By Guy Ashley, The Contra Costa Times
OAKLAND, Calif. - Don’t tell Richard Word there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
The Oakland police chief has drawn a great deal of media buzz lately, but the headlines haven’t been the kind you tape to the refrigerator or cut out and mail to mom.
One day the television cameras catch him straining to be heard over hecklers as he explains his department’s decision to disperse an anti-war demonstration with rubber bullets and other “less-lethal munitions.” The response has been widely condemned as an astonishingly brutal overreaction.
The next day he’s on the witness stand in the case of the “Riders,” three former Oakland officers accused of planting evidence and blazing a path of brutality through some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
Word fired the officers, but can shake only so much of the criticism because many of their alleged crimes occurred on his watch. In court, meanwhile, defense attorneys try to blame him for creating a cut-crime-at-all-costs atmosphere that gave rise to such ruthless tactics.
The police department’s crisis of the moment has run head-on into one of its worst scandals of the past. And Word, who gained national attention in 1999 for becoming the youngest-ever police chief in one of America’s toughest cities, has often looked like the city’s sacrificial lamb.
But no matter how far they might say his explanations fall short, Word certainly stands up to his critics.
To the beleaguered troops at Oakland police headquarters, as well as to the department’s many detractors, his message in this time of tumult is simple.
This too, he says, shall pass.
“The confluence of events has really made it a rough time,” he said. “We’ve taken some major hits. But folks are still out there working hard, responding to calls, investigating crimes and for the most part treating people well. All that is bound to pay off for us.”
At 41, Word is still among the youngest police chiefs in the Bay Area and a kid compared to most top cops in other major US cities. But his four years in the pressure cooker have forced him to make the transformation from wise street cop to astute administrator and savvy political player.
“If you had asked me back when they put him in there I would definitely have said he was too young,” said Alameda County Sheriff Charles Plummer, whose 50-year career makes him the dean of East Bay law enforcement. “I can’t say that now. They put him in there, sink or swim, and there he is still swimming along.”
Answering for the past
Word’s critics question his commitment to change, citing the rough handling of anti-war protesters on April 7 as evocative of the same skull-cracking philosophy that spurred the Black Panthers to take up arms in defiance of Oakland police in the 1960s.
Others say he’s too nice a guy to orchestrate the housecleaning needed to transform a police culture set in its ways.
Still more say he has not stepped from the shadows of his boss, Mayor Jerry Brown, and that instincts gained in 19 years as a cop are too often eclipsed by Brown’s fascination with newfangled models of policing.
“Rich to me is an extremely likable guy, but his tenure has been disappointing,” said Shannon Reeves, president of the NAACP Oakland chapter. “The city under his leadership has shelled out millions based on bad cops defaming the profession. It’s the same old story, and it’s a shame.”
Word’s supporters say he is often made to pay for problems that preceded him. The transgressions of the Riders, for instance, took place over a 4-year period, with Word the chief only the last year or so of that time.
Yet because the trial, and a $10.9 million settlement the city reached with 119 Riders victims, occurred this year, Word is the city official who gets grilled the toughest by the media over the case.
Brown remains a devoted supporter, even though the mayor has suffered his share of bad publicity in light of the police department’s problems.
“He’s intelligent, he’s honest, he’s sensitive to other people and he works his tail off to make Oakland a better place,’' Brown said.
Even if crime stopped completely, Brown says, some segments of the community would still be anti-police.
“There are people running around this city who think criminals are the ones who are oppressed,” Brown said. “Even the criminals who violate the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment before they bash you over the head.’'
Fast results
When Word was selected at age 37 to be Oakland’s police chief, he boldly pledged crime would drop by 20 percent in his first year. It almost did, dropping by 19.2 percent, the largest one-year decrease seen in Oakland in decades.
Crime has started to rise again the past two years, just as it has throughout the state. But overall, Oakland’s crime rate slid by 4 percent during Word’s first four years as chief, and statistics from the first quarter of this year show another 3 percent decrease.
The police rank-and-file, meanwhile, seem to be squarely behind the chief.
“We couldn’t ask for a better chief,” said Lt. Jim Emery, who as head of Oakland’s homicide unit would seem to have reason to gripe. The unit’s 10 detectives carry the largest homicide caseloads in the state and get their share of bad press over the high number of unsolved killings in Oakland.
Word grew up in San Francisco’s Ingleside District, and started his law enforcement career as a cadet in the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department.
When he first hit the streets as an Oakland cop in 1984, he was a scrawny kid whose physical presence could not keep up with his big crime-fighting ideas.
“He got tossed around on the streets in the beginning,’' his wife Stacey says. Word then hit the weight room, and the refrigerator, to bulk up.
A wispy 165-pound kid turned into a 225-pound rock of a man. Stacey Word says the granite has softened a bit in recent years, because the demands of being chief leave less time for the weights.
Word quickly rose through the police ranks, thanks to his passion for crime fighting. He still speaks fondly of working as an undercover narcotics officer, and of the two years he spent as a captain leading patrols on the gritty streets of East Oakland.
Shortly after Brown took office in 1999, Word got a call from the city manager’s office asking him to schedule an interview for the open police chief post. A few weeks later he had the job, beating out four other finalists.
“It was bizarre,’' he said. “I thought maybe one day I would be a police chief in a smaller community. But never in this city.”
Fighting the image
Despite dark, arching eyebrows that give him an intense look, Word has an easygoing nature that may be his primary asset in dealing with a high-stress job.
“He’s very good at letting things roll off his back,” Stacey Word says.
He is a passionate football fan, and to this day has the nerve to be an Oakland city leader who cherishes the San Francisco 49ers.
But mention Oakland’s reputation as the Bay Area’s crime hub, and Word stands up for the city as passionately as any native Oaklander.
“I hate that crime-plagued image,” he says. “Growing up in San Francisco, I, too, had that impression of Oakland.”
He says too few people know that Oakland has less crime per capita than Sacramento, Fresno, Stockton or Berkeley -- cities that do not share Oakland’s crime-infested image.
What sustains that perception, he says, is the homicide situation. The city tallied 113 of them last year, up from 87 in 2001 and the most since 1995.
Word says publicity about Oakland’s homicide problem wrongly leads people to believe it’s unsafe to venture into the city to shop, see a ballgame or eat at a downtown restaurant.
Police believe 80 percent or more of homicides have some kind of drug connection -- rip-offs, violence perpetrated over drug debts, drug-dealing gangs fighting over turf.
“It’s not John Q. Citizen getting shot while he’s taking his kids to school,” Word said. “We don’t see any more of those homicides than any other community does.’'
Word believes progress is possible in curbing the killings that do plague the city. A new homicide task force recently was formed in which personnel from the US Attorney’s office, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration will help Oakland police attack the homicide problem.
The prospect of new crime-fighting tools, and the upcoming finale to the Riders trial, may fuel Word’s optimism about the immediate future.
But there’s little reason to believe the job pressures will ease. As a result of the Riders settlement, an outside monitor is expected to arrive soon at Oakland police headquarters to review supervision levels, arrest practices and other fundamental procedures.
Meanwhile, the city has pledged to hire an outside panel to probe the April 7 clash, which Word says took place after anti-war demonstrators hurled rocks and other items at police. The panel may seek changes to the department’s crowd-control policies.
“There may be times when it feels like people are following me down the hall, looking over my shoulder, but as long as they’re fair, I really don’t mind,” he said. “If the experience helps us to become better, then I’m all for it.”
BIOGRAPHY:
» Name: Richard Word
» Age: 41
» Residence: Solano County
» Occupation: Chief of the Oakland Police Department
» Education: Bachelor’s degree, business administration, John F. Kennedy University; master’s degree, public administration, Golden Gate University