LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Two former police officials from the East Coast and a California chief who rose through the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department were named Thursday as the three finalists to become the next chief of fabled and sometimes controversial LAPD.
The Los Angeles Police Commission announced it was forwarding the names of former New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, former Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney and Oxnard Chief Art Lopez to Mayor James Hahn, who will select one of the trio to lead the department.
"These three finalists are all tried and true veterans," said Police Commission President Rick Caruso. "Each is unique and all are proven leaders."
The finalist who is eventually chosen will replace the ousted Bernard Parks, who was not given a second 5-year term by the Police Commission in a move some of Parks' supporters in the African American community said was engineered by Hahn.
Both Bratton and Timoney have experience running big-city police departments while Lopez spent 28 years with the LAPD before taking the top job in the coastal city of Oxnard in neighboring Ventura County.
Whoever wins the coveted position will inherit a department that never fully recovered from the Rodney King beating incident and the subsequent riots in 1992 that caused 54 deaths and $700 million in property damage. The unrest cost the venerable and crusty Darryl Gates his top job. His successors -- Parks and another former Philadelphia cop, Willie Williams -- did not serve more than one term.
Today, the LAPD is caught between demands to tone down its often-aggressive tactics and shaky morale within the ranks and a chronic inability to recruit and retain officers.
At the same time, the LAPD remains what Caruso called a "large and very complex" department that will have to both change its ways and its public image while a rising combating crime rate in a sprawling city of countless ethnic communities.
Lopez told KABC television Thursday that the LAPD's rank-and-file would expect the new chief "to be competent and provide them with a sense that things will get better."
The police officers union, which lobbied hard for Parks' removal, has claimed that the former chief's attempts at reform led to an uneven and harsh disciplinary system that shattered the department's morale.
Hahn, who took office while the Rampart scandal was reverberating through the city, has insisted, however, that the LAPD must be reformed and will apparently insist that the new chief follow his lead and not drag his feet.
"I think the culture that has been typical of LAPD, that resists outside influence and resists reform, is very deep in the organization, and I need a chief who can change that," Hahn told the Los Angeles Times in an interview published Wednesday.
The mayor's sentiments shed some light on why some well-known LAPD veterans did not make the cut, including Deputy Chief Dave Kalisch, who made headlines this summer when it was publicly revealed that he was gay. Martin Pomeroy, who was appointed as acting chief when Parks left in May, was not a candidate for the job.
