D.A.’s Former No. 2 Is No. 1 at Torrance Court : Law: After Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner abruptly demoted his top aide, Gilbert Garcetti didn’t quit. He is making a name as a hands-on prosecutor. And he still has ambitions.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert Garcetti could see that the jury he was trying to sway was slipping toward torpor.

As the mid-afternoon hours passed, eyelids fluttered, heads nodded and a hypnotic stillness fell over the court. Even the witness, a police officer, appeared unusually relaxed as he answered questions about a series of noises at a crime scene.

Suddenly, Garcetti cupped his hand and slammed it down on the railing of the jury box, sending a sharp explosion of sound through the courtroom. Startled jurors and court watchers snapped to attention.

A shade of a smile crossing his face, Garcetti asked:

“You didn’t hear anything like that?”

Garcetti was back in control, exactly where he likes to be.

With an open, confident style that has earned the respect of even his legal opponents, Garcetti, 49, has taken over the Torrance branch of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office like a man with a mission.

During the nine months since he arrived in Torrance, Garcetti’s polished demeanor and careful attention to detail--combined with his unusual insistence on returning to the courtroom five years after he last was a trial attorney himself--have won over the branch’s two dozen attorneys.

Scarcely two years ago, though, serving as head deputy at a branch courthouse was the last thing Garcetti had in mind.

After 19 years in the nation’s largest district attorney’s office, Garcetti had managed to work his way into the agency’s No. 2 spot. He spent his 11-hour days as Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s right-hand man, responsible for the office’s day-to-day operations in a position nearly as visible as that of his elected boss.

Articulate, ambitious and an exquisite dresser, blessed with a flair for public relations, Garcetti seemed to have a bright future.

As a result, Reiner’s abrupt--and publicly unexplained--decision to demote Garcetti two years ago came as a shock to a number of people, especially Garcetti.

“When he dropped the bombshell on me, I, of course, asked whether my performance had been unsatisfactory in some way,” Garcetti said. “I remember him holding up his hand, like, ‘Stop,’ and he said it wouldn’t pay to discuss it. He simply wanted Greg Thompson to be his chief deputy.”

Office insiders say it was never clear why Reiner demoted Garcetti, but most speculate that Garcetti’s high-profile personality may have been overshadowing that of his boss.

Although in public Reiner was effusive in his praise for his ex-chief deputy, Garcetti says Reiner expected him to resign.

Instead, Garcetti stayed on, completing several special assignments--including revamping the agency’s hiring policies--before he was named to head the Torrance office.

Rather than being bitter about the demotion, Garcetti moved into Torrance--which is among the largest of the nine branch offices--ready to get down to business, attorneys there said.

“He just came here and jumped right in,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Sandra Buttitta, who works as Garcetti’s assistant. “He introduced himself to staff and listened to their problems. He personally met with the police chiefs and command personnel at all the South Bay departments. I’ve never seen another head deputy do that.”

Rather than relying on secondhand reports of how prosecutors are doing, Garcetti habitually goes to the building’s courtrooms himself to observe them in action. Afterward, he does not hesitate to critique what he sees.

“He’s a straight shooter,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Julie Sulman, who prosecutes the office’s hard-core criminal cases. “If it’s good, he tells you. If it’s bad, he’s going to tell you that too. You don’t get it through the grapevine and wonder at the source.”

Attorneys said that Garcetti is a demanding boss but that he requires even more of himself than he does of others.

“His standards are really high,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Irene Wakabayashi, who co-prosecuted a case with him recently. “He expects people to do a good job because he does.”

Garcetti, who rises at 5 a.m. for a one-hour bicycle ride around his Brentwood neighborhood, usually arrives at the office by 8:30 a.m. and rarely leaves before 6:30 p.m., his staff said.

During the workday, his door is rarely closed. Attorneys are encouraged to use him as a quick legal resource and sounding board, an approach that keeps him up to date on the office’s current cases.

A few months ago, Garcetti told his staff that he wanted every attorney, even those assigned to administrative jobs, to take at least one or two cases to trial each year. After a five-year absence from the courtroom, he took the unusual step of deciding to set the example himself.

“I still view myself as a trial lawyer,” Garcetti said. “I’m convinced that my trying a case can help maintain my credibility not only with the deputy district attorneys here in Torrance but in the legal community as well.”

Garcetti said he began sifting through the office’s caseload looking for a case that would be both factually and legally challenging and that would not take very long.

He selected an unusual case in which the defendant, Mack Charles Moore, was charged with second-degree murder under the state’s “provocative act” law. During a narcotics raid on a Gardena apartment, Moore allegedly swung a shotgun at a policeman, provoking the officer to shoot and kill another man.

“Most people have never heard of the provocative-act doctrine of murder (because) there are few cases like this that are ever tried,” Garcetti said. “I knew it would be challenging.”

Ultimately, a judge ordered a mistrial in the case after it deteriorated into a tangled public sparring match among jurors. Garcetti plans to try the case again in November.

Garcetti’s opposition in the case, defense attorney Jeffrey Gray, had nothing but praise for the prosecutor.

“Mr. Garcetti is a very confident, very persuasive, very professional individual who performed very well in court,” Gray said. “Any time you go up against a guy who was the No. 2 guy in the largest law firm in the state of California, you know you’re going to get a high level of performance.”

Gray also discovered a high level of charm.

“There were a lot of strong feelings in that courtroom, but he never took it outside the courtroom,” Gray said.

Colleagues say Garcetti has demonstrated that sort of professionalism throughout his career. But some also have criticized him for what they see as his drive to attain and to wield power.

Garcetti, while denying that power is a primary focus for him, is philosophical about the issue.

“There is awesome power and authority at the district attorney’s office that you wield as soon as you become a deputy district attorney,” Garcetti said. “You cannot abuse that authority. It’s a very easy thing to abuse, but you have to be constantly vigilant in making sure that the authority and the power you exercise is being used professionally and ethically.”

Those concerns were a major factor during his five years in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s as head of the district attorney’s Special Investigations Division. Surrounded by a swirl of publicity about the division’s investigations of officer-involved shootings and misconduct by public officials, Garcetti said he strove to review each case solely on its merits.

It was difficult to satisfy everyone.

“A lot of people thought he might have been playing to the media, grandstanding,” said Raul Gutierrez, a former district attorney’s investigator in that division. “I didn’t look at it that way. People who didn’t work for him didn’t like him very well, but people who did grew to like him a great deal.”

Despite the controversy the division’s cases entailed, Garcetti succeeded in “developing a real esprit de corps,” said Norwalk’s head Deputy Dist. Atty. Bob Kuhnert, who worked as Garcetti’s assistant head deputy at that time.

“You almost got the feeling that you were working with Gil, rather than for him,” Kuhnert said.

Sometimes, to lighten the atmosphere, the division’s workers would play pranks on one another. Garcetti was an unflappable victim.

“I remember one time we put a dead snake by his desk and we thought he’d sit down and then he’d see it and he’d jump a mile,” Gutierrez said. “Well, he sat down, he looked at it and very calmly reached down and picked it up. He didn’t freak out. He didn’t get upset. He just smiled.”

Garcetti’s polished reserve did not crack even when he faced a serious illness in 1980, colleagues said. Told that he had lymphoma, a life-threatening cancer that required surgery and chemotherapy, he missed few days of work and never spoke of any pain.

“He was having treatments that caused his hair to fall out, but he never said a word,” Gutierrez said. “He just faced the world and he showed a lot of courage. He fought it, and he won.”

His victory against the odds is characteristic of Garcetti’s drive, friends said.

“He has demonstrated his ability to take on substantial responsibilities and deal with those without being tortured by the fact that he’s confronted with them,” said Richard Hecht, who supervises Garcetti as head of the district attorney’s branch operations.

“Gil is an independent thinker who is not afraid to make tough decisions.”

No one has forgotten that he also is a very ambitious man, colleagues said.

“You’ve got to be a very talented person who has goals and knows how to meet them to achieve everything that he has over the years,” said Torrance Superior Court Judge Francis Hourigan, who worked with Garcetti as a deputy district attorney in the late 1970s.

Garcetti said his demotion has not dimmed his ambition.

“It is not an easy thing for anyone who has been in the No. 2 position . . . to take a lower-level position,” Garcetti said. “For anyone to say otherwise, I’m not sure that would be candid.

“On the other hand, I think that one can also look to the future . . . and assume that there will be changes in the future.”

Garcetti briefly flirted with running for district attorney himself but rejected the idea as “not in the best interests of my family”--his wife of 27 years, Sukey, and their son and daughter. Now he will only hint at what he has in mind for the future.

“I’m certainly enjoying myself professionally here,” Garcetti said. “As chief deputy, I did not have an opportunity to be in the courtroom, and I will take full advantage of that opportunity while I’m here.”

But Garcetti figures that in about a year and a half--around the time Reiner’s current term expires--he will be looking to move to another position. He would not say exactly what he has in mind.

Would he consider running for district attorney at some point in the future?

“That is very premature,” he said. “It would depend on who is running, whether an incumbent is running, whether another elected official decides to run. . . . But both of my children are adults now, and I don’t think if I were to run for office that it would adversely affect my family in any way.”

For the moment, however, Garcetti said such thoughts are not foremost.

“I’m very much a hands-on manager, and I’m very focused on this office and our mission here,” he said. “That is what I’m concentrating on.”