The different skills mentioned sound great. But I’m afraid you won’t find them in one individual. How about taking a different approach? Not some sort of triumvirate, but rather a team leader with a set of deputy chiefs chosen to insure the senior police management has all the qualities mentioned. As long as the chief chosen can manage THAT team, we may well get the kind of department we want to have.
But having read Bill Dooley's contribution, let me say YES, mentor some nonwhites to rise in the hierarchy so that a few of these patrolmen have bosses who aren't another white guy. Perhaps EVENTUALLY, we'll get to the place where patrolmen have learned tact in dealing with a nonwhite. Oh, I know the good ones do it habitually. But too often, they aren't the first on the scene. And whoever is kinds of knocks another piece off the already damaged relations between community and police force. Some way or other we need the perspective that skin color and eyes and such don't affect that there is a HUMAN facing you. The Golden Rule needs to become second nature somehow.
Another thought: Everyone is focusing on the top job, which certainly is important. But what is to stop the city from finding a community where community relations are challenging but a good job has been done. Then why couldnt Minneapolis raid them for someone who can come to Minneapolis with the charter of improving our relations. I think the whole structure is tainted with failure. What we need is someone in a senior position who has participated in success and believes in it. He or she would have to learn our structure and community and figure out what is DIFFERENT so that we have these recurrent troubles. Past mistakes do leave a legacy, but it can't be impossible to turn it around. Such things are done all the time in this world, but I think the path forward has to involve some imagination. You can't just figure "get the right chief and everything else is automatic". Also, the community itself has to have a basis for hope because whoever comes needs a community willing to work and learn with that person. So maybe that hope would be greater if the MPD recruited someone with a history of success with the civilian community...and that person does NOT have to be chief. They need firm chief support and a respected position. But again you might not have to hunt and hunt for a chief who has that TOO along with the laundry list of good characteristics.
A chief of anything needs authority in difficult times but receptiveness most other times.
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Jim Mork
Cooper Neighborhood
No bonds for colonial wars. Say "no pay no play" and spare the grandkids from a life of poverty.
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