[dropcap size=big]T[/dropcap]he next chief of police of the City of Angels could be Robert Arcos, who grew up in the 1970s in Atwater, blocks from the L.A. River, the oldest of five children by a single mother.
He’s a third-generation Mexican American, and although born in Texas, a homegrown child of Northeast Los Angeles. On Tuesday Arcos emerged as one of three candidates to succeed Charlie Beck as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, a milestone for an L.A. kid who grew up in what he describes today as a “Switzerland” neutral zone between several local gangs.
Much like residents citywide, nearly half of all rank-and-file Los Angeles police officers are Latino.
But the department and the city have yet to see a Latino police chief. Los Angeles had its first African American police chief in 1992 with Willie Williams, recruited from Philadelphia, and its first Latino mayor in modern times with the election of Antonio Villaraigosa in 2005.
Arcos is one of the finalists recommended by the L.A. Police Commission to Mayor Eric Garcetti, who could make the decision any day now. The other two finalists are Michel Moore, who is white and heads LAPD’s patrol operations, and Bill Scott, who is African American and another LAPD veteran. Scott took over the troubled San Francisco Police Department a little more than a year ago.