Top LAPD Officers Fear Outsiders Have Inside Track : Police: Their spokesmen say city officials are unfairly leaning toward choosing a candidate from another department to replace Chief Gates.

Spokesmen for an association of the Los Angeles Police Department’s highest-ranking officers said Friday they fear that some city officials are predisposed to select an outsider, rather than one of them, as the city’s next police chief.

But Personnel Department general manager John J. Driscoll said, “For all intents and purposes, this process is stacked for the insiders.”

Under the City Charter, inside candidates who have been on the force for 10 years or more are given a one-point scoring advantage. In addition, outside candidates must outscore all inside candidates to be appointed chief.

Spokesmen for the 94-member Los Angeles Police Command Officers Assn., however, said they were prepared to challenge elements of secrecy in the selection process in an effort to make certain that insiders get a fair shake.

The organization’s chairman, Capt. Charles Labrow, and its attorney, Barry Levin, seized on a remark by the Rev. Kenneth Flowers, vice chairman of the city’s Civil Service Commission, that an outsider as chief could be “a breath of fresh air.”

Flowers made the comment Thursday at a public hearing on the attributes a new chief should have, but said he did not mean to imply that insiders should not be chosen. “If the process presents an insider to be best qualified to be chief of police, so be it,” he said.

Nonetheless, Levin told reporters: “When we hear comments like Rev. Flowers’--he is already predisposed. They’re going to skew the selection committee to select someone from the outside. . . . It’s an unfair process. . . . We’re going to challenge it every step of the way in every other forum we can.”

Levin said he wants the Civil Service Commission to make public the names of civic leaders it will soon appoint to a panel, whose job will be to screen written applications and eliminate all but 10 or 15 candidates.

City Personnel Department officials say it is necessary and customary to shield members of such panels from attempts to influence them, by not making their names public until they have completed their work.

Personnel officials say it is also necessary to keep the names of applicants secret because those from other cities may not want their employers to know that they have applied for the Los Angeles job.

Applicants who survive the first round of cuts and number among the 10 to 15 semifinalists will be interviewed and ranked by another yet-to-be appointed citizens’ panel. Their names will then become public as a matter of law.

Names of the top six candidates will be passed on to the Police Commission, which will choose the next chief.

Under rules drafted by the Personnel Department, subject to expected Civil Service Commission approval, the Los Angeles Police Department’s 25 highest-ranking officers are eligible to compete against similarly qualified outsiders.