Sept. 20--Wanted: New San Jose police chief.
Must be able to repair community rifts, uplift the spirits of a demoralized officer force, navigate contentious political waters and efficiently respond to spiking crime in the country's 10th-largest city with a dwindling workforce and shoestring budget.
"We've got to have a healer, a leader and someone who understands the politics who is diplomatic and effective," said LaDoris Cordell, San Jose's independent police auditor and a former judge.
Chief Chris Moore surprised many Monday by announcing his retirement effective in January, ending a 27-year career with the department, including the past two years as chief.
Two years ago, when she was looking to replace Rob Davis, City Manager Deb Figone picked insider Moore over Anthony Batts, then the Oakland police chief, even though some thought she would go with an outsider to reform the department.
With the firestorm in San Jose over pension reductions, police cuts and the spike in crime, the same choice looms even larger. Does the city want an outsider who is ready to go even further to shake up the department or someone with experience in the department who can rally the dispirited rank and file?
And community groups and business interests will be lobbying for someone who can address their issues.
There will be no shortage of potential candidates, although Batts may not be interested this time. He's now the police commissioner in Baltimore. As far as insiders, there are a number of possibilities since at least four Bay Area police chiefs spent a considerable amount of their careers in San Jose.
Some feel it's time to have an outside chief for the first time since Joseph McNamara, who served from 1976 to 1991 and is credited with many of the reforms that earned San Jose the distinction of being America's safest big city. To those in this camp, Moore has shown too much resistance to operational changes used in other departments that could put more officers on the streets, such as greater use of reserve officers.
"It's important to get somebody to handle the difficult budget part of the job," said Mayor Chuck Reed. Pension reform, the mayor said, is the key to controlling city spending and ultimately freeing up money to rebuild the police department.
Councilman Pete Constant, a retired San Jose cop, agrees.
"We really do need an outside viewpoint because we're facing continuing challenges in the city of San Jose, and we keep getting the same group of people making the same decisions over and over again," Constant said. "We need to realize there are other options out there."
But police union president Jim Unland said the new chief has to be able to "speak truth to power."
At the same time the department has shrunk from over 1,400 down to about 1,050, the city has seen an upswing in crime across the board, from burglaries to homicides, including eight in an 11-day span in August. Cops blame the staff reductions and the salary and benefit cuts to a department that for the first time has seen more officers resign for other jobs rather than retire.
"We've got to have a chief that is willing to say, 'You're nuts, I don't know what you're thinking. And if saying it to them in private doesn't do it, he's got to be willing to go public. That's where this last chief dropped the ball," Unland said. "You saw how quickly the chief was losing support internally, and he's respected around here."
Figone will spearhead the search, and spokesman Dave Vossbrink said that because that process was fairly recent, there's a sense that it could be streamlined, though he said the city still would seek community involvement in the selection. A timeline hasn't been established. Ideally, the city would like a replacement by the time Moore leaves at the end of January, but if the search takes longer, so be it.
"We're not going to take shortcuts just to meet a deadline," Vossbrink said. "This is probably the most visible and sensitive appointment the manager has to make."
Cordell, the police auditor, said she hopes the city repeats the extensive search process it used to find Davis' successor two years ago, which featured an advisory panel with civil-rights leaders and numerous public meetings.
"That search was one of the most thorough processes I've seen," Cordell said. "I don't want them to cut corners."
The city will use the same executive recruiter involved in the last police chief search, Teri Black & Co., led by Teri Black-Brann of Palos Verdes, Vossbrink said.
Some in the community want to see a successor who will continue Moore's work to mend fences with them. Downtown business owners are hoping the next chief will carry on his efforts to reform what many had criticized as heavy-handed and racially tinged policing in the entertainment zone under former Chief Davis, when the department was accused of abusing discretion in misdemeanor disturbing-the-peace arrests that appeared to disproportionately target Latinos and other minorities.
Businesses felt such tactics drove many potential customers out to the upscale Santana Row or suburban districts.
"Chief Moore really rebuilt the community policing model after it had tanked under his predecessor with the attitude arrests," said Scott Knies, executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association. "All that really damaged the trust. Whoever is going to replace Chief Moore hopefully will build upon his successes in communicating with the community."
Richard Konda, executive director of the Asian Law Alliance, which had criticized officers' fatal shootings of Asian residents suffering mental health issues, also credited Moore for his effort to build bridges and restore trust between the department and minority communities.
Contact Robert Salonga at 408-920-5002. Follow him at Twitter.com/robertsalonga.
Copyright 2012 - San Jose Mercury News
