Mayor to Announce Five Police Panelists : City Hall: Riordan promises that the commission will prove his commitment to ethnic diversity.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan is scheduled to release the names today of his five police commissioners--appointments that the mayor and his aides said will prove his commitment to representing the city’s many ethnic groups.

Sources said front-runners for the citizen Police Commission include Lourdes Saab, executive director of the Hispanic Women’s Council, who appeared in Riordan campaign mailers; Gary Greenbaum, a rabbi and Western regional director of the American Jewish Committee; Michael Yamaki, a Japanese-American who is a member of the current commission appointed by former Mayor Tom Bradley, and Deidre Hughes Hill, an African-American lawyer and daughter of state Sen. Teresa P. Hughes (D-Inglewood).

The choice of an African-American to sit on the commission was thrown open late in the selection process when Stan Sanders withdrew his name from consideration.

Sanders, a lawyer and opponent of Riordan in the April mayoral primary, had long been mentioned as the front-runner to head the commission. But on Thursday, Sanders, who campaigned for Riordan in the election, said he has proposed that he lead a task force to improve living conditions and programs for children.

Among the estimated 200 commission appointments the mayor must make, the police nominees hold a special significance. The panel, the policy-setting head of the LAPD, will direct efforts to expand and reform the department.

Some critics have questioned Riordan’s commitment to police reform after his appointment of former police union head William C. Violante as deputy mayor.

He also drew protests Thursday by activists who complain that blacks and Latinos have been overlooked in early appointments.

Of his four top-ranking appointments, Riordan has named three Anglo men, including Violante, and an Asian-American woman.

Riordan’s chief of staff said the appointments expected today have been in the works for weeks and were not in reaction to the protests Thursday by members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Urban League, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other groups.

“We are not reacting to pressure,” said William R. McCarley, Riordan’s chief of staff. “We are going to assemble the best management team possible. The mayor has said many times, ‘Judge us by our performance.’ God had six days. At least give us two weeks.”

At a news conference Thursday, Riordan added: “My Administration, as I’ve said all along, will reflect the ethnic diversity of this city. I’ve been in office a week today. . . . I’m going to announce a number of appointments tomorrow. I just ask everybody to have a little patience. . . . When they step back, they will proud of the ethnic diversity that is represented in my government.”

At a news conference Thursday afternoon and at a community meeting in the evening, several minority and civil rights groups said Riordan has not included residents of South Los Angeles on his transition team and that minority advisers have not represented the middle and lower classes.

Riordan’s staff countered that the protesters have failed to acknowledge several lower-level staff appointments. The mayor’s recently named press staff includes press secretary Annette Castro, a Latina, and deputy Tom Kruesopon, who is of Thai descent.

Riordan officials also complained that Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, an organizer of the one of the protests, is campaigning to keep his position on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board.

“He wants an MTA appointment,” said one source close to Riordan, who controls several seats on the transit board. “That’s what all this gets back to. Ridley-Thomas has been working this hard for a couple of weeks now.”

Ridley-Thomas conceded that his reappointment to transit board was one of the goals of the protest.

“There are multiple goals of this, and that is one of them. But we’ve talked about a range of other issues as well,” Ridley-Thomas said.

Many other commission appointments are expected next week.

At the Airport Commission, sources said, Riordan was likely to pick two attorneys who would be new to the panel although well-known around City Hall: former Planning Commissioner Dan Garcia and current Planning Commissioner Ted Stein. Also said to be under consideration are Martha Brown Hicks, who heads the nonprofit Skid Row Development Corp.

As for the powerful Planning Commission, West Hills resident Robert Scott, a vocal advocate of small-business rights and champion of breaking up the Los Angeles school district, said Thursday that Riordan has chosen him. Riordan’s office refused to confirm this.

Scott, 47, president of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley, said he hopes to use the Planning Commission post to bring sweeping reforms.

Meanwhile, aides to Riordan suggest he is taking a polite but skeptical view of a proposal made earlier this week by four department heads to revamp the structure of the economic development bureaucracy at City Hall.

Chief of Staff McCarley said that substantive discussion of Riordan’s economic policies would be put off until after he appoints a deputy mayor for economic development.

Times staff writers Greg Krikorian and John Schwada contributed to this story.