document: LOS ANGELES Police Chief Daryl Gates had been accused of nurturing one of the most brutal police forces in the country : now he is under attack for fuelling the violence and then standing by as it rolled across poor black neighbourhoods . Mr Gates acknowledged yesterday that his department had been overwhelmed by the scale of the violence . Police could only look on , outnumbered , as crowds looted shops , and moved in mostly to protect firefighters from attack . The controversial police chief was said to have argued on Wednesday , the first night of rioting , against sending in National Guard troops , and only to have bowed later to evidence that his police force was incapable of handling the violence . That the Los Angeles police department should have been overwhelmed by the riots may be understandable , but it represents one final blot on Mr Gates 's reputation . In his 14 years of office , his critics say he has built a heavily politicised force in his own image : aggressive , insensitive and widely tinged with racism . Shortly after his appointment in 1978 , Mr Gates told a Hispanic audience that Hispanic officers were not promoted because they were lazy , and he later suggested that the carotid choke hold - a police technique severely curbed in 1983 after police had killed 16 suspects with it - might be more dangerous for blacks because their arteries did not open up as fast as on ` normal people ' . In March , Mr Gates strongly defended the detective who had led an investigation 17 years earlier into the killing of an off-duty Los Angeles police officer , although a judge had just released the two men wrongfully convicted , calling police conduct ` reprehensible ' and urging an immediate investigation of the ` sordid record ' . The detective involved now heads the unit which investigates shootings involving police officers . But the Los Angeles police chief has almost complete protection from removal under a 1937 statute that followed a series of political scandals , and Mr Gates has developed political clout on top of this job security . President George Bush last year called Mr Gates ` an exemplary police chief , ' although at the time he called the conduct of the four Los Angeles officers - whose acquittal this week over the beating of a black motorist triggered this week 's protests and violence - ` sickening ' and ` outrageous ' . A high-ranking commission appointed after the beating , under the chairmanship of Mr Warren Christopher , a lawyer and former deputy secretary of state , concluded that the Los Angeles police department got results , in terms of arrests , but had developed a ` siege mentality that alienates the officer from the community ' . Besides recommending that Mr Gates should go , the Christopher commission urged a policy of community policing with more foot patrols , as well as measures to discipline racist police officers and to improve the investigation of complaints about police brutality . The commission found that a significant minority of the Los Angeles police force ` repetitively misuse force ' without being properly disciplined . Six months after its initial report , however , the commission noted that of the 44 officers identified as the object of six or more brutality complaints , two had been fired , three had resigned and 11 removed from field duty . Mr Gates has finally agreed to step down in June . His replacement , Mr Willie Williams , will be the first black head of the Los Angeles force . Mr Williams faces an uphill struggle , but he has drawn widespread praise as Philadelphia 's police commissioner since 1988 for mending fences between the police and the community - notably through the use of the foot patrol methods recommended by the Christopher commission .
extractive_keyphrases: brutal police forces violence brutality complaints police brutality investigation daryl gates
abstractive_keyphrases: resignation