Oakland’s New Police Chief
[October 30, 2008]

         How long does it take for a city to know if it has chosen the right Police Chief?  In a city of low expectations and inferior self-esteem, it is likely that the question won’t arise because the policy makers will rationalize the worst as being the norm.  After all, it is said in Oakland, a police chief is not responsible for the crime rate.  Oakland, we commiserate, is full of terrible people, brimming with more violent crooks coming back every day from prisons, eager to join the other predators.Oakland, we conjure, is full of social ills and injustices that can never be solved.  Our OPD, we are urged to believe, is full of corruption, ineptness and malcontents who are banded by a powerful obstructionist union that no Chief can overcome.  We take pride in a wonderful and beautiful city and are thankful each day any one of us isn’t victimized, but accept it as inevitable if we are.

         This is self-imposed delusion that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Nothing is more apparent about our quality of life than the state of our public safety.  The vibrancy of people visiting, shopping, worshiping, dining, going to school, enjoying parks and recreation, is singularly dependent on the degree of public safety perceptions.  Public safety in this sense is an apparatus that works or doesn’t, and in Oakland it is grinding to a painful stall.

         In the hiatus before Brown left and Dellums was to take office, there were informal discussions and wishful thinking about Chief Charles Ramsey of Washington D.C. coming to Oakland.  After all, he was available, having been told that D.C.’s incoming Mayor wanted his own Chief.  During his tenure, by the end of 2006, the crime rate declined by -40%. He left with D.C. having 169 homicides, the lowest in 25 years.  In contrast, Oakland’s homicides peaked to a 15 year high of 146 in 2006 from 60 in 1999.  Oakland’s Mayor Brown watched Oakland’s crime rate accelerate over +50% since his appointment of Chief Tucker in early February of 2005.  Oakland had become much more violent, and our nation’s capitol had become much safer.  It made sense to wish for Ramsey.

         Philadelphia picked a new mayor as did Oakland, but Mayor-elect Michael Nutter quickly recruited Ramsey and it was a done deal -  On November 15, 2007, the waiting mayor publicly announced Ramsey would soon head police public safety.  Ramsey was sworn in on January 7, 2008, as quickly as Michael Nutter was inaugurated Mayor.  Philadelphia’s violent crime by September 30 of 2008 was reduced -15% from 2007.  Murders were down -28%, Robberies down -15%, assaults down -19%. 

         In 2004, at this time, Philadelphia had 7,495 violent crimes reported.  That number went up to 8,223 by the end of September in 2006 and the city was alarmed.  In only nine months of 2008, Ramsey’s methods of leadership and management have reduced the number of violent crimes to 6,738.  By September 30, 2004, Oakland had about 3,900 violent crimes reported that year to date.  By the same time this year Oakland has had 6,100 violent crimes reported.  Philadelphia has about a million and a half residents and a bulging daytime population.  Oakland has fewer than four hundred thousand residents.

         Yes, it’s time for a new Police Chief and a new police public safety apparatus.

         How do we go about getting a new police chief…  Quickly!  If we follow the political protocols, looking for the most favorably profiled candidate, we can “conduct a national search…”  This is a poor recommendation for a number of reasons.    A top Chief candidate with stature and gravitas is not going to get his/her white gloves dirty in Oakland.  There’s no percentage in it.  Ramsey tried for Baltimore first and, likely typical of top cops, seems to prefer large cities with thousands of cops.  To select a lesser candidate from a lesser city is to increase the percentage of lesser results.  It would be a folly irony to pick a top cop from a lesser city that would love to have any of our existing top people as their chief.  Over fifty of our OPD have gone on to become Chiefs of other police agencies.  Even San Francisco once selected a Chief from OPD.  They look to us, why are we looking elsewhere?  Besides, the political rationalization process inherent in the selection and hoorah of a new Chief from the outside is a parade in a cul-de-sac. 

         We could be tempted to name an “Interim Police Chief” from within OPD ranks or an Oakland person readily available who has obvious qualification.  After all, we’ve had interim City Administrators and top City staff… but that only delays the inevitable and prolongs the inaction.

         We should name an immediate replacement by closely analyzing what’s available in and for Oakland.  Assistant Chief Howard Jordan was apparently asked, but it was reported he wanted a seven-year contract reminiscent of Tucker’s request for a similar guarantee of tenure until retirement eligibility.  If true, that’s not a good idea.  We should give a new Chief a year or two, to be sure, but that’s it… and no contract.  Besides, we’re slow to see the light anyway.  Tucker’s had four years already, Word had five, and Samuels had over six… yet all were deemed failures.

            It was recently all the rumor at OPD that Kozicki had been selected as the new interim Chief.  He had lost weight, set his motorcycle boots aside, donned a suit, and was strutting confidently.  If true, that’s not a good idea.  Deputy Chief Kozicki is a clone of Tucker’s methodologies, and outspoken against a Beat system as the backbone of the Department.  He’s a leader in the mold of George S. Patton, bright, capable, and resolute as to his way of doing things… even if dead wrong. 

         Deputy Chief Lohman is new, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed, and a favorite for his smiling and witty charm.  He seems bright and intelligent.  However, he is as yet inexperienced and untested.  In fact, has anyone seen anything in writing, anything with creativity and innovation, or any kind of a trail of authorship coming out of Jordan, Kozicki or Lohman?  Fine, if you want to consider them, give each about six hours to type a contemporaneous twenty page dissertation on their plans for a Comprehensive Strategic Police Public Safety Plan.  We know they look, walk, and talk good.  Let’s give them a fair and serious look.  We select Sergeants with more introspection than we select Chiefs.  Let’s quit profiling, searching for impressive resumes, and satisfying images of appearances in favor of testing minds and character.

         I can see only two apparent choices for quick action that have any chance of success, and the bar is pretty low after Tucker.  We can bring in Chief Robert Nichelini of Vallejo.  That city has to be pretty dismal for careerists in light of their bankruptcy.  I know Nichelini well, having gone through Oakland schools with him since the fifth grade.  He reached the rank of Deputy Chief at OPD, and even a short stint as acting Chief, before he left for Vallejo eight years ago.  He lives in Oakland, and has always done so, growing up in the poor flatlands of 60th Street and eventually moving into the lower hills.  He has a law degree and an active license.  He has also headed Vallejo’s Fire Department and I think he was asked to be their City Manager.  He’s 66, and his parents have been productive Oakland citizens into their nineties.  He’s familiar with finances, having served long on the boards of the Credit Union and the OPD Widows and Orphans trust.  He’s a great communicator and is comfortable on stage.  I don’t know if he’s interested, but I would bet on his coming on board as a special request in the best interest for Oakland.  I do know that he’s fully vested in two retirement systems, so he doesn’t have that stumbling block.

         The second choice I have could just as well be the first choice.  Jeff Israel has just entered his fourth year as Deputy Chief, making him the senior top OPD staff member by far.  Remember, a cop on the street can’t even be a Field Training Officer until he has three years on the job.  Tucker picked him just months after he became Police Chief, noting his intelligence and energy.  Tucker came later to regret Israel’s honesty and integrity when he wrote slightly too critically of Tucker’s ill conceived off-the-cuff Area Command plans.  Israel was “moved” to Bureau of Investigation and Kozicki was named Tucker’s new Deputy Chief of Field Operations, a man he could trust to cram 12-hour workloads into 25 fragmented shifts working out of three disconnected “Areas” and no permanent Beats.   Kozicki and Tucker can look you right in the eye and say this is “community policing.” 

         As Captain and Deputy Chief, Israel has worked more than a dozen high profile assignments in various components of OPD’s efforts.  He held authority in Samuels’ and Word’s “Area Command” experiments since 1992 that Tucker now claims as his own invention.  But, let me tell you what I’ve observed of Israel while I was Ombudsman at OPD that I think qualify him to be Chief, and then why I think he isn’t the right guy now.

1.  Israel is a great communicator.  I’ve witnessed many citizen and government meetings where Israel was to speak, and the audience eagerness anticipating his turn to talk is palpable.
2. Israel is a man who comes into a room with questions, not answers.  He researches incessantly and prepares as best he can without staff support.  He wants to know, whereas Tucker and Kozicki, as examples, want to dictate.
3. Israel holds the antithesis precepts to Tucker and Kozicki in that he believes strongly in the Beat System as being the backbone of the Department and Investigations as being their indispensible full partner..

         I asked Israel recently, as I’ve asked others in the top positions at OPD, if he would take the position.  He said no, because he didn’t believe he was ready.  Jordan, to his credit, told me the same thing, but with Israel there was a difference.  I believe Israel meant in part that OPD wasn’t ready either.  You’ll have to ask Israel, but I got the feeling he meant that top management has been floundering for too long, including him, and has lost connection with the dots.  They’ve lost perception of what the dots are.  None of the top commanders has had a mentor, a rabbi, a time period where they learned the lessons of the past with which to formulate forward progress.  There is a gap of sixteen years and a missing generation of lost elders to pass on the knowledge that could make change real.

         Israel is one of a very small crew of people in top positions at OPD who can write critically, informatively, and persuasively.  I mean, that he can do more than just assemble data and information.  Israel can think, evaluate, critically analyze, and most importantly he can formulate.  He has a long trail of writing, but more manifest is Tucker’s dependence on him to ghost write everything meaningful out of the Department.  From what I’ve seen, everything not meaningful, and there’s lots of it, was not written by Israel.

         Israel is also a tough and demanding boss, and he is resented perhaps too frequently for a sense that defines integrity as hard work, good work, and professional work.  This means, he gives no latitude and has high standards for professional behavior that grate many who feel he should be more understanding. 

         Seeing Israel in action when I was Ombudsman, I noted he was intensely loyal, often repeating, as if to acknowledge perhaps some distinction, that “OPD can have only one Chief.”  I never heard him say or intimate anything disloyal, and that is the OPD culture that has kept Tucker in office.  Whereas Chief Bratton of NYPD and LAPD fame purposely flattened the organization and encouraged, indeed expected, loyal and qualified dissent, Tucker stifled it by rewarding his “yes” followers.  I’m guessing that Israel is much more in the Bratton mode, because he’s smarter and confident in the sparring of ideas.  He is always juggling critical balls so he has a habit of getting people quickly to the point.  That’s good.  He wants to hear talk where there is substance.  That’s better.

         On the negative side, Israel is quick to challenge others.  He hates mediocrity and has no tolerance for the inaction it festers, and so he often appears impatient.  He puts in endless hours and expects others will also.  He is a fast learner, but there is so much more for him to know.  He’s not authoritarian, but he is perceived as elitist and dismissive at times to those at lower levels.  He, as the rest of the command, lacks information and has to wing it.  Worse, because of the gap of mentorship Israel has yet to be clear on the information he needs, the relevance and credibility of it, and when he gets it his frames of reference are still too limited.  He has amazing processing power. But without more guidance for a while, he would need to ask a lot more questions and get input from those who knew before he can know.

         The best of all worlds would be to talk Nichelini into coming back aboard as Chief for a couple of years and designate Israel as the back-up quarterback.  They would be a symbiosis of winners.  They would benefit from each other, the elder Nichelini (66) and the young Israel (44), both intensely OPD, great communicators, both with the highest standards who can write with formulations of creativity, and both who would respect the profoundness of their relationship.  I believe they would be excited to work together, and such a spirit would be infectious and sorely needed at OPD.

         Tucker once expressed to me a frustration that OPD had no “Line of Succession,” and he was right for the wrong reasons.  I felt he was frustrated that since he didn’t know what he was doing, that his faults were compounded by a senior staff who didn’t know what they were doing.  He talked Harnett [of the Harnett Report] into justifying an Assistant Chief, and now there were two people in charge who didn’t know what they were doing.  He moved Israel to obscurity and elevated Kozicki to command 534 cops in a hodge-podge Bureau of Field Operations, and now there were three people in succession who didn’t know what they were doing.  Then he appointed Lohman fresh from Captain to Deputy Chief to interim Public Safety Director and now there are four people who don’t know what they’re doing.  I’m not implying that any of these people haven’t the capacity to know what they’re doing, but even the best team has to be properly harnessed and directed by superior leadership to get anywhere.

         Appointing Nichelini Chief immediately, assuming he would take it, would give OPD an instant qualified line of succession, close the gap of unknowing, and broadly invigorate enthusiasm.  That’s the first step, and I think they would know the next steps and be eager to implement them.  I think they would quickly move on several fronts simultaneously.  (1)  They would acknowledge the crises with clear and sober definition.  (2)  They would put someone like Captain Paul Figueroa in command of an Office of Police Management and Budget along with all of his people, Crime Analysis, and more than a dozen other smart people currently working ad hoc and isolated all over the fragmented Department.  Over three dozen people, a group much larger than IA, would become the nerve center for actionable information. The brain has to be in gear for the dog to wag the tail.  Command, policy makers, and citizens must have full, accurate, and timely information.  (3) They would quickly move to put the right people in the right places and usher the wrong people to inconsequential places.  The team has to be assembled for performance, not activity.  (4)  They would begin to change the OPD structure to make sense.  The organization has to be re-engineered.  (5) They would revitalize that most essential component of public safety – the permanent Beat System for rapid and efficient response to citizen calls.  OPD needs to project benign and effective police presence.  (6)  They would rebalance the obvious inequities in priorities, properly balancing Response mechanisms with all important but neglected Investigative functions.  (7) They would watch the numbers like hawks, know what they mean, and move their chess pieces accordingly.  (8)  They would be impatient and intolerant of mediocrity, inefficiency, unprofessionalism and poor performance.  Nichelini knows the standards and Israel can make them contemporary.  (9)  They would begin to return motivation to the troops and confidence to the citizens. 

         I’m not suggesting for a moment Nichelini and Israel would actually follow the template above, but I know an outsider brought in after a “national search” couldn’t begin to get started, and we would have to grant hollow confidence that he/she would be effective at some point.  Any point after right now is too far away.

ronoz