Lots of openings........

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/cities-are-losing-police-chiefs-and-struggling-to-hire-new-ones

This summer, a headhunter called Lashinda Stair, second-in-command at the Detroit Police Department, and asked if she was interested in potentially becoming the chief of the Louisville Metro Police Department. Her answer: “Absolutely not.”

In a year that has seen protests in the street, defiant unions, and mayors who are quick to push out police chiefs, the job of running a police department has become less coveted among many law-enforcement leaders. They say what used to be the pinnacle of achievement in their profession is now a job in which it is difficult to implement changes and easy to get blamed when things go wrong.

“There’s a lot of folks that are hesitant when they see chiefs are getting beat up and getting thrown under the bus by their bosses,” said Art Acevedo, Houston’s police chief and president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents chiefs from 69 of the country’s largest cities.

Eighteen chiefs from those 69 cities have resigned, retired, been pushed out or fired since protests and increased calls for police accountability and reform began after George Floyd’s death in May, according to Mr. Acevedo. Though the group doesn’t keep records, it’s an unusually high number in such a short time, he said.

Replacing a police chief is often the simplest way to signal change in a department and is less difficult than implementing structural overhauls, policing veterans say.

The exodus has included the chiefs of Louisville, Atlanta and Rochester, N.Y.—cities in which Black people were killed by police and civil-rights activists responded with protests and calls for change.

But many chiefs have left in cities in which there haven’t been controversial killings this summer. Carmen Best, Seattle’s first Black female police chief, resigned after the city council cut her department’s budget and her pay. U. Reneé Hall, Dallas’s first Black female chief, resigned without giving a reason after criticism of the way Dallas officers handled protests. Chief Sylvia Moir is leaving Tempe, Ariz., after city officials said they wanted to go in a different direction amid the nationwide calls for police reform.

Ms. Best couldn’t be reached for comment; Ms. Hall canceled two scheduled interviews.

Recruiters are having difficulty persuading candidates to apply for the open jobs, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of Police Executive Research Forum, which conducts the searches for cities.

“When you have city after city losing their chief, how do you get the next generation to step up?” said Mr. Wexler.

In Seattle, Mayor Jenny Durkan appointed an interim chief, but she delayed the search for a permanent one for fear of not finding a qualified candidate. Ms. Durkan, who opposed the police budget cuts, said it would be difficult to lure someone to a department facing pressure from liberal activists for further budget cuts and policy changes.

“If we started a search right now, I doubt we could attract the candidates that Seattle deserves because they don’t know what job they’re applying for,” Ms. Durkan said in August, after Ms. Best announced she was stepping down.

Officials in Tempe, a city of 195,000 outside Phoenix, appointed an interim chief for one year, putting off their search, too. “The hope is if we give ourselves six months or eight months that the landscape will be improved,” said city manager Andrew Ching.

Tempe has experienced Black Lives Matter protests like many other cities, but there was no particular incident or issue in the city behind the resignation of Ms. Moir as police chief. Mr. Ching described the change as the city wanting to go in a different direction “accelerated by the high-profile things that were happening in other parts of the country.”

The city recently established a task force to make recommendations to the police department on training, hiring and improving relations with minority communities.

Ms. Moir said city officials wanted the department to transform more quickly than is realistic, due to political pressure. “Local officials have very short windows to show change, and that is often inconsistent with real reform work,” she said.

When Ms. Moir arrived in Tempe in 2016 from El Cerrito, Calif., she introduced new training intended to reduce the use of force and racial profiling. She also started mindfulness meditation for her officers.

“When folks across policing see reform-minded leaders who are also cops’ cops being completely discarded without some real foundation as to why, they can’t help but question why one would want to tackle the challenge of being a chief,” said Ms. Moir.

She said she isn’t currently seeking another position as a police chief.

Janeé Harteau, who was police chief in Minneapolis from 2012 to 2017, said she has received calls to gauge her interest in open positions. “You couldn’t pay me enough to do the job,” she said. Chiefs aren’t being given enough time or support to make real changes now, she said.

Ms. Stair said she is content in Detroit and that she isn’t alone among experienced officers she knows in her reluctance to make the jump to chief. “I think it’s as simple as turning on a TV or riding downtown in any city you live in,” she said. “Do you really want to leave and go deal with that kind of thing?”

'mindful meditation' 'I'm a cops' cop'
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Chiefs by and large got filled by narcisists. Then, they got filled by quotas and empty shirts. Now, they are being picked off for delivering nothing, and... they can't understand what went wrong? Lol that's rich.

Small-town chiefs are almost a retirement hobby. Now that they all see they are just as expendable as the patrol dogs they continually sacrifice at the altar of calea and the fickle public?

Fuck them, and their I love me wall, and their fragile, bubble-enclosed feelings. This is one of the only positive things to come out of the current climate of the Rise of the Leaf Eaters.

So weird that no one wants to be a scapegoat for failed liberal policies.

Interim chiefs are so hot right now.

I know the recent interim Chicago PD Chief. I saw him Monday and somebody asked "how was Chicago"? He just shook his head and said it was a nightmare. He said he would consider consulting but would NOT be taking any offers for employment.
Anybody would have to be out of their minds to do that. I think the people approached for interim positions should say HELL NO. I ain't helping you out of the mess you created.

Someone I know attended the FBI NA not long ago. They had a panel of chiefs of police talk about being a police chief and one of them told everyone you should never take a police chief job unless you don’t need the income. If you need an income, never take a police chief job. That’s a job you can do everything right and still be fired. You’re a scapegoat for the city elected “leaders”.

I’ve worked for both a municipality and a sheriffs office and I will never again work for a municipality. At least at a sheriffs office you usually have a cop at the top who should understand how things work. In a city, you have a city council run by people who know nothing about LE (but like GD posters they think they are LE experts) and they are the ones who decide if you stay employed or not. Not a comforting thought there......

I would love to see a racial and gender break down for appointed chiefs (not elected Sheriffs) at the largest 50 such agencies in the country.  Seems like literally every big PD Chief is a female or minority.

Attached File

My thoughts exactly.

We have dipshits on this site bitching about how officers perform their duties but not a fucking one of those stupid fucks doing all the complaining are doing a fucking thing to hold their elected city leaders accountable. The chief can’t be held accountable by the voters......he/she isn’t elected. That sure doesn’t stop the stupid asses from blaming the chief and his officers for all their “failings” just like the stupid fucking elected “leaders” do when they scapegoat and fire the police chief when they are the ones who actually directed the chief’s actions. The typical member of the public never does anything to hold the actual people who actually are accountable.....accountable.

The world is full of fucking idiots and even this site has more than our share.

That’s probably accurate but I’m not sure that matters. Everything has become so policy and bureaucracy driven chiefs have no room to exert any discretion or make policy so individual attitudes and styles don’t exist. It wouldn’t matter if it’s a white dude, black chick or a blue alien. You could probably put any command staff level suit there and get the same results. They’re just someone to blame and fire  for the city council.

I’ve watched the same thing start to happen in the army and it’s chilling. We don’t actually have leaders anymore. Just figure heads and supervisors.

I got out of the cop business 45 years ago because being a cop in Michigan was a deadly occupation. Don't regret it for a minute.

I have a pet theory that part of the problem stems from organizational failure: no agency I know of has ever written into their SOPs that the brass are required to go out and serve on the line X number of hours per year.

If they were, I strongly suspect it would do much to keep craniums out of rectums.

I've swapped agencies, and was utterly floored to see the entire command staff put on uniforms and start humping random backlogged calls when a major incident broke out recently. The HMFIC didn't go drive over to the SWAT scene to babysit, he went out and started taking homeless disturbance calls, while the other brass went to go deal with mental patient calls.

Oddly enough, supervisors who haven't put handcuffs on a person since the Clinton administration, tend not to make good decisions about the policies of their organization, nor do they tend to recognize and promote actual skilled leaders. Instead you see cliques of favorites forming up, and the actual leaders in the agency almost never rise above Sgt or Lt. And since no one is around to whisper "memento mori" in their ear during staff meetings, they never seem to wake up to the slow decline occuring around them.

As for sheriffs versus chiefs...at the end of the day, the electorate can be just as dumb as a city council. Cities tend to want to headhunt for the latest and greatest checkbox-fulfilling jefe who will make everything perfect forevermore...but voters tend to vote for whichever sheriff candidate has been selected by the existing sheriff high command and/or local political powers that be. The former leads to turnover and a revolving door, the latter to stagnation, rot, and corruption. There's no perfection on either side of the coin.

I think overall you are correct. The Sheriff of my agency comes out and works on the road from time to time. He doesn’t work a lot (he has a LOT on his plate) but does come out occasionally. The nice part about that is....he understands. We might mess up and maybe even need a write up......but he may be laughing when it’s given. He understands mistakes and, while they need to be addressed, it doesn’t mean he needs to crucify the officers.

All chiefs serve at the whim of a small number of council members. If you have a bad city council.....you’ll have a poor police department....regardless of the chief. A good chief will try to keep the bullshit off his officers but can only go so far. If you have a good city council and a good chief, you’ll most likely have a good department.

There are bad sheriffs out there but they are directly accountable to the voters and most of them know that. Voters sometimes vote for nice sheriffs who are also poor leaders but those same sheriffs usually don’t last too long since the public wants results and a nice guy who can’t run a department often ends up getting voted out.

There are politics everywhere and when I worked for a municipal agency, I was told sheriffs offices are more political. I left (due to politics) and went to a sheriffs office and I can say without hesitation, in my experience, a city PD is WAY more political than a sheriffs office. As we have seen nationwide, the chief can oppose an officer being fired but the elected city “leaders” can still fire them. And, if the chief opposes the firing, the chief usually gets fired next.  I also know a few incidents where a police chief wanted to fire a problem officer but was prohibited to do so by the city “leaders”....and it’s always due to politics.

But how else do you have some semblance of command responsibility?

Not certain I understand what you’re asking but I’ll take a stab at it.

The chief theoretically should be accountable for his officers but when he can not control who is hired and fired and how his department will do business, then how can a chief be held accountable for his department’s failures? The failures we are seeing nationwide are a direct reflection of the failures of the ELECTED LEADERS and I don’t know of any police chiefs who are elected by a vote of the citizens. The city leaders will happily throw the police chief under the bus when things go bad but they were the ones who set the chief up for failure. Then, another chief comes in and the cycle repeats itself. That’s why many big cities typically only have a police chief for a couple years before they shitcan him/her and try to hire another one. If you take that chiefs job in a highly political and liberal city, the city leaders will prevent you from doing anything productive and then blame and fire you when they decide you aren’t working out for the city. They hire a new chief and a couple years later that chief gets replaced.

As the article explains, it has gotten so bad no one even wants these jobs any more. You’re fucked if you take the job. Would you take a job where there is 0% chance of success? I wouldn’t and anyone with a brain wouldn’t either.

I disagree with the notion that the sheriff gets voted out for doing a bad job. The public will never know whether the agency is being run efficiently or not..and they'll never know if the internal culture is being driven into the ground. Challengers don't pop up every election cycle..in my experience, it's extremely rare that there's ever even a token opposition to the sitting sheriff, let alone an actual legitimate threat to the incumbent.

It's been argued that democracy doesn't scale past about a thousand citizens...and I wonder if there aren't similar restrictions on agency size and ability to remain effective and agile. Past a certain size there's just too many layers of middle management separating the decision maker at the top from the people on the street. Those layers tend to hide their own failures, and project only their own illusions upwards. Crime stats are a giant distraction, providing a hint of reality while mostly obscuring what actually occurs where the work is done. When the agency grows large enough that the command staff aren't around to see the actual work: patrol, detectives, etc, then they no longer have an actual hand on the wheel. They think they're steering the ship, but their commands to turn the rudder are now fly-by-wire, and the middle managers are the software that "interprets" those commands into whatever they think is the right answer that suits them.

Too small is bad because is doesn't allow enough dissent or fresh blood, and too big is equally bad. Intuition tells me that the optimum agency size is probably in the range of 100-500 employees.

I agree with a lot of what you say but I have personally seen several incidents where the public finally realized that the sheriff needed to go and voted out a long term incumbent sheriff and replaced him with someone who was an improvement. I even know a nearby county that went through several sheriffs in a 12 year period (4 year terms) because each one was a piss poor sheriff. They now have one who seems to be pretty decent and the voters have now re-elected him on his second term.

If the sheriff is mediocre but good at handling the public, he usually keeps getting elected. I’ve seen that the most important thing for a sheriff to do is to hire good subordinate leadership. A mediocre sheriff with good leadership under him usually has a good department. A strong sheriff with strong leadership under him usually has a great department.

Crime stats are irrelevant to whether a sheriff is doing a good job although they are often used to try to tell the public that the local LE is doing a good job. The problem is, crime stats can EASILY be manipulated so are really irrelevant.

I like your comment about the optimum agency size. I had not put much thought into that before and I think there is a lot of truth to that.

When I was younger and more naïve I thought it would be cool to go back to my old police department and put in for the Chiefs position after I retired from my current federal position but no way I would do that now. It’s still a very conservative area and very conservative populous but just the bullshit of dealing with the city politics would make it less than desirable. When I’m done with this job I’m just going to be done.

If the Chiefs were smart they'd negotiate riders in their contracts for removal for anything other than personal criminal acts. You want to fire me in the first 6 months? OK, that will be 48 months of severance, medical coverage, retirement contribution, etc.

City council doesn’t care. Spend the money and fire the chief. Welcome to the reality of being a police chief in America. A job where you can do everything right and still be fired.

All the stupid asses on this forum want to bitch about the actions of the police and the police chief in the various liberal cities. WTF do you think is going to happen when the police chief says “no we aren’t going to enforce your mask ordinance”? “Cool you’re fired. Next?”  In the end, all the enforcement of shit you don’t like and refusal to enforce shit you do like falls back on the elected leaders....that’s the city councils and the elected DA/Prosecutors.

“Doing everything right and still get fired” has been a reality in paramilitary or military life since the Centurions.

To the second point, well yeah.

I spent 20 years in the Marine Corps. I’ve seen a number if commanders (and enlisted) fired. Very very few of them were truly screwed over. Most had made stupid mistake after stupid mistake and they finally caught up to them. Yes it happens but, in my opinion, it’s not all that common to screw over a competent commander. At least in the military, most of the time you are being held accountable by a higher commander who has walked in your shoes.

In law enforcement, as a police chief, your career is often in the hands of people who are trying to make a political name for themselves but simultaneously know nothing about what the job entails. Imagine the actions of a company or battalion commander in combat being judged by a “civilian review board” staffed by people who hate the military.

I know several military guys who retired after 20+ and thought they had “been there-done that” and understood how civilian politics worked. They had no idea how vicious things can really be and how little recourse there usually is. While the certainly are similarities between military life and LE life, the difference in politics is night and day.....and much worse over LE. Those people I know?.....none of them work in LE any more.

I know an agency where a long time intel analyst retired. When he retired he wrote a scathing letter blasting the agency and the chief for lying on their crime stats. Guess what happened? Nothing. Not a fucking thing. The city government wanted lower crime stats and the only thing the chief could do to give them what they wanted was to lie to them. And they love him for it. If he ever starts telling the truth, he’ll be looking for a new job shortly.

The Army doesn’t hold a candle to how cut throat LE politics are.

Crime stats are worthless, because at their core, they are statistics. I can make stats say anything I want to. For instance, university police are required to report incidents and crimes on roads that are contiguous to their campus. If they all did that, their  crime reports would go up by an order of magnitude. So they don't.

Far as the election stuff, here in Tennessee, it is nearly impossible to unseat a sitting Sheriff. Highly, highly rare. The way the elections are set up, they favor the incumbent, and the more people that run, the better the odds.

If you have three running, that's four slots. You can actually add up the three's votes, and it is higher than the number of votes the incumbent got, but because it's a one candidate - to -one candidate measurement... house always wins. For instance, Sheriff gets 40%. The three get 20%. In actuality, 60% of the public voted AGAINST the current Sheriff, but because there were so many others to spread the vote around, the Sheriff wins with less than even 50% of total votes cast.

In Tennessee, it's even worse. They passed regulation (not law) that says you have to have had so many years of experience as a certified officer before you can run. This effectively eliminates anyone who wasn't raised by one of the current chiefs or sheriffs and so, rarely do you get any new ideas or blood, just continuations of dynasties.

Chief to Sheriff as a breeder program is rare; chiefs have a life expectancy of one or less city mayor elections most times. Maybe longer if he hires the city administrator's knucklehead daughter as an administrative assistant.

I liked the older days. Some absolutely kooky people with bizarre plans used to run. Ultimately, we don't need a nanny state to tell us who is qualified. If the public is apathetic and allows a few hundred votes to put a girl in wearing a rubber boot on her head... well, that's how a Constitutional Republic works.

Personally, after spending so many years in public safety, I'd like to see a Mom who has raised 6-8 boys, or a honorably separated Lt. Col. run an office, just to see what that's like. Maybe someone with absolutely no law enforcement experience, but better fiscal sense, and the honest urge to get and do what's right for the citizens and the patrollers, and not some body that realized they like wearing suits and eating $4 chicken on a $250 plate. (shrugs)

I have worked for both police departments and sheriff offices (yes, the sheriff is an office, not a department), and both has its advantages.

For me, municipalities are too limiting, you're always listening to scan and wondering what's going on out there. And, both are political. I had a city mayor require me to go deliver his campaign signs, in my marked patrol car, while I was on duty, as a condition of my employment. I had a city chief that told me to go sleep on night shift during an election and eventually took my radar gun away. I also worked for a sheriffs office that literally was politically untouchable. You could complain to a wall and get better traction. Because he knew the secret to re-election, and cultivated that process, he was in for as long as he wanted to be there.

I’m a firm believer in this premise, which is why we tend to see small town chiefs carrying a lot more respect from their rank-and-file than large agency chiefs.  
In my agency (large metro), our Homicide investigators never wear uniforms, and when they come out to scenes they have a tendency to light dumpster fires with witnesses or crowds.  Nobody screws with them though, and instead people just lash out at officers.  We had a week where all staff have to be in uniform, including investigators.  The homicide guys showed up to a scene and started the same BS, and people immediately lashed out at them, or nobody would listen to them.  One guy even got into a scuffle with a bystander and had his first use of force in probably the better part of a decade.  They came out of that in sheer shock and disbelief about how screwed up it was on the street.  It was like, “yeah, welcome back to being a street cop, buddy.”  

I’ve worked under 3 chiefs, and all have been completely disconnected from the street.  What’s sad is how quickly our command staff forgets where they came from when they start getting up in rank.  The only Inspector (in charge of a precinct) that actually ever “got it” lasted about 18 months before he was demoted back to street LT and shipped out to traffic unit.

If you want to be chief, make sure you are past retirement eligibility and do it just long enough to give your top years a boost.  My Sheriff will hit 30 in 2-3 years, he's been Sheriff for over half his career.

I agree. When you’re alone holding someone’s hand while they die when a fucked up crowd forms and you’re hands on a second later it’s a real rush of reality these admin types need.

A few years back, the worst Lt I ever worked for came in one day and started apologizing to the squad. Apparently he somehow screwed up and got stuck working a simple burglary call by himself, and it took almost 3 hours. He proceeded to apologize at length for yelling at everyone who took 2 hours to complete one.

And of course, promptly went back to getting pissy at people being on calls too long.

This, its always about leverage in any management position, and how much you give away to get what you want.

My small town went through about three police chiefs in about six months.

I was recently retired and friends told me I should apply.  

I said, "But, what if they said yes?"

And so it goes with any LE job. IF the Bidophile gets in he will crush policing to the point where it will be impossible to find even officers, much less chiefs. I theorize this is all part of their master plan. They will attempt to demonize the military after they slam us.

Oh they have been working on destroying the military for a long time.

I was the assistant Chief at my former Agency, serving as Chief for a time when my Boss had a heart attack. I did not want it, I did not want any of the promotions I was given past Sergeant. As you go higher, there is a bigger target on your back. The higher the rank the bigger the target. I wanted Sergeant just to be able to take care of my Officers better, have a bigger voice in moderating and modifying super restrictive or stupid policies.  The State Chiefs School was straight liberal PC bullshit brainwashing for lack of a better term. My current Agency I am again a Sgt. I didn't want it nor ask for it. All I wanted to do was Patrol and help out with training. I am looking for a new Agency now because of a new City Manager trying to take over the department.

So short answer, I do not know why anyone in their right mind  would want to be a Police Chief in an Agency where the City Council/Manager wont guarantee a hands off approach to the Chief running the department.

Sgt is an awesome rank and I agree you can really make a difference within a department. I suspect, in a lot of ways, you can do more for your department and even your community as a Sgt than as a chief.

I have worked for a municipal agency with a good city council and a great police chief. Life was GREAT. Council changed, chief retired (earlier than he planned due to politics) and things started a downward spiral. Work for a sheriffs office now and things couldn’t be better. The rest of the county government elected officials can’t do anything to us. Several of our cities have masking ordinances. County leaders talked about a county masking ordinance. Sheriff said bluntly “we aren’t enforcing that”. Masking ordinance died right there.

This statement says it all right here:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/portland-homicides-car-fire-shooting-stabbing-gun-violence


The spokesman told KGW that Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler ordered the police bureau to have officers and supervisors take over some of the investigations to help ease their load.

Want to guess who really runs that department?

Rumor says if Chicago hits 700 dead this year,  he's getting the boot.

I haven’t kept up with Chicago’s body count. What’s it up to now?

https://heyjackass.com/

As of this post, the devils number.

Chicago can break 700. I believe in them.

The Mayor is also the police commissioner in Portland, so yes, he runs the department.

689 as of just now Nov 9. Definitely going to break 700....I’m sure they will break 700 before Dec

A police Chief in Maine is statutorily probationary for 1 year upon hire.  Probationary employees can be let go at any time.

It is worth it sometimes to cut a check to make someone go away.

It’s always worth it to someone to cut a taxpayer funded check to make someone go away who won’t toe the line of the elected folks. After all, it’s not their money. Sometimes the elected people are right to get rid of a bad chief. Most times they just give the chief the boot to find some yes man/woman.

Hit 700 today it appears

Number and percentages of people shot by fellow citizens vs those shot by Chicago PD in 2020
Community 3,556.       99.6%
On-duty CPD. 13           0.4%