The president of the Portland firefighters union said he could swear he saw former Portland police chief Charles A. Moose in the city, wearing a suit, near City Hall on Thursday -- on a day when candidates for the next chief of police were being interviewed.

Others in City Hall also heard of a Moose sighting.

Reached Friday, Moose confirmed he is, indeed, in Portland.

Asked if he applied for the chief of police job in the city, where he had risen through the police ranks and became Portland's first African American chief of police, Moose declined to comment.

"I really need to go,'' Moose said.

When reached, Moose said he was visiting a friend Friday afternoon in his old neighborhood, at North Williams Avenue and Going Street. He did say he had listened to a brief segment on national public radio Thursday afternoon about the city's police search.

Community panels interviewed six remaining candidates Wednesday and Thursday in the Portland Building. The mayor's office on Friday released the names of the community members on the panels. Community members signed confidentiality agreements not to talk, said Daryl Turner, president of the Portland Police Association, who was among the panelists.

The Rev. T. Allen Bethel, who also sat on a panel to conduct the interviews, called the six remaining applicants "a good slate of candidates,'' and said the mayor will have good choices for the city. Asked if Moose was among the six, Bethel said, "I am not able to say who are the candidates at this point.''

Moose, according to Portland Fire Fighters Association President Alan Ferschweiler, was heading south on Southwest Fifth Avenue at Jefferson Street when Ferschweiler spotted him walking by himself during the day Thursday.

The panels are making recommendations to the mayor, who will interview an unspecified number of finalists early next month then issue an offer by the end of August.

Mayor Ted Wheeler has said he's looking for a proven leader committed to community policing who recognizes the need to increase the diversity of bureau officers and managers.

Moose, now 63, served from 1993 to 1999 under Mayor Vera Katz. He left Oregon to become the top cop in Montgomery County, Maryland, where he rocketed to fame leading the hunt for a Washington, D.C-area sniper.

He resigned from that job in June 2003 because he was barred from accepting a monetary advance for a book on the sniper case while chief. Since then, he traveled for speaking engagements, book signings and TV interviews and lobbied for a national anti-racial profiling bill.

After climbing to the top of his profession, though, at age 52 he decided to start again at the bottom, reporting in 2006 for academy training as a new officer with the Honolulu Police Department. On Aug. 4, 2010, the Gazette reported that Moose was no longer working for the Honolulu police. Most recently, he was retired and living in Florida.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian