Tucson Weekly: Closed Shop (September 10

Tucson Cops Evade The Scrutiny Of An Outside Consultant-For Now.
By Dave Devine
WHEN THE GOING gets tough, the Tucson City Council usually gets going--and hires a consultant.
After pipes started bursting from corrosive CAP water, the city spent $300,000 for an outside review of Tucson Water's management structure. When bus drivers went on strike last summer, the Council ordered an independent study of the management company that runs the system.
For several years stories of Tucson Police Department irregularities and illegalities have been front-page news. So it wasn't surprising when City Councilman Jerry Anderson proposed an outside management analysis of the department in early August. He combined it with a call for an independent evaluation of how the department has handled controversial situations, like the Kevin Danaher case. (Danaher, a police captain, crashed his car into a telephone pole in April, prompting Smith to demote Danaher and discipline other officers who allegedly failed to determine if Danaher had been drinking before the accident.)
Currents After the local media portrayed Anderson as somehow disloyal to City Manager Luis Gutierrez and Chief Smith for even mentioning the possibility of an outside analysis, the ideas went nowhere. But is it time, after years of controversy and bad-cop stories, to have an independent look at TPD?
At the August Council meeting, Anderson listed several reasons why he thought his proposal was necessary. One of his concerns is TPD's alleged unresponsiveness to minor crimes. He also wanted an independent look at the sufficiency of resources provided to the department.
In addition, Anderson said an outside review of how the slew of recent controversial police cases has been dealt with would allow the community to have confidence they had been handled properly. But no one else on the Council agreed with Anderson.
Suzanne Elefante, chair of the city's Police Advisory Review Board, thinks Anderson's idea is premature. She says the city spent a lot of time and money last year coming up with an independent auditor of the department and a new civilian oversight committee. She says they should be given a chance to work. In her opinion, TPD is constantly trying to improve its operations and the department isn't stagnating.
But Willy Bils, a litigation consultant to local lawyers on several police misconduct cases, thinks an outside look at the department's operations is essential. "When you have high-ranking officers in the department accusing the Mayor and Chief of Police of constitutional violations, as they did in the Danaher case, one has to wonder who the real culprits are. It gives the appearance of impropriety at the top," Bils says.
An outside review, Bils believes, could also address the apparent factionalism within the department. He thinks there's been lots of talk about the problems in TPD, but not enough about how to fix them.
Outside reviews of police departments are not a standard practice, according to Michael Polakowski of the UA's Management and Public Policy program. "There has been an effort to have independent certification of police departments, but most haven't bought into it," he said. Instead, usually a call for an outside look at a department results from an event which raises concerns among those with police oversight responsibilities.
Although his proposal went nowhere with the City Council, Anderson says there are still issues he isn't comfortable with. One is TPD's "thumb-in-the-dike" strategy toward fighting crime, which doesn't seem to be working for the taxpayers. An outside review, he believes, could also address how the department investigates allegations against its own.
In Anderson's view, cops on the street do the best they can and "are working their rear ends off." But he isn't confident that he knows where crime fighting is going in this community. The organizational review would help to clarify that, Anderson argues.
Smith's resignation, in Anderson's opinion, won't change the minds of the other Council members about the need for an outside review of the department. "I'd like to think it would give some folks a reason to reassess their position," he said, "but I don't think it will change much. Most will say publicly this was just a career move by the Chief."
Bils believes Smith's departure adds emphasis to the need for an independent review of TPD. "An outside study," he said, "will shed light on what's going on, both good and bad, in the department, instead of this individual case-by-case look by the media that we have now. It would be a sober, rational approach to looking at TPD."
Both Anderson and Bils point to a 1992 "Organizational Evaluation" of the Omaha, Nebraska, police department as an example of what could be done here. A team of outside police professionals recommended dozens of changes in their 300-page report. Those proposed changes ranged from minor procedures to a total reorganization of the department.
Joe Mangiameli, of the Omaha mayor's office, said the study wasn't what you'd expect for the money. Omaha's Deputy Chief of Police Larry Roberts was more direct: "It wasn't worth the $80,000 to $85,000 spent on it," he said.
Roberts said Omaha's previous mayor wanted to know if they had good management practices. So the study was done and 97 percent of its suggestions were implemented, according to Roberts. But some of the recommendations had to be modified because they didn't work. In addition, the organizational restructuring recommendations created new positions which weren't needed, in Roberts' opinion.
But one thing the study did do, he said, was raise the issue of race relations within the department. It brought to light problems unknown to upper-level management, forcing needed changes. But in general, he said, the report was a "short-term study that didn't fit our long-term goals."
Nebraska state Sen. Ernie Chambers said it was criticism of racism within the department by him and others that may have led to the preparation of the Omaha report. "You can't have an inbred organization investigate itself," he said. "If you want to know what's going on, you must have an outside look."
But, Chambers added, if that look exposes warts within the department, there will be attempts to both discredit the study and to ignore the problems. In the Omaha case, he says, the report was very much on point about racism. But there have been only cosmetic changes as a result, and, in his opinion, basically "nada" has happened because of it.
In Tucson, Anderson promises once again to bring up his proposal for an outside review of local police management practices in a few months. "Morale in the department isn't as high as it should be," he says, adding it's important to push issues which he perceives are vital to the community. Even if, he says, he doesn't have the support of the other members of the City Council.

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