By Sean Maher
San Jose Mercury News
OAKLAND, Calif. — Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan was sworn into the office Thursday for the second time in less than three years.
Jordan, a 23-year veteran of the Oakland Police Department, will replace outgoing Chief Anthony Batts, who announced his resignation Tuesday. Jordan had been the department’s second-in-command for several years and previously served as interim chief in the seven months before Batts took office in October 2009. He now commands a department that is chronically understaffed, and has been threatened with a federal takeover if it doesn’t make significant reforms by January.
“Howard Jordan is the best person and most prepared to become the chief of police,” Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said at the swearing-in. She said she’s known him for 20 years and that “he’s prepared to work forward in a way probably nobody else in the force is.”
Jordan, 47, thanked his predecessor, the men and women of the department he now commands and the community he said he’s excited to serve.
“As interim chief, I intend to make solid decisions. The term ‘interim’ will not apply to my decisions. I will make decisions as though I am the chief,” he said.
“The police chief role, for me, is multifaceted,” he added. “You have to be a liaison between the community and the organization. You’re in the middle. You have to represent community’s interest, and also have to represent the organization’s interests. Recognizing that role is one of the first steps in becoming a leader.”
Batts quit citing an unworkable overload of bureaucracy and an inability to command his department with the kind of authority and control he needed.
Asked how things will be different under his own command, Jordan said he plans to work closely in collaboration with Quan and City Administrator Deanna Santana.
“When I look at the challenges facing our department, they’re many of the big city police challenges you see in a lot of cities across the country,” he said. “I have some of my ideas how to fix those problems, and I know Ms. Santana does as well.”
As for the controversy surrounding recently proposed policing policies that include gang injunctions, youth curfews and anti-loitering efforts, Jordan called them “tools we have to some degree already in the department. Fighting crime involves much more than just injunctions. It’s a holistic approach, that includes getting members of the community who are willing to support police and take their community back.”
Quan said she’s known Jordan long enough to understand his position on most major policing issues and she said she doesn’t anticipate clashing with him in the way she sometimes did with Batts.
Jordan has headed the department’s efforts to complete the reforms agreed to in a 2003 corruption civil rights lawsuit. Almost nine years later, the department is only in compliance with about two-thirds of those reforms, with several outstanding issues involving the internal affairs division and protection of whistle-blowers.
Frustrated by the slow progress, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson has threatened for more than a year to hit OPD with a contempt of court charge and with federal receivership. The city and OPD return to Henderson’s courtroom in January.
John Burris, one of the attorneys who sued the department and won that settlement, said Jordan “is someone we can work with, and for now, it looks like a good fit. The important point here is there won’t be a learning curve, and time is of the essence. We need somebody who can hit the ground running and get up to speed on the issues.”
Burris said he’s seen “significant progress” since Jordan took charge of the reform effort about a year ago. Jordan is a homegrown officer from a department criticized as having an entrenched culture resistant to reform, but Burris said he nonetheless sees Jordan as having a receptive attitude, and doesn’t believe Jordan will be “an obstacle to us getting this done.”
Santana also announced Thursday that she’s finalizing a deal with former Baltimore Police Commissioner Tom Frazier to join OPD’s reform team. Frazier has served as a federal monitor overseeing similar consent decrees in Los Angeles and Detroit, she said, and he will serve as a special advisor as soon as she can iron out the details with him.
They worked together in San Jose, where Santana was assistant city manager before she came to Oakland this summer and where Frazier served in the police department for almost three decades.
Copyright 2011 San Jose Mercury News