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Daryl F. Gates was the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) from 1978 until 1992.

Early life

Daryl Francis Gates was born to a Mormon mother and a Catholic father in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles on August 30th, 1926; the family soon relocated to Glendale, where Gates spent most of his youth. The Great Depression had an impact on his early life: his father became an alcoholic after losing his job, and frequently ended up in the custody of the Glendale police. (Later in life, Gates often remarked on the taunts and harassment he received from schoolmates because of his father's behavior.) His mother had to support the family alone, often on little more than church and government welfare payments. Gates graduated from high school and joined the Navy in time to see action in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Shortly after leaving the Navy, he attended college on the GI Bill and married. At the time, a friend suggested that he join LAPD, which was conducting a recruitment drive among former servicemen. Gates dismissed the entreaty, later remarking that, at the time, he had no intention of becoming a "dumb cop."

LAPD career

Nevertheless, Gates joined the LAPD in 1949. Among his roles as an officer, Daryl Gates was picked to be the chauffeur for Chief William H. Parker. During his lengthy tenure as chief, Parker greatly reformed and streamlined the LAPD, bringing in changes to stamp out corruption and improve efficiency. In general, Parker's reforms had the effect of making LAPD a paramilitary body. To combat low-level corruption, one reform barred officers from having the same patrol area for more than 18 consecutive months. Another such change was to assign police according to the time of day and neighborhood where crimes were committed, a major departure from the operational practices of most departments of the time. (While Parker and his admirers deemed this to be a proactive approach, later critics of Parker's methods--community policing advocates, and most adherents to the "broken windows" hypothesis--saw this as an essentially reactive measure, and a predecessor to the "radio-chasing" that characterized police operations throughout the 1970s and 1980s.) Gates often remarked that he gained many administrative and professional insights from Parker during the hours they spent together each day.

Gates worked hard to prepare for his promotional exams, scoring first in the sergeant's exam and in every promotional exam thereafter. On his promotion to lieutenant, he rejoined Chief Parker as Parker's executive officer. He was promoted to captain and became responsible for intelligence, and by the time of the Watts riots in 1965 he was an inspector (overseeing the investigation of, among other crimes, the Manson Family murders and the Hillside Strangler case). Finally, in 1978, Daryl F. Gates became the 49th Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Achievements

SWAT

Gates is considered the father of SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics), which established specialized units dealing with hostage rescue and extreme situations involving armed and dangerous suspects. Ordinary line officers, with light armament, limited weapons training, and no instruction on group fighting techniques, had been shown to be ineffective in combating snipers, bank robberies by heavily armed persons, and other high-intensity situations. In 1965, Officer John Nelson came up with the idea to form a specially trained and equipped unit, intended to respond to and manage critical situations while minimizing police casualties. As an inspector, Gates approved this idea, and he formed a small select group of volunteer officers. The first SWAT team, which Gates had originally wanted to name "Special Weapons Attack Team," was born LAPD SWAT, D-Platoon of the Metro Division. This first SWAT unit was initially constituted as 15 teams of four men each, for a total staff of 60. These officers were given special status and benefits, but in return had to attend monthly training and serve as security for police facilities during episodes of civil unrest. SWAT was copied almost immediately by most US police departments, and is now used by law enforcement agencies throughout the world.

DARE

Gates is also the founder of DARE, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program designed to educate children about the dangers of substance abuse. DARE is currently used in schools worldwide, but its usefulness in combating drug usage is hotly debated. In particular, DARE's claims about marijuana have come under intense criticism.

Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH)

Gates's appointment as chief roughly coincided with the intensification of the war on drugs. A drug-related issue that had also come to the forefront at the time was gang violence, which paralyzed many of the neighborhoods (primarily impoverished and black or Hispanic) in which gangs held sway. In response, LAPD set up specialist gang units which gathered intelligence on and ran operations against gangs. These units were called Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, abbreviated CRASH and immortalized in the 1988 Sean Penn/Robert Duvall film Colors. Gates' aggressive approach to the gang problem was effective in suppressing gang violence, but its indiscriminate nature led to numerous allegations of false arrest and allegations of a general LAPD disdain for young black and Latino men (q.v.). (Ironically, by this time the department had a significant percentage of minority officers.) Gates himself became a byword among some for excessive use of force by anti-gang units, and became a favorite lyrical target for gang-connected urban black rappers. Nevertheless, CRASH's approach was successful and remained in widespread use until the Rampart Division scandal of 1999 drew attention to some of its less savory aspects.

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