Latino to Appeal Rating in LAPD Chief Competition

Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Division Chief Lee Baca said Monday he is appealing the rating he received by a civilian panel that kept him off the list of six finalists for the job of Los Angeles police chief.

Meanwhile, City Councilman Richard Alatorre said he will introduce legislation today to delay the naming of the next chief so that Baca and other top-rated candidates may be considered for the position.

Although the third-highest scorer in the final round of the chief selection process, Baca was bumped from the final list of candidates because a quirk in city law requires applicants from outside the Police Department to score higher than all LAPD candidates.

He said Monday he is appealing his rating--which was 94 out of 100--because he believes it was skewed by two panelists who gave him lower marks than the extremely high ratings he received from the five other panelists.

“I want to get to the bottom of this,” Baca said. “These two panelists were definitely not thinking about what is fair and I want to find out if they applied the same method to the other applicants.”

Baca claimed that because he, as an outside candidate, was required to obtain a higher score to make the final cut, the two panelists may have purposely given him a lower mark.

“The two panelists deliberately skewed my rating,” he said. “And given the fact that I had to have a higher score, it was a doubly crucial decision on their part.”

Baca said he received scores of 98, 98, 98, 93, 92, 89 and 88--an average of 94.

He said he will appeal to the Civil Service Commission, which has been conducting the process to find a replacement for Chief Daryl F. Gates, who said he is retiring in June. He wants a review of what he claims is an inconsistency in his rating over the two scores in the 80s.

“There shouldn’t be that disparity,” he said.

Baca received his scores from a panel of seven community leaders who interviewed 12 semifinalists to pare the list down to six. Laura Balverde Sanchez said recently that she and another Latino panelist, attorney Antonia Hernandez, believed that the panel failed in its mission to choose the most qualified candidates when it kept Baca off the list.

The six finalists, announced last week, include one outsider--Philadelphia Police Commissioner Willie Williams, who scored the highest of all applicants--and five LAPD officers.

The next step in the process is for the city Police Commission to select from the list of six one candidate who would become the next chief of police.

Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon, who also did not make the final list, said he would not join Baca in his appeal, but criticized the selection process.

“I prefer a process that has a measure of objectivity and merit,” he said.

Vernon, who is suing the city for conducting an investigation into whether he injected his religious beliefs into his job, said he planned to take a few days off and will make another announcement about his future with the department--including his possible retirement--within the next three weeks.

“I have not decided a retirement date but it’s not far in the distance,” said Vernon, 58. “I have a lot to think about.”

Alatorre said he will introduce a motion Tuesday to ask the Police Commission to delay proceeding with the selection until after the June election.

On June 2, city voters are to decide several police reform issues, including revising the City Charter to eliminate the provision that favors LAPD candidates over outsiders in the chief selection process.

“How do you correct what I perceive as being an injustice?” Alatorre said. “One way is to hold off the process until we see whether there is the will of the people to change the process.”