The men who administered the beating of Rodney King were under the charge of Daryl Gates, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Now Gates tells his story, with integrity and honesty, confronting the facts of the King videotape and the riots that ensued from King's trial. In his memoir, Gates shows himself to be an underprivileged child of a Depression-era family who raised him to question authority. Later, as a police officer rising in the ranks, he met with a good share of adversity, including the painful reality of his son's drug abuse. Such chapters in his life help to humanize Gate's otherwise supercop persona. Not a weak-willed apologia, Chief, offers a self-portrait that is critical and questioning, and essential for better understanding a case that has become synonymous with police brutality and racism in America.