Follow-Up Question: If Not Parks, Who?

If the Los Angeles Police Commission follows the lead of Mayor James K. Hahn and votes to deny Police Chief Bernard C. Parks a second term, the decision will bring to a close one political drama and open the curtain on another.

Although the job of the five-member commission is to decide Parks’ fate without considering who might replace him, the question of who would succeed the chief looms over the panel’s deliberations.

Already, some possible candidates being mentioned include Portland, Ore., Police Chief Mark Kroeker, a longtime LAPD commander who was beaten out by Parks for the job in 1997, and Sacramento Chief Arturo Venegas Jr., another finalist that year. San Diego Chief David Bejarano and former New York Police Commissioner William Bratton also appear on the short lists of some city leaders, though Bejarano this week said he is not interested in the job, at least for the moment.

The rest of the potential candidates declined to say whether they would like to be formally considered.

There is little consensus about who would be a front-runner if the commission and the mayor stay within the LAPD to find a Parks successor, but there is agreement that there are not many strong internal candidates for the position.

Deputy Chiefs David Gascon, David Kalish and Scott LaChasse are the highest-ranking of the possible Parks successors from within the department, and a number of other LAPD officials are considered potential contenders as well.

Whether Parks continues or someone replaces him, Los Angeles’ police chief for the next five-year term will command a troubled department--one still recovering from the effects of the Rampart scandal and facing a shortage of officers that has left it thin in spots.

“The bar has been set so high for police chiefs,” said Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. “The politics of the city, the job of managing and leading a big-city police department--all of that has become very, very difficult.”

The city’s ethnic politics could further complicate the search for a new chief. If the commission denies Parks’ bid for a second term, Hahn would have the final say in selecting the next chief, following a search process led by the Police Commission.

Many African Americans have expressed anger at Hahn for opposing Parks, and some political analysts suggest that will create pressure on the mayor to find a black successor. The LAPD has had two black chiefs--Parks and his predecessor, Willie L. Williams. Every other one of its 52 chiefs was a white man.

“There is an acute sense of political loss in the African American community,” said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. But at the same time, “there are undoubtedly some who feel it’s time for a Latino chief,” he added.

Deputy Mayor Matt Middlebrook declined to comment on whether the mayor’s office has begun looking for a replacement for Parks.

Some Question Whether an Outsider Can Succeed

The most pressing question about a search process would be whether the city would hire someone from outside the LAPD.

After the city’s rocky experience with Williams, who came to Los Angeles from Philadelphia, some experts are skeptical about whether an outsider could succeed in the post. In a recent Times poll, 61% of respondents said they want the next chief to come from inside the department.

But observers both inside and outside the department concur that there are few significant contenders for the job within the LAPD.

“There is a consensus among some of the people I’ve heard from that there’s not much of a bench there to choose from,” said former LAPD Chief Ed Davis, who left the department decades ago but who stays in touch with many city leaders and remains a close observer of the department.

Some attribute the perceived dearth of strong internal candidates to Parks’ assertive leadership style, which the chief’s critics maintain has made it difficult for his top deputies to assert themselves and develop as leaders. In addition, several high-ranking insiders have left the department in recent years.

“If you’re going to be chief somewhere like Los Angeles, you should participate at the national and international level,” said a former LAPD command officer. “This is how you prepare yourself, and a lot of our staff officers have chosen for personal reasons not to.”

Only three of Parks’ deputy chiefs are considered possible candidates: Gascon, Parks’ chief of staff and a 31-year veteran of the department; Kalish, commanding officer of operations in West Bureau, who has been in the LAPD for 26 years; and LaChasse, a 32-year department veteran who heads operations in South Bureau and who is retiring this week to become general manager of protective services as Paramount Studios.

Below that top tier of Parks deputies, some of those being discussed include Cmdr. George Gascon (no relation to David Gascon), head of the department’s training group. Other names being floated include Cmdr. Sharon Papa, the department ombudswoman and former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority police; and Cmdr. Jim McDonnell, who is working with the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police to plan the group’s 2004 meeting in Los Angeles.

Reacting to the perceived shortage of LAPD talent as well as to the desire for a candidate with an insider’s perspective, some officials say they would welcome the interest of former LAPD leaders who have since left for other departments.

One frequently mentioned possibility is Kroeker, who was a popular deputy chief who came in second when Parks was chosen in 1997. He went on to supervise the reconstruction of police agencies in Bosnia as a United Nations deputy commissioner, and then took the helm of the Portland Police Bureau.

While there, Kroeker has had an uneven tenure, drawing criticism for the way police clashed with protesters at a May Day event and jeers for requiring a strict grooming standard for officers. In the fall of 2000, videos surfaced of remarks he made to a Christian law enforcement group a decade earlier in which he called homosexuality “a perversion” and called for wives to be submissive.

In response, Kroeker said his views had changed and that he respects gays and lesbians. He said he would not tolerate any bias in the department.

Several LAPD insiders said another former deputy chief, William Rathburn, would also be a strong candidate for the chief’s job. Rathburn, who was in charge of security for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, is now a consultant working for the State Department on security in Greece for the 2004 Olympics, among other projects.

The name of Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez, who was with the LAPD 28 years before going to the Ventura County city, was one of the first to surface after Hahn announced his opposition to Parks. Lopez left the LAPD in 1998 to take the top spot in Oxnard.

But recently, the Oxnard Police Department has been struggling with a series of police shootings. In one widely reported case last summer, a distraught 23-year-old was shot by police while hiding in his bedroom closet with a knife.

The LAPD’s own history of controversy--in the last decade it weathered the beating of Rodney G. King, the failure to respond swiftly to the riots in 1992, the ridicule directed at it for its handling of the murder case against O.J. Simpson and the allegations of shootings, beatings and thefts that came to be known as the Rampart scandal--has done little to diminish its attractiveness for possible chief candidates.

The LAPD “has a tremendous tradition, and though it may have had problems, it is still considered a premier job in law enforcement,” said Bill Berger, police chief of North Miami Beach and president of the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police.

Mere Hint of Opening Starts Talk Nationwide

Even the hint of an opening has already generated discussion around the country about which prominent law enforcement officials would be competitive for the job.

The most frequently cited is Bratton, a former New York police commissioner who was credited by many with slashing that city’s crime rate, but was then pushed out by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Since then, Bratton has been working as a private security consultant. He was considered a top candidate to take over the NYPD again if former Public Advocate Mark Green had won the mayor’s race last year.

Another East Coast figure who would be in the running is John Timoney, who just left his post as commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department to run a high-end security firm in Manhattan.

Timoney, a popular chief with that department’s rank and file, was credited with effective leadership during the 2000 Republican National Convention, which took place in Philadelphia.

In California policing circles, San Diego’s Bejarano and Sacramento’s Venegas are considered leading potential candidates. Venegas impressed Los Angeles leaders five years ago and he made the final cut, only to have then-Mayor Richard Riordan opt for Parks instead.

After being turned down in Los Angeles, Venegas continued to serve as chief in Sacramento, where he works today. He too declined to comment on whether he would be interested in the post, but did say that if the mayor and the Police Commission are not going to seriously consider outside candidates, they should say so at the beginning to the process.

“If you guys have already made up your minds, don’t put your community and other professionals who sometimes risk their jobs by applying [through the process],” he said. “Just do it, and save everybody a lot of headaches.”

Bejarano has been credited with helping nurture San Diego’s well-regarded community policing program. The LAPD has been striving to implement various versions of that idea ever since then-Chief Davis ran the department in the 1970s.

Bejarano has been in the news recently as his department leads the investigation of the kidnapping and death of 7-year-old Danielle Van Dam.

On Tuesday, Bejarano said he had no interest in the LAPD job, but added: “You always have to have your options open.”