Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Wednesday that she intends to pick the city’s next police chief by the end of the month, but declined for now to name the finalists that were forwarded to her office two weeks ago.
Bass said she had not yet interviewed any of the finalists sent to her by the Police Commission, the five-person civilian body that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department.
The names were quietly passed on to Bass on Aug. 21, the day that the commission wrapped up its final interviews with several finalists behind closed doors. Commissioners have refused to reveal the identities of the front-runners — reflecting the secrecy that has enshrouded much of the the search process. The circle of people who have been briefed on the final list of candidates appears to be quite small, with even senior LAPD officials and longtime consultants reportedly being kept in the dark.
The finalists will now compete to replace former Chief Michel Moore, who retired unexpectedly in February after after 5 ½ years on the job. The months-long search to find his successor has created a palpable air of anticipation within the country’s third largest police force.
Speaking to The Times on Wednesday, Bass said that she hadn’t yet “talked to any of the candidates so I don’t know how they feel” about being publicly identified.
“Right now, I don’t plan on that, but I do plan on making a decision in the month of September,” Bass said. “I think it’s a question as to whether those individuals would like their names released. I think I need to be sensitive to that.”
Asked whether she would give a breakdown of whether the finalists were insiders, outsiders or a mix of both, Bass replied simply: “No.”
Bass followed in the footsteps of her predecessor, Eric Garcetti, who also bucked precedent by withholding the names of finalists during the last chief’s search in 2018.
Bass however laid out some of her priorities for the next chief, which included: boosting officer morale, which is “extremely low”; expanding the department’s heralded Community Safety Partnership program; and overhauling a discipline system that has been criticized by officers for favoring senior officials.
“I’m looking for a leader who will bring about significant change inside of the department,” she said. “I think the morale issue is really critical; my concern, of course, is law enforcement’s interaction with communities, and it’s pretty hard to have a positive interaction if the morale is really low.”
Under the city charter, the commission is required to select three finalists for Bass to consider. But if the mayor is unsatisfied with the choices, she can ask commissioners to send additional names or continue the search independently. Whoever she picks will then need to be confirmed by the full City Council.
The chief of the LAPD is widely considered one of the most challenging positions in law enforcement. The department is a massive, multibillion-dollar organization of more than 10,000 employees that is under an intense microscope.
Whoever gets the job, insiders said, should have a firm grasp of its operational practices and how the LAPD has evolved over its long history, including through its time under a federal consent decree. That person will also asked to balance demands that are often at odds: Even though violent crime numbers have started to level out, with the exception of robberies, anxiety over public safety remains high among many Angelenos. The number of police shootings has also increased, raising concerns from the commission. And any new leader, particularly one from the outside, will be expected to be a quick study and hit the ground running.
The new chief will also have to understand and respond to the sometimes competing interests of the police union, politicians and community groups. They will also be expected to address staffing woes, at a time when the massive security challenges of the World Cup and the Olympic Games loom on the horizon.
A Loyola Marymount University survey of Los Angeles residents showed stronger satisfaction with the LAPD’s overall performance than in recent years, even if swaths of the Black and Latino population see disparities in the way the department polices them.
Finding the city’s next police chief is one of the most closely watched decisions made by any mayor.
Bass and commissioners have in recent months embarked on an “extensive outreach process to officers, to the community, to crime survivors, community interventionists, faith leaders, neighborhood leaders, business leaders to get their viewpoints” about what they want to see in the next chief. She said she hoped to release some of the feedback she received during the listening tour later this week.
She said she was surprised by the general feedback she received from rank-and-file officers, who unlike in other recent chief searches, seemed to openly favor an outside chief.
“I expected the officers to be pretty dug in to an inside, an internal candidate and that was not the case,” she said. “I would say the No. 1 concern from the officers’ perspective is their morale, and I thought that was going to be because of community perception around law enforcement — that is true, but what was more significant was low morale because of the internal workings of the LAPD.”
During the community forums, many attendees pushed for the selection of an insider who is attuned to policing in a city as vast and diverse as L.A.
Bass said it was critical that the next chief to address one of officers’ main gripes: the view that the department’s much-maligned disciplinary system has created a double standard for high-ranking officers.
“People felt that No. 1 was a disconnect between the command and rank-and-file, and two that leads to problems in terms of discipline,” she said.
Earlier this year, Bass vetoed a ballot proposal that, among other things, would have let the police chief terminate officers outright for certain misconduct. Under the current system, a chief can only recommend the firing of an officer, who is then entitled to a military-style tribunal known as board of rights.
She said the RAND Corporation, a global policy think tank, has been brought in to conduct a top-down review of department management. Another consulting firm is conducting its own survey of department personnel, while the police union is planning to release the results of its own poll.
The Police Commission has said that were at least 25 applicants for the job, but hasn’t given an exact figure.
Among the outside executives who received second interviews, according to sources, were Jim McDonnell, a one-time LAPD assistant chief and former Los Angeles County sheriff; former Houston and Miami chief Art Acevedo; and Robert Arcos, a former LAPD assistant chief who works for the L.A. County district attorney’s office.
Those entries, confirmed by multiple sources, add another dynamic to what many consider a wide-open race to be the city’s next top cop.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the powerful bargaining body for the city’s rank-and-file officers, has not publicly backed any of the candidates.