As selection nears, who will be the next police chief?

SAN JOSE >> By month’s end, the city will select a new police chief for an era scarred by the death of George Floyd and other highprofile incidents of police misconduct that have led to a tenuous consensus that American law enforcement, from its tactics to its culture, needs to change.

The finalist crop is dominated by San Jose Police Department veterans: Acting Chief David Tindall, Deputy Chief Anthony Mata and Deputy Chief Heather Randol. They are joined by retired Pittsburgh Assistant Chief Larry Scirotto, a late addition to the pool who overcame a relative lack of local name recognition to land in the final four.

To many community leaders, the next chief has to fully commit to the city’s pledge to reimagine public safety.

“Police should not be in our schools, or dealing with homelessness, or responding to mental-health issues. We also require accountability,” said Iheoma Umez-eronini, director of compassion and justice ministries for The River Church Community. “We would not have public safety if it’s only police guaranteeing it. Public safety has to be a partnership between the public and police.”

Tindall, as acting chief, is a standard bearer for the department’s existing culture, having risen through the ranks with a career marked by long stints in investigative and tactical leadership roles. While for some that exudes the notion of stability and a smooth transition, that also presents his biggest hurdle in projecting himself as an agent of change.

Tindall said his knowledge of the department and the city have given him the insight needed to increase community engagement. He also acknowledged that the early days of demonstrations downtown following Floyd’s death in late May — after which San Jose police were roundly criticized for their aggression and use of projectiles and tear gas to break up crowds — exposed divisions that will need a lot of work to bridge.

“There has to be a change in this culture of us versus them, and that has to be recognized, first and foremost,” Tindall said in an interview. “We have to normalize these discussions and normalize the dialogue in the department. Talking about systemic racism and bigotry doesn’t mean you’re calling someone a racist.”

The Rev. Jethroe Moore, president of the San Jose-silicon Valley NAACP and a participant in the chief interview panels, said it’s difficult for him to see significant shifts coming out of Tindall’s background, given Tindall was part of the police leadership that responded to protests. Moore was also among those who said Tindall’s city council presentation last month on new less-lethal restraint tools missed out on the lessons from the protests.

“What I would want is less from that side of the table, and more from the other side of the table of working with people at a community level,” Moore said.

On that point, Tindall agreed: “We have an opportunity to directionally change this police department, and it’s long overdue.”

Mata, a deputy chief for most of the past decade, draws on his upbringing in poor Latino neighborhoods in Chicago to relate to underserved communities in San Jose. He has vocal backing from several influential minority community groups in the city.

“This community needs a leader who understands them,” Mata said. “I know what it takes. I know what the needs are.”

Mata also has direct experience with the most pressing police-community issues in the country: Using deadly force, involving an unarmed person.

In July 1999, Mata and another officer were part of a police contingent that traveled to Salinas to apprehend Odest Mitchell, who was a suspect in San Jose armed robberies. During a foot chase, the two officers shot Mitchell after reporting seeing a gleam they thought could be a weapon in his hand. The Monterey County District Attorney’s Office said Mata fired 10 shots, four of which hit Mitchell, who prosecutors determined was holding a pair of sunglasses.

Mata voiced remorse but said his actions were in line with police training, though he conceded that has evolved considerably since.

“It changed my life, and it’s something that I don’t want any officer to go through,” he said. “I’ve paid it forward with what I’ve done to train officers.”

While that shooting has long been in the public record, it resurfaced in department chatter as it grew clear Mata was getting serious consideration, in what some insiders have characterized as an attempt to cast him apart from the other internal candidates.

Moore said Mata should also be evaluated on what he has done since that time, and for him an indelible image for him is of Mata participating in Black Lives Matter marches last summer with his daughter.

“People can judge how they want, but he was there,” Moore said.

Mata is also a defendant named in a 2018 lawsuit filed by an officer alleging Islamophobic comments made during briefings presided by Mata. The lawsuit got renewed attention in the wake of a social-media scandal last summer that revealed several current and former SJPD officers were making Islamophobic and other bigoted comments on Facebook.

Mata denies wrongdoing, but said the situation taught him to be “more careful in engaging with our workforce.”

Randol has the least years of experience at a high-command level, having been promoted to deputy chief in 2019. But she is well regarded in the department, especially for propping up the recruiting division during some of the department’s most fallow staffing years in the last decade.

While she faces the same optics as Tindall and Mata in terms of trying to be a culture changer from inside, Randol says that since she joined SJPD in 1998, she said she has trained a critical eye on the department even as she moved up the ranks.

“Maybe it’s because I’ve been a minority voice often,” Randol said, an allusion to her bid to become the department’s first female chief. “But I have approached this with an openmindedness, and I accept these questions that come from the community and city council. We can’t be afraid of that.”

Like her colleagues, she sees a need for change in the way that officers police in underserved neighborhoods but don’t have much more of a presence.

“We have to get away from coming in and then leaving. We have to ask, are we over-policing an area?” Randol said. “We need to focus on the criminal enterprise and not the neighborhood.”

Scirotto is the lone remaining outside candidate, and entered the process after City Manager Dave Sykes extended the application process a second time in late January, a move described at the time as necessary to ensure a robust inside-outside pool.

Since 2017 — a year before he retired from Pittsburgh police — Scirotto has been named a finalist for chief jobs in cities including Portland, Grand Rapids, Madison and Nashville. Some, including the police union, have made hay of this to question the extent of his interest in San Jose.

In the lone public chief candidate forum Feb. 13, Scirotto, who is biracial and identifies as Black, emphasized a goals to “giving the community a voice at the table when we’re developing strategic initiatives.”

Scirotto initially agreed to, but then declined, an interview with this news organization. But his performance in the forum community interview panels held in mid-february elevated him in the eyes of panel participants like Umez-eronini, who said she was inspired by Scirotto’s ease and command with talking about racial bias in policing.