A FORCE FIELD OF 3
Finalists for LAPD chief have embraced the department’s gentler policing and bring contrasting benefits to Garcetti
As young cops, the three finalists for chief of the Los Angeles Police Department were taught a harsh style of policing that emphasized crackdowns and arrests.
They have since disavowed that strategy, rising through the ranks of a department that has recast itself as a kinder, gentler LAPD. All three use similar catchphrases: building ties with residents, investing in youth sports and academic programs, assuring immigrants that the LAPD wants to help them, not deport them.
But for the official making the decision, Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is considering a run for president, each of the veteran cops brings contrasting political benefits.
Robert Arcos would be the first Latino police chief of a city that is nearly 50% Latino. Bill Scott, who left the LAPD to lead the troubled San Francisco Police Department, is African American and a familiar face in South Los Angeles.
Michel Moore, whose father was a Basque immigrant, was already in the top echelons of the LAPD when the other two candidates were appointed to their first station commands. LAPD insiders say his breadth of experience and mastery of subjects from crime statistics to budgets are second to none.
Arcos has the backing of some powerful Latino politicians, while a coalition of African American pastors and community activists is supporting Scott.
Garcetti received the names of the
three finalists, chosen by the city’s civilian Police Commission from a field of 31 applicants, on May 4. He has said that he expects to pick the new chief by the end of the month, if not sooner — well in advance of Chief Charlie Beck’s June 27 retirement. The City Council will then vote on Garcetti’s choice.
In selecting three men with decades of experience in the LAPD, the commission signaled its desire to stay the course set by Beck and his predecessor, William Bratton, who remade the department under a federal consent decree. Among the challenges the new chief will face: how to improve relationships with some black and Latino residents, who are critical of fatal police shootings and complain about bearing the brunt of the LAPD’s enforcement operations.
Garcetti has said he wants to choose the best leader and is not aiming for a demographic first. Several City Council members had indicated that it was time for the leader of one of the largest police departments in the country to be a woman. But former Assistant Chief Sandy Jo MacArthur, who was among five candidates interviewed by the commission, did not make the final three.
“It’s a nice, diverse pool, with the exception of no female,” said Fernando Guerra, a professor at Loyola Marymount University and director of the school’s Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles. “It reflects L.A., and it reflects the new LAPD.”