3 Police Chief Finalists Subject of Probes : LAPD: The city will investigate allegations of obstruction of justice and other serious violations of department policy. The charges were raised by a Latino group angry over the selection process.

The president of the Los Angeles Police Commission said Tuesday that city officials will investigate allegations that three of the six finalists for chief of police have been involved in obstruction of justice, misconduct or other serious violations of department policies.

The allegations were raised by a Latino community group that is angry over the selection process for a new chief. Although the organization did not name the three candidates, sources said the references were to Deputy Chief Bernard C. Parks, Assistant Chief David D. Dotson and Deputy Chief Matthew V. Hunt.

Parks, the top scorer of five LAPD officers among the finalists, improperly intervened to help secure the release of his daughter’s boyfriend after his arrest last December on two counts of attempted murder, according to the allegations.

Dotson allegedly became romantically involved with a police subordinate in violation of department rules.

And Hunt allegedly refused to release a man arrested on a rape charge even though detectives were convinced of his innocence, which later was proven by DNA tests.

“Rest assured that everything will be examined as closely as possible,” said Stanley K. Sheinbaum, president of the Police Commission, which next month is expected to choose the successor to Chief Daryl F. Gates. “There is no doubt about that.”

Gates, who attended the Police Commission meeting where the allegations were raised, said: “Everything that was mentioned here will be looked into, and in great detail.” He refused to comment on whether any of the allegations already have been investigated.

Xavier Hermosillo, chairman of NEWS for America, said his group was raising the allegations because “we don’t want this cloud of potential corruption or wrongdoing” to hang over the chief selection process.

“It is unfair to everybody in the community and the Police Department,” he added.

NEWS for America, a coalition of Latino business, community and public employee groups, has criticized the selection process because there are no Latinos among the finalists, although Los Angeles is 40% Latino.

Parks declined to discuss his actions regarding the arrest of his daughter’s boyfriend, but said, “I did not intervene in anything.”

Dotson said he has been the subject of a police Internal Affairs Division investigation since July. “It has to do with an (alleged) inappropriate relationship with a female officer,” said Dotson, who says he is getting divorced from his wife. “Indeed we do have a relationship and I don’t find it inappropriate.”

Hunt denied that he had anything to do with decisions regarding the rape case and was not briefed on it until news media inquiries Tuesday. “I know nothing about it whatsoever,” he said. “Nothing.

“These are strange times and everybody’s pointing fingers,” Hunt added. “Everybody is accusing everybody of everything and I don’t need to be part of it.”

Tuesday’s developments further muddied the selection process for a new chief, which already has been strongly criticized.

Earlier, Gates contended that some candidates used ghost writers for their written essays--a contention that later was discounted by the Personnel Department. And a Latino candidate, Division Chief Lee Baca of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said he will appeal his elimination to the city Civil Service Commission.

Sources told The Times that Parks was the subject of an internal police inquiry regarding his involvement in the release of his daughter’s boyfriend, a suspect in a drive-by shooting that wounded two bystanders.

Parks, the sources said, had vouched for the boyfriend in a phone conversation, and the station lieutenant later ordered the suspect released without bail.

“I have no knowledge of an internal affairs investigation,” Parks said Tuesday in an interview. “I merely responded to a phone call from that division.”

Parks declined to discuss details of the phone call, but said his statement could be verified by talking to sources at the station. The detective on the case declined comment, and the lieutenant could not be reached.

Based on interviews and police reports obtained by The Times, the Parks matter began when his daughter, Trudy Jackson, filed an arrest report on Dec. 3, complaining that her estranged husband, Karl Jackson, had stolen her car.

After being arrested, Karl Jackson told detectives that Trudy Jackson had “loaned me her car” but that she became angry when he failed to pick her up at work.

He said he was driving her car on the night of Dec. 2 when her boyfriend, Nathan Thomas, “drove up and started following me.”

“He fired a shot at me,” Jackson said in a signed statement. “I again tried to elude him by driving through several alleys in the area.”

A few moments later, on 28th Street, “he opened fire on me again,” Jackson said. “I distinctly heard two different guns firing. It sounded like five rounds fired.”

Karl Jackson said he revisited the scene of the shooting and “I learned that two people had been hit by the gunfire.”

Repeated attempts to contact Karl Jackson and Trudy Jackson, who reportedly moved out of state after the shooting, have been unsuccessful.

Police reports indicate that two victims, standing on a nearby street corner, were struck by gunfire.

They were identified as Margarita Dancer, 31, who told police that she was hit with shotgun pellets in her left hand. The second victim, identified as Kenneth Jackson (apparently no relation), was treated for shotgun pellet wounds to the left forearm, right thigh and abdomen.

Detective John Campbell, the lead investigator in the case, declined to comment.

But according to two other detectives in the Southwest Division, Campbell checked the police logs and realized that two people had been shot there that night.

Police reports show that Campbell next re-interviewed Trudy Jackson. “She admitted that she had falsely reported her car stolen out of frustration with her estranged husband’s not returning the car as promised,” Campbell wrote in his report.

The report noted that Thomas “admitted the shooting to her” but was “convinced that (he) had not hit anyone.”

Campbell contacted Thomas, who voluntarily went to the Southwest station on Dec. 6.

At the station, Thomas also gave a signed statement to police in which he said: “On that night when I was chasing Karl, I didn’t fire any guns. . . . If somebody got shot, I had nothing to do with it.”

In a brief interview with The Times last month, Thomas contended that he was falsely arrested, but refused over several days to discuss the matter further.

Police records show that Thomas was arrested and booked on two counts of attempted murder, felony charges that carry no bail. The records also show that Campbell sent gunshot residue samples to the police lab for analysis. The samples were taken from Thomas’ car, and Thomas was identified as the “suspected shooter.”

But the records also reveal that three hours after Thomas was arrested, he was released on his own recognizance, and without posting any bail.

According to several police sources, normal department procedures were not followed in Thomas’ release. They noted that normally an arrestee would be held for a maximum of 48 hours--time enough to conduct further investigations and allow the county district attorney’s office to determine whether criminal charges should be filed.

District attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said the Thomas case was forwarded to the district attorney last Thursday and is being reviewed to determine whether charges should be filed. According to several sources, Lt. Alan Kerstein several times directed Campbell to release Thomas, despite the detective’s reluctance. The sources said Kerstein also later acknowledged that Parks in a phone call “vouched” for his daughter’s boyfriend.

Kerstein did not return phone calls on Tuesday.

Sources said that Assistant Chief Robert Vernon, who is Parks’ supervisor, ordered Kerstein to provide him a detailed report on the incident.

Gibbons, of the district attorney’s office, said prosecutors are evaluating whether to charge Trudy Jackson with filing a false police report.

Records reveal that police presented a case of auto theft to the prosecutor’s office against the estranged husband. But prosecutors rejected the case.

In the Dotson matter, police Internal Affairs Division investigators are reviewing whether the assistant chief improperly became romantically involved with a female subordinate. “We have been friends for a long time and now it’s gone beyond friends,” Dotson acknowledged.

He also noted that the investigation was begun after he gave testimony to the Christopher Commission that was critical of Gates and the LAPD, and he suggested that the NEWS of America officials were publicly bringing up the allegations only because they were angry that Baca was cut out of the chief selection process.

The Hunt case allegedly involves the arrest of a 25-year-old man after a series of crimes in which three women were abducted from college campuses and two were raped. Richard Lee Nichols was held in jail for four months until DNA tests cleared him.

Some police detectives had urged Nichols’ release, but Hunt allegedly refused until the DNA results were in.

Hunt said he is unaware of any internal investigation regarding the matter and, based on a review Tuesday, he thought the case was properly handled by investigators.

The top scorer in the competition for chief, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Willie L. Williams, is followed by Parks, Hunt, Dotson, Deputy Chiefs Mark A. Kroeker and Glenn A. Levant.

Times staff writers Louis Sahagun, Ted Rohrlich and Sheryl Stolberg contributed to this story.