Saturday, July 19, 2008

Police chief's job on the line

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Contra Costa Times

July 6, 2003 Sunday FINAL EDITION

By Karl Fischer and Rebecca Rosen Lum, Times staff writers

RICHMOND -- A perception that Police Chief Joseph Samuels Jr. misled the City Council about disciplining employees for alleged misconduct may soon cost the city's top cop his job.

Numerous city officials say a firm council majority wants Samuels gone in October, when he finishes his one-year presidency of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the world's largest professional organization for police executives.

City Hall sources say City Manager Isiah Turner has given Samuels until the end of that term, Oct. 9, to repair his tarnished public image, heal gaping rifts between the department and Richmond's minority communities, and correct a series of employee discipline lapses that eroded council faith.

If not, Samuels will be removed as quickly as a graceful departure can be arranged, sources said.

"I've received input from community leaders and the City Council expressing concerns about the chief's leadership," Turner said. "I have raised these concerns with the chief and let him know we have certain standards and expectations."

"If these goals are not met, we will come to a point where we have a discussion about his career," Turner said.

Samuels would not comment directly.

"I've heard all the whispers, all the rumors about my job status," Samuels said. "But where I come from, who I am, the only voice I listen to is the voice of God."

Political will to remove Samuels coalesced in December, when City Council members learned a police officer accused of bullying a woman into having sex with him while on duty remained on the payroll, despite assertions by Samuels he was fired, sources said.

Suspicious the police department had given them inaccurate information about other personnel cases, the council investigated certain police misconduct complaints handled in the past two years by the department's internal affairs division and the civilian Police Commission.

The council review took more than two months of closed meetings ending in late April. In the end, the council demanded officials start termination hearings against five police employees, including the chief's closest adviser.

The department's handling of investigation and discipline in at least three cases severely damaged Samuels' credibility with the council, sources said.

In the first case, a 34-year-old female motorist claimed former Officer Patrick J. Sweeney stopped her in February 2002 and, after giving her a break on a ticket, asked for sex.

In a Nov. 21 damage claim against the city, she claims she had sex with Sweeney at least five times over a five-month period -- while he was armed and on duty -- because she was afraid of him.

While the council considered settling the claim at a Dec. 3 meeting, members asked about discipline, and sources say Samuels and other city staff members told them Sweeney had been fired.

Samuels recalls telling them only that he recommended Sweeney be fired. "Maybe I should have elaborated a little more on the process," Samuels said.

The council soon learned on its own that Sweeney took a long-term medical leave months earlier and was not fired.

Sweeney, the nephew of Richmond's former interim Police Chief Ed Duncan, took a medical retirement May 9. The council settled the woman's claim for $35,000 in February.

In a second case, Samuels apparently did not place his top civilian aide on administrative leave or notify him of his termination hearing in late April despite direct orders from the council.

Council members learned nearly two weeks later that Armand Mulder remained on the job after several female city employees who had complained he sexually harassed them frantically phoned to report more problems.

Mulder, who served as the department's commander of support services until his sudden retirement May 19, was the subject of a December internal affairs complaint. Council members were horrified to learn the complainant, whom Mulder supervised, continued to work in the same office after she made the complaint.

A department source said Samuels in December removed Mulder from direct supervision of the city jail, where the woman worked, when the claim "came to (his) attention." Samuels said he could not comment.

In the third case, the council dressed down Samuels publicly for not investigating brutality claims against several officers linked to a notorious police action on May 5, 2002.

The council learned internal affairs investigators contacted some of the primary witnesses for the first time April 29, just hours before the council was briefed on police plans for this year's Cinco de Mayo observances.

This, despite Samuel's repeated assurances his department investigated the incident while the civilian police commission conducted an 11-month investigation into numerous brutality claims.

"In the past they have had a number of bad moments here," said Councilwoman Maria Viramontes of strained relations between police and local Latinos. "Cinco de Mayo was another one of those moments, and it didn't have to go the way it did."

Council demands that Samuels take action resulted in a pink slip for Officer La Raunce Robinson, who was accused in a civil rights suit filed this spring of striking community activist Andres Soto with a metal flashlight during the incident.

The commission's findings did not substantiate claims against any of the officers named in the suit.

The firing had nothing to do with what Robinson did on Cinco de Mayo, sources said, but with evidence he lied to the commission during his testimony about the incident.

"We believe that (his firing) was politically motivated. The complaint was not factually sound," said Alison Berry Wilkinson, an attorney representing Robinson. "They were doing it, in my opinion, to resolve some community issues rather than because it was the right thing to do."

Talk of all these incidents has roiled the city's neighborhoods, igniting a discontent simmering since Samuels arrived in August 1999 and began dismantling the community-involved policing started by his popular predecessor.

When Samuels came to Richmond, the only concern was that the ambitious up-and-comer might not stick around if he were offered a more prestigious assignment.

Samuels seemed like the dream candidate. He had become Fresno's police chief at 42, and Oakland's first-ever African-American police chief. He launched community policing programs in both cities and collected some admirable awards. At only 50, he sat on the board of the world's largest organization of police executives.

"I was very pleased," said Eleanor Loynd, president of the Richmond Neighborhood Coordinating Council. "I thought, 'He's coming from Oakland, he's dealt with all that.' It has been a real disappointment."

Richmond searched for months to replace Police Chief Bill Lansdowne after he went to San Jose in 1998.

Then, in March 1999, word came that Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown planned to purge department heads, including Samuels. Although he says there was no connection, City Manager Isiah Turner dumped a pool of finalists that included three Richmond police captains.

In August 1999, Samuels took a $24,000 pay cut to become Richmond's top cop.

He was given a four-year contract paying $147,000 a year and asked to expand Richmond's popular community policing program.

He is the only city executive, other than Turner, to have a contract. It expires in August.

Samuels needed the job security it provided. He knew he would be president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 2002-03, a post he would have to resign if he lost his job.

At the time the contract seemed like a small concession for Richmond. But Samuels soon began rubbing the neighborhood councils the wrong way.

"I've learned that this community wants a hands-on chief," said Samuels, who intends to spend more time in the city once his IACP commitment ends in October.

One of his first acts was to re-assign five of 16 neighborhood-based officers to Narcotic Intervention Team Restoring Order, a nine-member task force targeting gangs, guns and drug dealing.

"He came in with an attitude toward dismantling the community policing we had with Chief Lansdowne," said east Richmond's Nick Despota. "There was a huge outcry, and after that he tried to piece it back together, but he wasn't very effective."

Samuels said promotions, injuries and retirements forced the shifting of officers.

Community policing embraces two tenets: Pairing an officer with a neighborhood over a long haul, and helping an area become crime resistant, said Rudi Raab, a North and East Neighborhood Council representative who works as a Berkeley police officer.

"If you stay on the beat, there's no us versus them. It's us together," he said. "In Richmond, it's a revolving door."

Under community pressure, the City Council in January approved 17 guidelines for community policing. But critics say they have yet to be implemented.

Samuels disagrees, and says a report due this month will show marked improvements in community relations.

"We're looking at making a lot of changes," he said.

Among officers, Samuels has become known as an aloof, hands-off executive, as in Oakland.

He is away on association business so often the council appointed an assistant police chief, paying him $146,500 a year -- only $500 less than Samuels -- to steer community-building efforts and represent the department.

Within the past two weeks, assistant police chief Charles Bennett tendered his resignation, leading residents to despair of community-involved policing ever getting off the ground in Richmond.

"Chuck Bennett is the one who carries CIP," Raab said. "This is really sad."

Raab said his most telling encounter with Samuels came early on, at a meeting that included Turner.

He and others hoped to implement a public education campaign to keep New Year's revelers from shooting live rounds into the air.

"Within five minutes, the chief stood up and said, 'I'm sorry, but I have an important meeting to go to.' I wanted to grab that guy by the lapels and say, 'Listen, we're talking about out-of-control gunfire in your city and you have somewhere more important to be?' And Isiah let him get away with it."

Editor's noteThe Times does not use unnamed sources unless editors determine them to be credible, the information cannot be obtained any other way and the sources have compelling reasons for remaining unnamed, such as fear of retribution. In this case, the situation's gravity and the legal issues involved for the numerous sources led us to take the unusual step.

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