USA TODAY International Edition
POLICE CHIEFS UNDER FIRE ACROSS U. S.
Several pushed from jobs as communities struggle with crises
The list of police chiefs recently ousted in the wake of personnel disputes or racially charged episodes involving officers’ conduct is long — and getting longer.
San Francisco Chief Greg Suhr, who resigned last week after the fatal police shooting of an African- American woman, is the latest top official to leave the stage as communities large and small struggle with crises of confidence in their law enforcement agencies.
Since Ferguson, Mo., exploded in civil unrest after the fatal police shooting of a black teenager nearly two years ago, chiefs have exited with increasing regularity, from Baltimore and Chicago to Cincinnati and Salt Lake City.
“Never has the job been more difficult than now,” said Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a coalition of the nation’s top law enforcement officers. “It is a precarious time.”
Stephens and other law enforcement analysts attribute the accelerated turnover to sustained scrutiny of all facets of police operations initially prompted by the racial strife that left Ferguson in near ruin and that reignited in New York, Cleveland, North Charleston, S. C., and other communities after controversial — often deadly — police actions.
David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor, said the public attention trained on police actions has intensified public pressure on political leaders to act quickly, with many often choosing to cut ties with established police leaders if only to salvage their own viability or calm a volatile environment.
“Patience is in short supply these days,” Harris said. “What once may have been seen as a purely local matter involving a police department, a chief or an officer, is now seen as part of national pattern or problem. What came out of Ferguson painted for people a set of issues that is now seen as recurring and national in scope.”
This year, the ouster of Chi-
cago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy played out as a national drama. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who expressed support for McCarthy, reversed course after the release of a video showing the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald, 17, by an officer who was later charged with murder.
Hours after the mayor announced McCarthy’s firing, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced she had requested the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to investigate the department’s operations.
“Trust in the Chicago Police Department is broken,” Madigan wrote in a letter to U. S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. “Chicago cannot move ahead and rebuild trust between the police and the community without an outside, independent investigation into its police department to improve policing practices.”
That review is ongoing as the reverberations from Ferguson, Baltimore and other communities continue to be felt.
In Baltimore, police officer Edward Nero was acquitted Monday of all charges in the death of Freddie Gray, who died more than a year ago after suffering a spinal injury while in the custody of police. His controversial death touched off violent protests in the city, a series of events that preceded the firing of Police Commissioner Anthony Batts.
In Ferguson, Delrish Moss, a former Miami police official, is in the midst of his first month on the job as the city’s new chief, replacing Thomas Jackson, who resigned in March 2015 after a Justice Department report offered a withering indictment of police policies and practices.
Federal officials continue efforts to bolster public trust in policing.
At a White House event Monday to mark last year’s release of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing report — another effort rooted in Ferguson’s aftermath — Lynch said the environment represented “a moment of unprecedented challenge for police and citizens alike.”
“Our work to help law enforcement adjust to the specific challenges of the 21st century has arisen from an intensely difficult set of circumstances,” Lynch said in prepared remarks. “In cities across the United States ... we’ve seen long- simmering and deeply rooted tensions boil over into protest, discord and even — tragically — into violence.”
FBI Director James Comey is likely to participate in a conference on race and law enforcement Wednesday in Birmingham, Ala., and once again broach the highly charged topic.
In some places, including Cincinnati and Salt Lake City, changes were prompted not by a shooting or other questionable use of force, but by internal clashes involving personnel.
For many police chiefs, the spotlight has been especially harsh for the past two years and there is no let- up in sight.
Ronal Serpas has some experience in that glare.
Hired in 2010 to lead the fractured New Orleans Police Department after a series of scandals exposed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Serpas said the job always had an unforgiving quality attached to it.
“As a chief, you are always on the tip of the spear,” said Serpas, now a criminal justice professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. “The difference now is that everybody is watching and the political process is playing out for all to see.”