The Los Angeles Police Commission has sent the names of three finalists for chief of the Los Angeles Police Department to Mayor Karen Bass, but like much else in the search process, the identities of the front-runners have been kept secret.
The announcement came as the commission returned from a closed-door session at the end of a special meeting Wednesday. Commission Chairman Erroll Southers said the board had “fulfilled its obligations as set forth in the city charter … and will forward a list of recommended candidates to the mayor,” according to a recording of the meeting.
Then, without further comment, he proposed to adjourn the session. The brief announcement went virtually unnoticed outside the committee, which did not issue a press release or publicly announce the decision.
The move brings the city one step closer to ending what has been a months-long search for what is widely considered one of the most prominent and challenging positions in law enforcement. The post has been vacant since February, when former Chief Michel Moore retired.
Under city charter, the commission — a five-member civilian body that acts as a governing board for the Los Angeles Police Department — must select three finalists for Bass to consider. But if the mayor is not satisfied with the choices, she can ask commissioners to submit additional names or continue the search. Whoever she chooses must be confirmed by the full City Council.
Bass, through a spokesman, has declined multiple requests for comment from The Times about his leadership priorities, and he did not reschedule an earlier interview on the topic that he had canceled.
Zach Seidl, a spokesman for the mayor's office, said in a text message that there was “[n]There is nothing to share about the search at this time, except that the mayor continues to work with urgency on this search and her work to make Los Angeles a safer place.” She did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the mayor had begun considering finalists.
Wednesday’s announcement falls within an earlier timeline given by commissioners, who said they hope to finish evaluating what could be dozens of candidates and offer Bass their top three suggestions by the end of August.
That hasn't stopped feverish speculation among LAPD rank-and-file officers and command staff about who will be their next leader.
There were at least 25 applicants for the position.
According to sources, outside executives who received second interviews included Jim McDonnell, a former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and former sheriff of Los Angeles County; Art Acevedo, a former chief of the Houston and Miami Police Departments; and Robert Arcos, a former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department who works for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. A high-profile former chief of a West Coast department was also said to have applied, but that name was never confirmed.
Those entries, confirmed by multiple sources, add another dynamic to what many consider an open race to be the city's next police chief.
The department veterans who received second interviews, sources said, are: Deputy Chief Blake Chow, who oversees LAPD special operations; Deputy Chief Emada Tingirides, commander of the department’s South Bureau; Deputy Chief Donald Graham, who heads the Transit Services Bureau; Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton, chief of the Detective Bureau; and Commander Lillian Carranza of the Central Bureau.
The selection of the city's next police chief is one of the most closely watched decisions made by any mayor.
In recent months, Bass and the commissioners have embarked on a citywide listening tour to poll residents, officers and business owners about what they want to see in the next chief. The mayor has also made regular visits to police roll calls around the city.
During community forums, many attendees pushed for the selection of an insider who was attuned to policing in a city as vast and diverse as Los Angeles.
Others spoke about the importance of choosing someone who understands the complicated history between the department and the communities it serves. And yet, unlike other recent chief searches, a growing number of people within the LAPD are pushing for an outside candidate to breathe new life into the organization.
The process has been shrouded in an unusual level of secrecy.
While names of candidates have sometimes been withheld to protect the identities of those working in other cities, officials have also declined to disclose how many people applied for the job, saying only that the number was “more than 25.” Sources later told The Times that the number was more than 30.
In the absence of information, the search has been the subject of near-daily rumors within the department. A LinkedIn post by a former LAPD sergeant turned police consultant went viral after he claimed to reveal a list of semifinalists. Among those named in the post was Anne Kirkpatrick, the current police commissioner in New Orleans, who quickly issued denials of any interest in the LAPD’s work.
At stake is the chance to lead the nation's third-largest local police force at a crucial time in its history. Whoever gets the job will inherit a wary department eager for clear leadership, and a city worried about crime and use of force.
One of the key questions facing Bass is whether an outsider would be better at bringing reforms to the organization than someone who has risen through the ranks here and already understands the political and workplace landscape.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the powerful bargaining body for the city's rank-and-file officers, has not publicly defined its position on the insider-outsider debate.
One of Moore's former chief deputies, Dominic Choi, was chosen as interim leader. Moore stayed on as a consultant in the search for the chief and Choi said he will not seek the job permanently.
The job of running the Los Angeles Police Department — a sprawling, multibillion-dollar organization with more than 10,000 employees that operates under intense scrutiny — is more about risk management than crime-fighting; it involves balancing demands that are often at odds:
Although violent crime numbers have begun to level off, with the exception of robberies, anxiety about public safety remains high among many Angelenos; the number of police shootings has also risen, raising concerns at the Police Commission. Meanwhile, any new leader, particularly one coming from outside, is expected to learn quickly and hit the ground running.
Forecasters have said Bass's selection will indicate much about the direction he sees the department taking. Picking someone from within the organization to follow in Moore's footsteps would signal the mayor is looking to continue some of the reforms he initiated, but would stop short of the wholesale changes some have called for.
According to some observers, the selection of an outsider would signal that the mayor is seeking a new direction for the department. The city has hired only two outside chiefs in the past 75 years: Willie L. Williams and William J. Bratton. Both selections came after high-profile scandals: the Los Angeles uprising in 1992 and the Rampart scandal in the late 1990s, in which more than 70 police officers were implicated in unprovoked shootings, assaults and planting evidence.
Experts say the Los Angeles Police Department's job is one of the toughest in law enforcement.
Any serious candidate will need to have a proven track record as an experienced leader. The chief must be comfortable speaking off the cuff, and often in front of cameras, about the work of the police department through the progressive lens of the city's elected leaders, including the mayor and City Council.
Whoever gets the job will have to face many challenges at once, while grappling with the myriad issues facing the city, including homelessness and the fentanyl crisis.
The next chief will also have to recruit and inspire a new generation of officers, some of whom were not even born when the department was forced to make sweeping changes in the wake of the Rampart scandal and who grew up in the era of Black Lives Matter.
The Olympics and the World Cup also loom as security challenges for the next few years. Others are eager to see how the next chief will deal with a much-criticized disciplinary system that, depending on who you ask, either lets too many bad cops off the hook or has been used as a weapon to favor the well-connected.
In March, the city hired Bob Murray & Associates, a Northern California-based headhunter, to conduct a national search for the chief — the same firm that helped select Bratton more than two decades ago.
Joel Bryden, a vice president at the firm, said he could not discuss the search and referred questions to city officials.
“It’s our strict rule,” said Bryden, one of two lead recruiters on the main search team. “At least we’ve kept everything confidential, although there have been leaks, some accurate and some not.”
