Four of the officers were put on trial for King's beating and their acquittal in April 1992 by an all-white jury touched off three days of the worst urban riots in modern U.S. history, leaving 53 people dead.

Gates, who was roundly criticized for attending a fund-raising dinner in the first hours of rioting, came under heavy pressure to resign and stepped down in June of that year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63F4TF20100416

 

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