by David Runk, The Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) - As the first outsider to lead the Detroit Police Department in more than two decades, Chief Jerry Oliver quickly found out that new ways weren’t necessarily welcome in the nation’s 10th-largest city.
Oliver rankled some in his first weeks on the job when he asked officers to wear a light blue button that said, “Mind’N Our Business.” An effort to remind officers of their duties in the community, the buttons were criticized as grammatically incorrect and confusing.
For Oliver, the job is about change, not politics. He’s ready to ruffle a few feathers, if needed, to make that happen.
“I’m not interested in being anybody’s friend here in the department,” Oliver says. “I like friendship, but that’s not what I’m here for.”
With children dying in drive-by shootings, a lingering mistrust of city police and the looming national spotlight of the 2006 Super Bowl, Oliver sees a window of opportunity to reshape the department.
Money is needed for overdue improvements, and a tight budget makes it tough for Oliver to tackle the problems he inherited. The department also faces a federal investigation into its practices, including police shootings of civilians.
Despite finding the challenges larger than he expected, Oliver is working quickly to map out a reform plan, earn the trust of residents and give officers the tools and support they need to fight crime.
“You cannot have a great city, a world-class city, you can’t attract people if you don’t have a great police department,” says Oliver. “I think we can get there fairly soon if we just cut to the chase.”
Oliver, 55, was picked by new Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick for the top police post after serving since 1995 as chief in Richmond, Va., and in Pasadena, Calif., since 1991. He brings a fresh perspective to a department he remembers from a visit more than two decades ago.
At the time, he said, some of the department’s practices, such as using in-car computer terminals, made it highly regarded in law enforcement circles. But since starting in early February, he has learned just how unkind the years have been.
“Just as advanced as we were 25 years ago that’s how backward we are now,” Oliver says. “Not that we don’t have great people - there are still great people here - but the systems are broken. Under every rock that I’ve lifted, there’s been a problem.”
In his office, a copy of “Character and Cops,” a book on ethics in policing, is within reach. A few boxes sit waiting to be unpacked, courtesy of his busy schedule, and organizational charts of the department - as it looks now and how it might look in the future - stand on easels in one corner.
Overhauling the department is part of the mayor’s “Kids, Cops, Clean” initiative. Kilpatrick, who took office in January, wants to increase the number of police on the streets and raise salaries. Detroit’s starting salary is around $28,000; New York City police start at $31,305.
“I told the chief I want an agile, attentive, accountable, accessible and problem-solving department,” Kilpatrick said in his State of the City address last month.
Oliver was first approached about the job by an executive search firm, but didn’t seriously consider it until Kilpatrick spent a day with him in Richmond. The men, both the fathers of twin sons, spoke about Kilpatrick’s plans for revitalizing Detroit. Oliver was impressed.
“His vision for the city empowers a guy like me to get things done,” Oliver says.
His transition hasn’t been easy. When Oliver was named chief in Detroit, he faced fresh media reports about accusations by an ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend who said he beat them in the early 1990s. He has said repeatedly that all of the allegations were false. None of the allegations led to criminal charges.
From his first day on the job, Oliver moved to start repairing the department’s image and reached out to residents for help in fighting crime. The effort speaks to one of Oliver’s key beliefs: Police are there to serve.
“We become the point of the spear in developing confidence and trust in the entire community,” Oliver says. “And that’s what I think is what’s really important, that this is tied to something bigger than revitalizing or reforming the police department.”
Oliver hopes to move aggressively on addressing issues being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department. The investigation, which started during former Chief Benny Napoleon’s 1998-2001 tenure at the request of former mayor Dennis Archer, is looking at the department’s high volume of deadly police shootings of civilians, questionable treatment of prisoners and wholesale arrests of homicide witnesses.
“They’re going to tell us things that we already know, so it makes no sense for us as leaders to wait two or three years down the road” to take steps to correct the problems, Oliver says.
He says he would rather deal with excessive police force, outdated technology, a lackluster system for weeding out bad officers and a poorly functioning city jail before receiving a mandate from Washington.
The department also is coping with an 80-year-old crumbling police headquarters that Oliver would like to replace.
Marty Bandemer, president of the Detroit Police Officers Association, says Oliver needs time to address the problems he inherited. For too long, he adds, Detroit officers have been asked to do too much with too few resources.
“We need the necessary tools for police work, and that’s where Oliver comes in,” says Bandemer, whose union represents more than 3,000 Detroit officers.
In Richmond, Oliver impressed many by cracking down on violent crime and drugs. He expanded the force, created specialized units focused on problems such as street crime and auto theft, and stepped up community patrols.
“He had a tremendous effect on the police department,” says Michael Smith, an associate professor of criminal justice at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “I was a police officer in the mid-1980s. They’ve really come around, leaped ahead in terms of technology and professionalism.”
Smith says some officers felt ambivalent toward Oliver because of what they considered an autocratic management style. Leaving Richmond, Oliver also faced criticism that poorer neighborhoods didn’t get enough police patrols.
But on the whole his influence on the department was beneficial, Smith says. And the results, while mirroring national trends at the time, showed in the numbers: the murder rate, a record 160 in 1994, dropped to 69 in 2001.
“He really tried to raise the standards of the people that were hired, and he was mostly successful in that,” Smith says. “Detroit really needs that as well.”
The size of Detroit’s department will test Oliver’s managerial skills. Detroit has about 4,200 officers patrolling a city of 950,000 people, while Richmond’s 650-officer force watched over a city of about 198,000.
Oliver isn’t daunted by the task.
“I’m a change agent, and my job is to build a police department,” Oliver says. “So that’s what I plan to do.”