Lopez Builds Bridges Between Police and Communities

As he makes his pitch to head the Los Angeles Police Department, Art Lopez argues against history: He contends that his affability, his willingness to listen to civilians and his record of reaching out to those who distrust the police qualify him best to take over an organization long renowned for its insularity and independence.

It’s time to change that, Lopez says. And making allies, even of potential enemies, is the forte of the 52-year-old Oxnard police chief, who last week surprised even himself by making the short list of finalists for police chief in Los Angeles.

Lopez says he knows how to get along with people, and how to listen to his superiors. And he thinks those characteristics might work for him when he interviews this morning with Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn.

“When I was hired in Oxnard, the city manager said he chose me because he felt most comfortable with me,” Lopez said. “I think that’s what Mayor Hahn is going to look for too. I’m going to listen to my civilian bosses. I’m not going to try to steal the limelight from anybody. We’ll share in the success.”

On Thursday, the five-member civilian Los Angeles Police Commission, all mayoral appointees, recommended that Hahn consider Lopez for police chief, along with higher-profile finalists William Bratton and John Timoney, former police commissioners in New York City and Philadelphia.

“I was the dark horse guy,” Lopez said in an interview Saturday. “I came in under the radar for a long time, while the candidates within the [LAPD] were killing each other off.”

The new chief will replace Bernard Parks, whom Hahn earlier this year denied a second five-year term. And if Parks represents a style of chief with whom Hahn was uncomfortable, Lopez offers a clear alternative.

Where Parks was forceful, Lopez is easygoing. Where Parks battled with some members of the city’s civilian leadership, Lopez promises a gentler approach. And where Parks used to boast of his record for forcing out bad cops--at the LAPD, he once famously proclaimed, officials “discipline too many and fire too few”--Lopez in his four years as Oxnard’s chief has not fired a single officer for misconduct.

In addition to Oxnard officers, Lopez includes community activists, some LAPD officers and even some police critics among his supporters. Skeptics include some longtime LAPD leaders, who question his depth, and former Mayor Richard Riordan, who passed over Lopez in favor of Parks.

The low-key Lopez, a calm and orderly executive with a knack for turning hostile community meetings around, said he is not troubled by criticism nor by his rivals’ credentials.

Lopez added that he planned to arrive for his interview with Hahn today ready to make his case for how to turn around the department.

“Imagine,” said Lopez, who worked 28 years as a Los Angeles cop before moving to Oxnard four years ago, “the reward of being part of the fix of the LAPD.”

One key goal, he said, is putting the department in touch with Los Angeles’ ethnically diverse communities. The Rampart scandal, he said, revealed not only the crimes some officers will commit to jail youth gang members, but also how little trust at least one poor Latino neighborhood, Pico Union, had in its police.

“There had been a total disconnect between the Police Department and that community,” Lopez said.

“It’s so important for the next police chief to rebuild those bridges. And that’s what I do best.”

Lopez said his steady ascent through the ranks of the LAPD--starting as a patrolman in 1971 and eventually including the command of Hollenbeck Station and Central Bureau before ending as a deputy chief shortly before he left for Oxnard in 1998--prepares him to run the demoralized department of 9,000 officers.

But others say Lopez is a good guy whose ambitions overreach his abilities--a lesser light, especially compared with Bratton and Timoney.

William Rathburn, former deputy chief of the LAPD, said Lopez’s four years atop the 200-officer Oxnard department do not qualify him to run the far larger and more complicated LAPD.

Oxnard’s entire police department is smaller than a single LAPD station, of which there are 18, in addition to a host of special units. LAPD pioneered SWAT teams--which include negotiators and marksmen--and it fields canine and mounted operations, as well as gang enforcement, narcotics and other specialized groups of officers.

As the nation’s third-largest police force, the LAPD also labors under complex administrative requirements, including the presence of a federal judge and monitor who oversee a consent decree adopted under Riordan and despite Riordan’s reservations.

“Art is a nice guy,” Rathburn said. “[But] I don’t think Art has the capabilities that are required for the job.... You could be a success in Oxnard but not a success in Los Angeles. It requires a different mentality, the ability to recognize problems, very strong leadership characteristics.”

Lopez was not even the strongest candidate available from current or former LAPD deputy chiefs, Rathburn said.

Riordan, who selected Parks as chief in 1997, when Lopez was also a candidate, said LAPD insiders tell him a vote for Lopez would be a vote for the status quo.

Riordan cautioned against selecting Lopez if the reason is to please Latino residents, who make up the largest racial or ethnic share of the city’s population. If selected, Lopez would be city’s first Latino police chief.

“Art’s a good guy, and a very competent guy,” Riordan said. “But if [Hahn] wants to get reelected, he needs a really good police chief, and forget the political correctness. That’ll get worn thin. If I had to bet, I’d pick Timoney.”

Lopez said his selection would be a boost to Latinos, but that his ethnicity should not be a principal consideration when picking a chief.

“There is a lot of pride about this,” Lopez said Friday, shortly after a reporter from a third Spanish-language television station interviewed him. “Believe me, we’re going to have a lot of support out there from the Latino community. And it may be important for some of the people because I’d become an instant role model. But I agree with Mayor Hahn that they should be seeking the most qualified individual.”

Supporters say that’s Lopez.

“What this city needs is a chief of police who is not another politician or would-be politician,” said Ron Frankle, a former LAPD deputy chief who mentored Lopez before retiring in 1996. “They need a good, solid, affable general manager, and he fits that description very well.”

Ventura County’s two top law enforcement officers said Lopez is a worthy finalist.

“I told Mayor Hahn that they can’t do any better than Art Lopez,” said Ventura Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury. He said Lopez had introduced new crime-fighting ideas to the suburban county. Lopez, for instance, brought two LAPD experts on the Rampart scandal to Ventura to share its lessons.

Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks, who met regularly with Lopez on a police chiefs’ panel, said Lopez also distinguished himself by establishing four community advisory boards for different parts of Oxnard and a “chief’s council” of racial and ethnic leaders, with which he meets regularly to feel the pulse of the working-class city of 182,000 residents.

Those relations were tested during Lopez’s tenure by a string of police shootings that touched off fear and anger in the community. Over eight months, Oxnard police shot and killed five men, most of them mentally ill.

The last was the fatal shooting of a distraught, knife-wielding 23-year-old artist killed while cowering in his own bedroom closet after his mother called police to take him to a hospital for treatment.

All of the shootings were ruled justified by county prosecutors, but Lopez ordered more training for his officers on how to calm emotionally disturbed suspects.

So far, 24 officers have undergone weeklong training classes, and every officer in the Oxnard department has received an eight-hour course, Lopez said. Oxnard also is using a new crisis intervention team and, in the last year, officers have shot just one crime suspect, and he survived.

Los Angeles attorney Samuel Paz, who specializes in police brutality cases, dealt with Lopez in two questionable Los Angeles police shootings in the 1990s, and represents the mother of the artist Oxnard police killed last year. Paz said Lopez should have acted more quickly in response to the Oxnard shootings.

But in general, he said, Lopez has been responsive to residents and has enacted reforms that will save lives in Oxnard.

Paz recalled a San Pedro case a few years ago in which it appeared that a young man had been shot in the back by Los Angeles police. Lopez rolled out to the scene to calm the community, he said.

“The public was very upset with the LAPD,” Paz said. “Lopez was very caring in addressing their concerns, but he also protected the integrity of the department. He comes across as being a sincere person who demands respect, not based on his size or a scowl, but because he expresses himself in a very articulate way that doesn’t set people off.”

Community leaders say Lopez has brought that same personal connection to his work in Oxnard.

“He’s responded whenever we’ve come forward with complaints,” said Hank Lacayo, board president of El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, the county’s biggest Latino advocacy group. “I see a difference in the demeanor of the Oxnard P.D. There are more attempts to reach out.”

Lopez came to an Oxnard department with a history of excessive force complaints. Within days, he sat down with Sgt. Steven Moore, then president of the officers’ union, to emphasize discipline.

“He’s been strict but fair,” Moore said. “He’s handed out some discipline, but I don’t know anybody who has found it unjust.”

Although police disciplinary records at Oxnard are not public, Moore said Lopez has not fired any officers, though he has handed down at least one 30-day suspension. That record would make Lopez a light touch by recent LAPD standards, but officers in Oxnard view him as at least as tough as his predecessor there.

Lopez said he left the LAPD for Oxnard in 1998 with no intention of returning. But if he does, Lopez’s journey would bring him home to a city he never really left.

The son of two Lockheed employees--his dad was a plastics fabricator and his mom a parts sorter--Lopez was raised in a bilingual middle-class home in Monterey Park, a third-generation Mexican-American. He’s married and has two college-age daughters--a law school student at USC and a master’s degree candidate at Pepperdine.

He lives in an Oxnard condo weekdays, and commutes home to Porter Ranch in the San Fernando Valley on weekends, so he’s always kept a foothold in Los Angeles.

He says that’s not because he was planning a return to the LAPD as chief--he figured Parks would be there for at least 10 years--but because he truly likes the city.

“Now I want to be back in the worst way,” Lopez said. “Everything I am today is the result of my experience with the Los Angeles Police Department. I still bleed blue. I never really left the LAPD.”

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Times staff writer Beth Shuster contributed to this story.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

In-Depth Looks at the Short List for Next Chief

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Police Commission concluded a five-month search for the next chief of the LAPD by sending Mayor James K. Hahn the names of three finalists: William Bratton, former commissioner of the New York Police Department; John Timoney, former commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department; and Art Lopez, a veteran of the LAPD who now serves as chief of the Oxnard Police Department.

Sunday, The Times began a series of profiles of those three men. Today’s installment looks at Lopez, and Bratton will be featured Tuesday. Timoney was featured Sunday. To see the articles on the Internet, go to

www .latimes.com/lapd.

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ART LOPEZ

Age: 52

Career: Chief of police in Oxnard for the last four years. Former deputy chief in the LAPD; as commanding officer of the Hollenbeck area of Los Angeles, he implemented a community-based policing program that became the model for the LAPD.

Education: B.S. in public administration, USC; M.S. in management, Cal Poly Pomona.

Personal: Married with two daughters.