Infighting for Chief’s Job Grows Fierce : LAPD: Accusations of back-stabbing and dirty tricks fly as top officers compete.

As the race for the job of Los Angeles’ new police chief enters its final stages, the men who reside in the Police Department’s upper reaches are locked in some of the worst bickering and back-stabbing in the force’s history.

Publicly and privately, a number of the department’s top contenders to replace Chief Daryl F. Gates have been trying to sully each other’s reputations in the fashion of politicians rather than policemen.

Some have gone so far as to accuse their competitors of dirty tricks.

Assistant Chief Deputy Chief David M. Dotson, for one, believes he is being followed by department investigators. Assistant Chief Robert L. Vernon, for another, says there is an orchestrated campaign to ruin his future by publicly painting him as a religious fanatic.

The infighting has become so well-known in the department that at an LAPD retirement dinner not long ago, a speaker joked that Gates would be late because “there’s been a staff officer-involved back-stabbing on the sixth floor” of Parker Center.

Cmdr. Ron Banks, one of the leading candidates, recently summed up the prevailing attitude among the department’s brass: “Pent-up ambition mixed with pent-up paranoia.”

“I’ve never seen it quite like this,” said one captain with more than 25 years’ experience. “There’s so much self-serving b.s. going on. It’s embarrassing.”

Added the adjutant for one deputy chief: “It’s a cutthroat type of mentality. They all have their own factions . . . they’re dinging each other.”

Clinical psychologist Samuel Culbert, a UCLA professor of management who has studied the dynamics of change in large organizations, said the current infighting appears to be extreme and potentially very damaging.

“I see an institution that has been ravaged being further destroyed by internal combustion,” he said. In some respects, the LAPD resembles the Kremlin in its last days--the old power structure breaking down and “the entire system lacking trust,” he said.

“You might say it is understandable, but it will take 10 years to repair,” Culbert said. “All the antagonists aren’t going to go away.”

In all, eight Los Angeles police officials have made the cut as semifinalists, along with four outsiders. This week, a citizens panel will cut the list about in half.

The infighting, which has intensified in recent days, began in earnest in the days after the March 3 beating of Rodney G. King. In an extraordinary break with tradition, several high-level police officials criticized Gates before the Christopher Commission.

In recent interviews with The Times, several of the inside candidates said the verbal volleys will probably continue even after a new chief is chosen because so much bad blood has developed.

Deputy Chief Glenn Levant, who openly predicts that he will be Los Angeles’ next chief of police, said that while many of the same police managers have competed over the years for various promotions, the intensity of the contest for the department’s biggest prize is unprecedented. “I know there’s a lot of internal handicapping going on for the individual candidates,” Levant said.

Vernon, who has been in the center of the some of the angriest public exchanges, said, “I’m sick about the infighting.”

Throughout the police hierarchy, alliances are being formed and people are watching each other carefully.

“There’s definitely a lot of back-biting,” said one police union director. “People choose sides right away. You’re loyal to whoever you’re working for or whoever you think is going to be chief. Most of the people in high places have a memory that won’t quit.”

Added one aide to a deputy chief: “You have to go by somebody every day in the hall and worry what they’ve done to ruin you that day.”

In some cases, the infighting has turned downright nasty as competitors accuse each other of trying to ruin their reputations with charges of wrongdoing.

Dotson, who was Gates’ most vocal critic before the Christopher Commission, says the chief has initiated a personnel investigation of him, based on an unsubstantiated allegation that he was having an improper relationship with a female officer. Dotson has denied any wrongdoing.

“They’re surveilling me,” Dotson said of the police investigators. “I don’t know who for sure, but they have been.” He said he is sure of the spying because “a lot of the questions they ask me have to have arisen out of somebody keeping track of my comings and goings, off duty as well as on duty.”

Lt. John Dunkin, a Police Department spokesman, declined to comment about the surveillance allegation.

Dotson has fired some shots of his own. For example, he has accused Vernon of being unethical and of having a “lack of integrity, honesty and candidness in his dealings with me.”

For his part, Vernon believes that Dotson and other insider candidates are part of an effort to undermine his chances to succeed Gates. He said they have re-hashed old, unsubstantiated charges that he used his police position to spread his religious views.

“Now in the selection of a police chief, here it comes again,” Vernon said. “To me there is a nexus.”

Vernon has made reference to the alleged attack on his candidacy in court papers filed in connection with a lawsuit he has brought against the city. Three of his competitors--Dotson, Levant and Deputy Chief Bernard Parks--have accused Vernon in sworn statements of mixing religion and police work.

Levant also has not been spared criticisms and mudslinging. He has accused unnamed competitors of dredging up allegations that he improperly dispatched police investigators outside of Los Angeles city limits to probe burglaries at a hotel whose owner had business ties to two of his relatives.

Levant, who has called the allegations groundless, accused his fellow candidates of “trying to sling mud, but there’s nothing there.”

As for Parks, the department’s highest-ranking black, his critics widely accuse him in private of having favored black officers in promotions over the years. They also suggest he has an unfair edge over other candidates because he has close ties to Mayor Tom Bradley and Police Commission Vice President Jesse A. Brewer, both of whom could have significant influence on the appointment.

Asked about the infighting on Tuesday as he left his oral interview for chief, Parks said: “I have no comment at all. I’m just going to participate in the process.”

Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker, commander of police operations in the San Fernando Valley, was the first to announce his candidacy for Gates’ job and has been faulted for promoting himself at media events after the King beating.

Some detractors have said he has appointed an officer to serve as his personal public relations agent. Kroeker, who denies that he is a publicity hound, has also been taken to task for his ties to Vernon and his church--which Kroeker said was unfair.

“I’m not worried about the truth,” Kroeker said. “Vernon can speak for himself, and I can speak for myself.”