Breaking Rank (45 page)

An entirely different, and appallingly neglected, facet of police discipline comes down to this: How do you discipline your
boss
? The incompetence or misbehavior of one's superior is a
huge
problem in police work. Before pointing fingers at some of the bosses I've worked for, let me confess to my own shortcomings.

In 1992, my third wife, Lisa, and I went on a delayed honeymoon, to Kauai. I was now the assistant chief. When I returned to work two weeks later my senior deputy chief walked in and asked for a meeting. We set it up for later that morning. He didn't show up alone: All four of my chiefs filed in and took a seat in my office.

“What's up?” I asked.

“We don't see enough of you,” said the senior chief. “There are a lot of decisions we can't make without you. It's nice you get asked to speak. It's great that you teach those classes at the Training Center and at San Diego State. But you're just gone too much.” Gone too much? True, I was in demand as a trainer and a speaker, and I loved standing in front of audiences throughout the country. I was proud of my (often controversial) contribution to the field, and felt it was important. But gone
too
much? Hell, when Burgreen picked me to run the organization I'd cut back, a
lot.

“Everyone feel this way?” Four heads nodded. I felt betrayed. It took me a day or two to come down. But when I did, I knew I'd been busted. I
was
spending too much time away from my desk, my day job. I cut out
everything
—no more classes, no more keynotes, no nothing that wasn't directly related to the job.

In Seattle, I listened as a roomful of journalists bitched about supervisors denying them access to rank-and-file officers, especially in Investigations. I can't remember exactly what I said but it was along the lines of, “Look, we've got a department to run but I understand your need for information. We'll see what we can do about standardizing access. In the meantime, I know you know how to cultivate sources, and I would encourage you to do just that.”

My chief of staff, an assistant chief who'd spent a lot of time in Investigations (much of it cleaning up messes caused by loose-lipped dicks) was
livid. After the meeting he walked into my office, sat down, and unloaded. “I can't remember when I've been more pissed! We're trying to
stop
leaks in the department, trying to avoid compromising investigations and jeopardizing prosecutions. And what do you do? You invite the press to camp out in the offices and hallways, to ‘chat up' every cop they see! You were wrong to say what you said, and we're all going to pay for it in the future.”

My rationale had been that there had been a failure to communicate, and we needed to correct that. As long as our cops followed our press policy I was prepared to live with the consequences of a more “open” approach to media relations. But whether I was right, wrong, or simply misunderstood, my immediate subordinate felt free to “discipline” his boss. And that's a good thing.

I'd learned in my days as a subordinate in San Diego that there are times when you have to exercise leadership
up
the chain of command, as well as down.

I was a lieutenant. My boss, “Frank Stanton,” was a deputy chief. He drank his lunch. He put moves on everything in a skirt. He didn't show up for critical meetings (on one such occasion, taking one of our key attendees, an attractive consultant, to Tijuana for the day). He lied, daily. I confronted him. He laughed, told me not to take life so seriously. The pattern continued, unchanged. I told him I was going to snitch him off if he didn't knock it off. No change. I snitched, to the assistant chief. He'd take care of it, he said. He didn't. I went to the super chief. He'd take care of it, he said. He didn't. I asked for a meeting with the two of them, the super chief, the assistant chief. I told them that if they didn't take care of the lying, womanizing sot down the hall I'd run to the city manager. They took care of it.

A few months later, Commander Cal Krosch must have felt the same way when he came forward to suggest that we knock off our
own
high-level, on-duty boozing. It had been a not very well-kept secret for years, a tradition among the senior staff.

Every Wednesday at five o'clock, the Big Boys would parade into the assistant chief's office where we'd open the liquor cabinet, pour generous
portions of bourbon, or scotch, or gin and drink ourselves silly.
*
Krosch's conscience got to him, and he had the guts to “discipline” not only his superiors but his peers—leadership at its toughest, leadership when it counts. He brought up the subject at a senior staff meeting. “I think we're being a little hypocritical here, guys,” he said. He looked around the room, then at the chief. “Not very long ago you forced one of us to resign, partly for his drinking. I have to wonder if we weren't all enabling Stanton. Regardless, what we're doing is wrong. I can't justify it any longer.” Neither could any of the rest of us. That was the day the San Diego Police Department went dry.

Sometimes the distinction between willful misconduct (and/or gross negligence) and an honest mistake can be difficult to discern. The Edward Anderson shooting (the last scenario) is a prime example.

Officer Bill Edwards had eighteen months on at the time of the shooting. A more experienced cop probably would not have reached down, gun in hand, to lift a suspect to his feet. A more experienced cop would have had his trigger finger “indexed” as he chased the suspect.

Officers are taught in the academy to extend their index finger
alongside the slide
of the weapon and not inside the trigger guard (when not planning to immediately pull the trigger, that is). But this was the first time Edwards had ever chased anyone with firearm in hand. Put simply, he lacked “muscle memory,” built through a repetitive process that must be refreshed periodically on its way to becoming second nature. Which brings up training and retraining (an
administrative
responsibility). And experience. Which Edwards didn't have.

Had Edwards purposely shot Anderson I would have fired him—and urged prosecution on at least a manslaughter charge. Had he been reckless (or grossly negligent) I would have fired him. Had he established a performance
record of carelessness (as opposed to the exemplary record he'd compiled as a rookie) I would have fired him.

So, I had a decision to make. What to do with a police officer whose actions led directly to the death of an unarmed man? Many in the community were demanding his badge. Three hundred and fifty irate African-Americans let me have it with both barrels at a community meeting a week after the incident. I listened to the crescendo of boos and catcalls at that meeting, and I witnessed in the months that followed a concerted campaign to drive Edwards from the force. Several of my colleagues in the Major Cities Chiefs organization, to whom I'd explained the situation in one of our regular “roundtables,” believed the man should be fired—not because they thought the shooting was reckless but because it would pacify the black community. Canning the rookie would certainly have been the politically expedient thing to do. His fellow cops fully expected it.

I studied the investigation, talked to the officer and his supervisors, called firearms training experts to my office, and drove down to the academy to observe the firearms training (which I'd previously taken). When my review was finished I knew exactly what to do with Edwards.

I walked across the street and informed the mayor of my plans. An African-American with deep roots and enormous popularity in Seattle's black community, Norm Rice disagreed with my decision. But he understood it, and the principles that shaped it. (He backed me, publicly, without equivocation.)

Next, I drove to Mt. Zion Baptist Church, the scene of the angry meeting, and told the Rev. Dr. Samuel B. McKinney what I'd decided. He also disagreed with my decision.

The decision? I would (1) retain Edwards; (2) not punish him; (3) have him undergo psychological fitness-for-duty screening; (4) put him through two days of one-on-one firearms retraining with the department's reigning semiautomatics ace; (5) get a sign-off from the instructor that Edwards had, in fact, developed that muscle memory; (6) condition the officer's return to the streets on his passing a rigorous test of both his emotional fitness and his retraining; and (7) assign him to a different area of town for at least eighteen months.

“I hear you, Chief,” said Dr. McKinney after I'd explained the rationale.
“You've made a responsible decision, from your point of view. And I respect that. But, answer me this: How can you possibly condone this young policeman sprinting through a field, in a driving rain, with his gun out? Chasing after a man he does not
know
to be armed? Wouldn't that qualify as ‘gross negligence' under your definition?” It was an excellent question, one local reporters hadn't thought to ask. My answer to McKinney's question was, in fact, central to my thinking on the Edwards case.

I told him the following story, which explains why, as chief I would never, ever prohibit a cop from running, gun in hand, in a foot chase. Even though I think it's a recipe for disaster.

A San Diego cop for less than a year, Jerry Hartless was riding shotgun one night in 1988 when he spotted gang member Stacy Butler standing on a corner. Hartless knew Butler was wanted on warrants. He got out of the car and started to approach him. Butler rabbitted. Hartless, winner of his academy's award for physical fitness, gave chase and quickly closed the gap. Butler, sensing he was about to be nabbed, stopped suddenly, pulled a 9mm semiautomatic from his waistband, spun around and fired. The bullet caught Hartless between the eyes. The officer hit the ground with his pistol still holstered. He died twenty-three days later without regaining consciousness.

Hartless's chance of survival if he'd had his gun is drawn? At least fifty-fifty. Holstered? Zero.