Inglewood Police Chief in Shootout With Robber : Crime: Official is confronted as he rides his bicycle home. He believes he wounded his assailant.

The streets are mean, even for police chiefs, as Inglewood Chief Oliver M. Thompson learned the hard way Tuesday night in a shootout with an armed robber.

Thompson is a bicycling enthusiast who pedals to and from the police station every day. He was on his way home from a City Council meeting when a car drove into the back of his bicycle, knocking him to the ground.

An armed man jumped from the passenger side of the car and demanded that the chief surrender his backpack. Thompson complied but drew his weapon, a .45-caliber semiautomatic, and fired at his assailant, who fired back, police said. Thompson declined to be interviewed Wednesday, but police said he believes he wounded the robber, who dropped the chief’s backpack before fleeing in the car.

City officials were thankful that, except for a scraped knee, the chief was uninjured. But the incident amounted to one more turn of bad luck for a community desperate to portray itself as a safe place to visit.

“I’m going to continue to ride my bicycle early in the morning and at night and I’m going to feel safe because this was an isolated incident,” Councilman Daniel K. Tabor, also a bicycle enthusiast, vowed Wednesday. “Robberies are a commonplace occurrence in Southern California now.”

Assistant City Manager Norman Cravens said he rides all over the city in his convertible with the top down and will continue to do so because he is not worried about being robbed. And Mayor Edward Vincent issued a statement saying that because the victim was the chief of police, the incident has drawn more publicity than it would have otherwise.

“But in the final analysis, and this is the unfortunate aspect,” the mayor said, “it could have been anybody anywhere.”

Indeed, among the most highly publicized crimes in recent months have been carjackings in the San Fernando Valley and other suburban locations--not in Inglewood or central Los Angeles. But Inglewood has had its share of high-profile crimes.

City officials, mindful of the hundreds of thousands of people who visit Hollywood Park racetrack and the Forum every year--and the tax revenues those facilities generate--moved quickly to control the damage that news of crime inflicts on the city’s image.

Officials were smarting Wednesday morning when radio newscasts reported the shootout involving the chief and gave the location as near the Forum. They were also wringing their hands last August when Jerry West, general manager of the Lakers basketball team, was robbed of his wallet and his 1985 NBA championship ring in the Forum parking lot one morning as he came to work.

The West incident and the bungled attempt to rob the chief followed last year’s civil unrest, which caused attendance at the racetrack and Forum to decline.

Police spokesman Alex Perez said the chief was not giving interviews because the incident is being treated as an officer-involved shooting and thus is under investigation. Police say Thompson’s assailants were in a light-colored, old-model Buick Regal. Investigators have a partial license number.

Perez said he expects the chief, who was dressed in biking shorts, a helmet and a light jacket, to continue pedaling to and from work.