Vernon Using Suit in Effort to Become Chief, City Claims : Police: He is timing the move to coincide with the process to select Gates’ successor, L.A. attorneys say in bid to have the action dismisseed.

Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon is using a religious discrimination suit against Los Angeles in his campaign to succeed Daryl F. Gates as chief, “timing the lawsuit to coincide with the selection process,” attorneys for the city asserted in court documents filed Wednesday.

The papers were filed as part of the city’s effort to persuade a federal judge to dismiss Vernon’s suit, which maintains that he is the victim of a “witch hunt” as a result of an internal police investigation into whether his conservative religious beliefs conflict with his official LAPD duties.

In the suit filed last November, Vernon, a longtime elder in the Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, alleged that the investigation, launched June 5 by the Los Angeles Police Commission, has had a “chilling effect” on his right to practice his religion.

In response, Police Commission members and Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who requested the probe, said they were not attempting to infringe on Vernon’s religious views. Rather, they said, the investigation was initiated in response to complaints that Vernon had injected his fundamentalist beliefs into department business.

Two weeks ago, several high-ranking members of the Police Department said in sworn declarations that Vernon had given higher scores to born-again Christians on promotional exams, advocated a policy of crosses on uniforms and attempted to prevent the arrests of anti-abortion protesters when they blockaded clinics. Among the police officials accusing Vernon with misconduct were Assistant Chief Donald Dotson and Deputy Chiefs Bernard Parks and Glenn Levant.

Last week, several Vernon supporters from the department filed sworn statements that he had not attempted to bring his religious views into department business.

On Wednesday, the city’s lawyer, Skip Miller, said in a brief that Vernon had failed to identify any official city policy that had injured him. Miller stressed that the investigation of Vernon had ended without any action against him. And Miller noted that Vernon had not been suspended while the investigation was under way.

“The law is indisputably clear . . . that a constitutional violation must be composed of actual action, such as discharge, suspension or disciplinary action, and that an investigation simply does not come close to sufficing,” Miller said in attempting to persuade U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson to throw out Vernon’s case. A hearing is scheduled Feb. 24.

Miller also threw back at Vernon a charge that the assistant chief first leveled two weeks ago--that the chief’s race is a key factor in the case.

“The present lawsuit is really a smoke screen” that is part of Vernon’s campaign to become chief, Miller asserted in his brief Wednesday. “Vernon’s tactic here is to ‘take the offensive’ by accusing his accusers of wrongdoing.”

Vernon contended earlier that Dotson, Levant and Parks made their accusations in an attempt to injure him and help themselves in the race to succeed Gates, who is scheduled to step down this summer.

Vernon and the three others are believed to be among the 13 finalists for the chief’s job. The screening process began last fall.

Yet another unusual chapter was added Wednesday to one of the most provocative subjects that has arisen in the Vernon controversy.

Vernon contended in a statement filed in connection with his suit that former LAPD Detective Neil K. Spotts had “made false representations” when he maintained in a sworn statement that the assistant chief told him years ago that he was conducting a clandestine investigation of Gates. Spotts also maintained that Vernon said “God wants me to be chief” at the secret meeting.

Vernon acknowledged last week that he had attended a meeting with Spotts at the Ambassador Hotel but denied that he had said he was investigating Gates or that he made the remark attributed to him.

Vernon based his latest declaration on remarks that Gates made on a KABC newscast Monday evening. During the television interview, according to Vernon, Gates read a purported transcript of the Ambassador meeting that quotes Vernon as expressing doubts as to whether he would want to be chief: “I make almost as much as the chief and don’t have near the responsibilities, and I have a private life. If God wanted me to be chief, I would take the job and give it my best effort.”

David Casterline, Vernon’s attorney, said he has subpoenaed the transcript. Miller said he was “not aware of any recorded transcript of the meeting. To my knowledge, Spotts did not record that conversation, and I have to assume if Vernon did, he would have come forward with the tape by now.” Miller said Spotts stood by his original statement.