Looking for the right fit at SFPD
In a medium-sized city confronting the gamut of big-city crime, the next police chief will move into a post that some observers say will only get more demanding as time goes on
On Nov. 8, the day after Santa Fe police Chief Patrick Gallagher publicly announced he would be taking the top post at the Las Cruces Police Department after nearly two years on the job here, detectives investigated a letter threatening a shooting at Santa Fe High School.
In that same 24-hour period, officers handled a DWI on Old Las Vegas Highway, a domestic disturbance on Rufina Street, criminal damage to property at a Little Caesars Pizza restaurant and an aggravated assault on Canyon Road.
Six officers were dispatched to a collision with injuries on Airport Road, while others investigated a robbery at a fast-food restaurant on St. Michael’s Drive.
Those were just some of the 82 calls for service reported by dispatchers — a typical day for the department. In a medium-sized city confronting the gamut of big-city crime, the person who succeeds Gallagher as chief of the Santa Fe Police Department will move into a post that some observers say will only get more demanding as time goes on.
Getting a handle on the crooks — numerically, as well as physically — is just part of a job that paid Gallagher $105,000 annually. And with the city about to choose a new mayor with expanded powers under a new city charter, the stakes are high for choosing a chief, the person entrusted with running perhaps the most public of city departments.
Since 2006, Santa Fe has cycled through six police chiefs, five men and one woman.
“The job will get done by the people who do it every day, regardless of who sits in this chair,” Gallagher said. “The grunt work, the real police work, is done by the men and women in the police department.”
City spokesman Matt Ross said there are no plans under the current administration of Mayor Javier Gonzales to open up the search for a chief before city elections in March. Instead, the department will be under the direction of the two deputy chiefs — Mario Salbidrez and Andrew Padilla— after Gallagher’s departure, starting the second week of December.
Finding the right fit, never easy, should be a priority, say those who deal with the department. Some have been complimentary of Gallagher, saying he brought stability to the position after he became interim chief in 2015 and was named to the position a year later.
Mayoral candidate Kate Noble said Gallagher brought a “really
steady hand” to the leadership of the department. “So I think what we need in a police chief is someone who really knows law enforcement, who knows best practices and who can inspire the confidence and loyalty of the police officers that he will lead,” she added.
Mayoral candidate and City Councilor Joseph Maestas said the next police chief should be someone “who really understands the community and culture and can successfully adapt effective police operations that works well with the community.” Having a “robust and effective relationship” with community organizations, he added, is a must.
First Judicial District Attorney Marco Serna agreed, saying a police chief from Northern New Mexico would be able to better understand the history of Santa Fe.
Serna said he hopes the new police chief can prioritize systemic crime problems and treat drug addiction with the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, which allows officers to direct low-level, nonviolent offenders through treatment and case management programs instead of sending them to jail.
“What I mean by that is, you know, we were seeing some petty marijuana arrests, I think, that should not be the priority,” Serna said. “I think the priority should be traffickers.”
Gallagher, who has been a proponent of diversion, acknowledged there have been “some growing pains with the program.”
“We’re not forcing it down the officers’ throats because they’re the ones dealing with the person,” he said. “There’s a lot of discretion with that program, and sometimes they just know that this is not the right person for it. We have picked up the referrals for it.”
Such debates — arrests versus diversion programs, enforcement versus treatment — are common in other cities, where resources are tight and the opioid crisis looms ever larger. One mayoral hopeful, Alan Webber, said the city faces “serious issues when it comes to property crime and burglary and shoplifting — and it’s largely, I think, related to the opioid crisis.”
Asked what a police chief could do to solve the issues of drug addiction in Santa Fe, Webber replied: “It’s not something that a mayor or police chief solves — it’s a really systemic problem.”
In some ways, the next chief will face some new terrain. The day after Gallagher announced his impending departure, the City Council approved a new contract with the police union, essentially extending the existing contract until June 2019 and giving officers a 2 percent raise.
With the Santa Fe Police Officers Association in transition — members will elect a new union head to replace Sgt. Troy Baker, who will soon retire after an internal investigation into offensive Facebook posts — Gallagher’s successor also will deal with a new representative.
“Having an adverse relationship with them won’t do anybody any good,” Gallagher said, adding that police management has “a very good relationship” with the union.
Meanwhile, staffing remains an issue. Gallagher said the department will need 187 sworn officers to fully cover the city, which has grown in recent years after the transfer of annexed areas from the county to the city. The department is looking into how to recruit people who may not have considered being cops but whose own professions require a similar call for public service — such as social workers, nurses and lawyers.
For now, the department is budgeted for 177 officers. It has 168, including the top command staff, Gallagher said. But filling those vacancies has proven to be a game of whack-a-mole for a department that sees officers leave as it vets candidates to send to the police academy for certification.
“It kind of changes weekly,” Gallagher said of staffing levels.
“It’s a difficult time for law-enforcement in general in the last couple of years,” he said. “High-profile incidents and demonstrations and acts of violence against officers, and publicity of officerinvolved shootings have made people re-examine whether they want to enter this field.”
Santa Fe police had two officerinvolved shootings earlier this year — with both incidents making news this week. A committee of five district attorneys on Thursday cleared an officer in the April shooting of Andrew James Lucero near Eldorado, but the city was named Monday in a wrongful death lawsuit by the family of Anthony Benavidez, who was shot and killed by police in July. The lawsuit says too few Santa Fe police officers are trained to “identify and interact with citizens afflicted by mental illness who are unable to comply with officer commands through no fault of
their own” and asks a judge to order the city to train more of its officers in crisis intervention.
The Benavidez case notwithstanding, some believe a focus on community policing will be a key job requirement for the next chief.
Joe Jordan-Berenis, executive director of the Interfaith Community Shelter, said he’s seen the practice of community policing work. He recently nominated Lt. Marvin Paulk for a public service award offered by the local Rotary Club because of how Paulk interacted with the shelter’s guests, many of whom would line up to talk to him when he visited.
Jordan-Berenis said he would like to see a new chief impart on his officers that type of practice so “that people feel comfortable with the police and see them as an ally.
“I’ve watched that here, and that’s been a terrific thing,” he said. “Leadership starts from the top down, so encouraging that is really, really important.”
It’s that kind of quality that could be critical to the future of the department. Mayoral candidate and City Councilor Peter Ives said the next leader of the department will need to be “strong on professionalism and training to ensure that our officers do the job right and well.”
Ron Trujillo, a fellow city councilor also running for mayor, said he opposes the current policy that allows officers to live outside the city because he wants to see them more involved in the community. Growing up in Santa Fe, Trujillo remembers police being more a part of the community they serve. If elected mayor, Trujillo said, he will search for a chief from Santa Fe.
“We had so many police officers that were coaching Little League,” Trujillo said.
There are examples of that now. Officer Billy Perdue, who threw his name in the hat for nominations to head the police union, coaches softball at St. Michael’s High School.
For his part, Gallagher, who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and still has the accent
to prove it, worked at the New York Police Department from 1984 to 2007. After leaving the NYPD, he served as the police chief in Truth or Consequences from 2009 until 2012, when he was hired by the Santa Fe department. He said that when he first moved to the city, there was a learning curve for him in getting to know its people.
There are benefits in hiring both locally and from out of town, Gallagher said.
Police who live in Santa Fe, while serving as a crime deterrent when they are off-duty, also have described to him instances in which officers have been confronted by suspects they have arrested — sometimes even when they are with their children at a grocery store.
New York officers were prohibited from living in the precinct where they served because of concerns about corruption, Gallagher said.
Gallagher said he came to Santa Fe without old grudges or friendships. The city appointed him interim chief for a year when Eric Garcia, 43, quit as chief after 13 months on the job. Garcia retired after a handful of his lieutenants, in a scathing memo to the city manager, accused him of cronyism, hindering internal investigations, and fostering an atmosphere of hostility and unethical and criminal behavior.
In hiring Gallagher, the city conducted a national search, advertising the job in local publications as well as national law enforcement magazines.
The mayoral candidates complimented Gallagher’s work. But in contemplating the department’s future after Gallagher, some also reached for buzzwords such as “community policing.”
To Gallagher, community policing broadly means listening to the community to solve crime problems. It’s more of a philosophy than a specific program, he said.
“A police department can’t be an occupying army,” Gallagher said. “It has to do what the community wants it to do.”