Mayor Karen Bass said she would conduct a nationwide search for the next chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, but it appears three local finalists have been selected.

Deputy Chief Emada Tingirides and former LAPD Deputy Chief Robert “Bobby” Arcos, who works for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, arrived at the mayor's official residence, Getty House, for several hours of candidate interviews on Tuesday. The third candidate is said to be former LA County Sheriff Jim McDonnell, who served with the LAPD and retired as first deputy chief.

McDonnell did not appear at the Getty House on Tuesday, but sources said the mayor is considering him to replace interim Chief Dominic Choi, who has led the police department since Michael Moore abruptly retired in February after 5 1/2 years on the job. The sources asked not to be identified because the final stages of the search process are classified and they were not authorized to discuss it.

A spokesman for Bass declined to comment when asked by The Times whether he had interviewed with leadership candidates on Tuesday.

All three candidates have deep ties to the LAPD, despite growing calls from within the force for outside change.

Bass released a report Tuesday detailing a months-long survey of civil rights groups, neighborhood association members, LAPD officers and others to find out what they want from the next police chief.

Some who met with Bass called for a police chief sensitive to the unique and often conflicting challenges of policing a city as large and diverse as Los Angeles, and spoke of the importance of selecting an innovator willing to prioritize de-escalation and transparency.

The report said rank-and-file officers' biggest problem in the department was low morale, due in part to a disciplinary system they viewed as unfair. Officers also reported that commanders' lack of experience in the job led to a “gaps in understanding of what officers deal with every day.”

Bass has indicated he is willing to consider candidates with ties to former mayoral rival Rick Caruso: McDonnell once appeared in the billionaire developer's campaign ads, and Tingirides and Arcos both sit on the board of directors of Operation Progress, a Watts-area nonprofit where Caruso is a founding director.

Arcos, who retired from the LAPD in 2021, is currently the chief of investigations in the office of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón. Approached by two Times reporters outside the mayor's residence on Tuesday, Arcos said being selected for the post was “truly the honor of a lifetime.” He said he would respect the mayor's wish to keep the investigation private and would not comment further.

“The mayor and his team are very strict about confidentiality,” he said. “It's entirely up to the mayor and I respect that process.”

Arcos, a third-generation Mexican American, grew up in Texas and moved to Los Angeles with his mother and siblings at age 10 to escape an abusive relationship, eventually settling in Atwater Village.

Xiomara Flores-Holguin, a longtime social worker and professor at California State University, Northridge, said Arcos rejected the LAPD's traditional “no one but us” mentality, opting instead to work closely with child protective services and community groups to solve crime problems.

“We're regular people, so we're not always welcome in these spaces,” she said.

During his time with the LAPD, Mr. Arcos served as a lieutenant in the department's elite Metropolitan District and led the 2007 May Day brawls when police were accused of using excessive force to clear immigrant rights protesters and journalists from MacArthur Park. He later served as deputy chief of the Central Bureau, where he was credited with promoting de-escalation training for officers and tackling homelessness and easing deportation fears among the city's immigrant residents.

In 2006, Arcos' daughter died in a drunk driving accident on the I-5 Freeway, killing two people. Soon after, allegations emerged that Arcos, then a LAPD lieutenant, had pressured the probation department to change the report in his daughter's favor. Arcos denied the allegations, and an internal investigation ultimately cleared him.

Arcos, who was a finalist for LAPD chief in 2018, stayed at the Getty House for nearly two hours before leaving in a black SUV, and less than an hour later Tingirides arrived and went inside, also staying there for about two hours.

Tingirides joined the Los Angeles Police Department in the early 1990s and gained national recognition for his community policing in 2015 when he attended the State of the Union address with her husband at the invitation of former First Lady Michelle Obama.

A Watts native who spent her teenage years in the San Fernando Valley, Tingirides rose through the ranks of the police department with unusual rapidity, working in the departments that covered downtown and southwest Los Angeles before being promoted to sergeant in 2006 and working in the Harbor District. She soon took over the department's community relations unit, which covers Watts and the surrounding area, where she worked for her future husband, though they were both married to other people.

Moore promoted her from inspector to deputy chief in 2020 and put her in charge of the newly created Office of Community Safety Partnerships, which has been credited with reducing violent crime and improving relationships in some of the city's most troubled housing developments.

She said during the panel that she joined police shortly after the Rodney King massacre, when LAPD officers were filmed beating a black motorist, and that she put on the uniform with the goal of “healing the distrust between law enforcement and the community.”

Fernando Rejon, a longtime gang interventionist, said Tingirides' “cultural fluency” allowed him to operate in a neighborhood where many residents distrusted police because of past abuse cases. That trust was hard-earned, he said, recalling Tingirides showing up at murder scenes to comfort grieving parents and calm distraught neighbors.

“The trust and support she has earned in Watts has been earned through years of active engagement, never backing down, being able to engage the community in difficult conversations and, when necessary, offering apologies,” Rejon said.

in Panel discussion In a 2021 interview hosted by actor and director Nate Parker, Tingirides said respect for human life should be a central pillar of all police work and that relationships are essential to his job.

Her relative lack of leadership experience has raised concerns from some within the police force, but there are also concerns about the potential influence her husband, former deputy chief Phil Tingirides, would have if she were to become chief.

The only finalist not at the mayor's mansion on Tuesday was McDonnell, who previously ran for LAPD chief in 2002 and 2009. He served with the department for 28 years and was at one point a public face for the department while serving as deputy chief under former Chief Bill Bratton.

McDonnell was instrumental in implementing the federal consent decree largely due to the Rampart corruption scandal, in which dozens of officers were accused of serious misconduct, including perjury and evidence tampering. He resigned in 2010 to take the Long Beach police chief job, then was elected sheriff but clashed bitterly with the police union over disciplinary issues.

He served one term before being replaced by Alex Villanueva, a stunning upset for a seat that hadn't seen an incumbent defeated in more than a century. He later joined a trend of senior law enforcement officials moving into academia, taking a job at the University of Southern California and working with Police Commission Chairman Errol Suthers.

During his time at university, a group of researchers began investigating the possibility of using artificial intelligence to evaluate police officer behavior and improve training.

Some within the police force question whether it has been too long since Mr McDonnell left the force and whether he is capable of dealing with the demands of modern policing.

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Commander Keith Swenson said McDonnell had the rare leadership qualities to seek out and listen to dissent in the name of improving the department. But he also lost the support of some of his officers because he took a much more heavy-handed approach to discipline, Swenson said.

“I think the mayor and city council would absolutely love him. I don't know about the rank-and-file. That's the big question in my mind,” he said. “It's a serious tightrope walk.”