Murray Tries to Quell Uproar by Clarifying Power, Trial Comments

Hoping to quell a growing furor that has some City Council members talking privately about his ouster, San Diego City Manager Sylvester Murray on Wednesday issued a clarification and apology for remarks he made about his power over the police department, affirmative action programs and local response to the Sagon Penn murder trial. The remarks were published Sunday in The Times.

Murray, the city’s top administrator, circulated a memo offering the apology and clarification to council members during a turbulent day that included a meeting with Mayor-elect Maureen O’Connor.

The San Diego Police Officers Assn. on Wednesday denounced Murray’s comments as “inciting violence in the streets” and irate citizens have swamped some City Hall offices with telephone calls to complain about his remarks.

Council members themselves said they were “shocked” and “dismayed” by Murray’s comments, adding that they will question the new city manager about the article during a closed-session review scheduled for Tuesday. The review had been scheduled before the article was published.

Privately, at least two council members said earlier Wednesday that they might ask Murray to resign if he did not hold a press conference to clarify his statements.

At the very least, one council member said, Murray would be sternly reprimanded for his comments about his powers as city government’s highest-ranking, highest-paid administrator.

“I would say that if the manager is not upbraided within the next week by the City Council, then the City Council has abrogated and acquiesced all power to the city manager, and that would be a big mistake,” said the council member, who requested anonymity.

In the Times interview, the 44-year-old Murray said he intends to fully exercise his powers as San Diego city manager, a job he took nine months ago.

Under the council-manager form of government, the city manager serves at the pleasure of the council and is responsible for the day-to-day activities of the 7,500 city employees who fill potholes, sweep streets, arrest criminals and pick up garbage.

“I will be powerful,” Murray said during the interview. “I will be no more powerful than the law allows, but I will assume all the powers of this office,” which he said are “equal” to those he enjoyed as Cincinnati’s city manager and undisputed spokesman for city government.

Speaking about his choice of careers, Murray described how he used to run away from the police when he was a boy growing up in the ghetto of Miami.

“When I was told that a city manager could be the boss of the police, I knew that’s what I wanted,” he said. “I get an orgasm just being a boss of police.”

Murray went on to say he was “very surprised” that there has been so little reaction from the black community over allegations that surfaced in the murder trial of Sagon Penn, who is accused of shooting and killing a San Diego police officer, then wounding a fellow officer and a civilian ride-along. Testimony in the trial alleged that the officers stopped Penn for no reason and began to beat the black youth before the shooting.

“The reaction has been basically . . . blah,” he said. “Except, I think, for a while there, there were some pickets around the courtroom. It has not generated publicly the issues of police brutality or non-police brutality, blacks, racial strife, that I just know it would have generated in Cincinnati or every other place.

“Blacks in San Diego are just as conservative as whites. Blacks in San Diego are just as concerned about not rocking the boat as whites do not want the boat to be rocked.”

Murray, the city’s first black city manager, also said he favored an aggressive affirmative action policy, remarking that he “consciously” chose a black fire chief when he made his first appointment on Nov. 1, 1985. He said he has instructed his department heads that they “have to justify why, what happened?” if they suggest appointing a deputy who is not a black, Latino or woman.

On Wednesday, Murray reacted to criticism of his remarks by issuing a memo that said he had “no desire to degrade this city, the police department or myself” through his comments.

“I was wrong to use the word orgasm,” he wrote. “It was a bad word. I am embarrassed and ashamed. I apologize.”

He also clarified his comments about the Penn trial by noting that he had “better sense than to be dogmatic about an ongoing court case.”

“My comment was intended to be reflective, not condemnation,” he wrote. “The reflection was to recognize the police department for being disciplined enough not to take revenge on Penn after the shooting and the black community was civil enough to let the courts and the law proceed unhampered by demonstrations. The article did not come out this way and I’m sorry.”

Murray also said that his “belief in affirmative action does not mean that I would hire unqualified minorities and women nor that I will practice inverse discrimination. It means simply that decision makers must be consciously aware and directly committed to hiring qualified minorities and women.”

The appointment of Fire Chief John Delotch was made because he was the “best qualified person” for the job, Murray wrote.

Whether Murray’s apology would be enough to stem the spreading backlash against his comments was unknown. The article seemed to ignite a smoldering discontent by some council members and their aides, who have been irked that Murray has been busy meeting with community groups, the traditional stronghold of elected officials.

And O’Connor, making the rounds at City Hall on Wednesday, stopped in to talk to Murray and mentioned his comments in the article, the city manager said.

“Her concern was the ‘power’ position,” he said. “I’m not trying to be the mayor of the city but the city manager, with written responsibility by law, and that’s all I want to do.”

In The Times’ article Sunday, Murray said the mayoral vacancy now filled by O’Connor was “probably an advantage from the point of view of less competition and less fear of competition and less second-guessing.”

One council source, who requested anonymity, said there is a fear that Murray may be trying to build his own power base among the community groups so he can eventually “preempt” the council.

“I think the manager has figured out that at the pace he’s going, the power will not emanate from the 10th Floor (where council offices are located at City Hall), but from the community groups and the liaison with the business community,” said the source. “Then he is no longer responsive to the 10th Floor. . . .”

Acting Mayor Ed Struiksma said he was “shocked and dismayed” by Murray’s comments. “I thought the terminology that was used was totally inappropriate,” Struiksma said. “There were a number of things embodied in that article that deserved further explanation.”

Struiksma said he had scheduled a performance review for Murray next week and he “rather suspects that that subject (the article) will come up.” He also said some of his council colleagues have expressed “extreme displeasure” with Murray’s comments.

A spokesman for Struiksma said his office received 75 telephone calls Wednesday about Murray.

Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, whose office Wednesday received about 40 telephone complaints about Murray, said she was “astonished” by the new city manager’s “perception of power over the police department. Not so much the verbiage but the power and the emotional impact it had on him to be running that department.”

And Councilwoman Gloria McColl, whose office logged 32 calls complaining about Murray, added that his remarks demonstrated a “management style that I’m just not familiar with seeing in the City of San Diego.”

Asked if she thought Murray should resign, McColl said:

“I have not made up my mind on that yet . . . I have not talked to him about the article, in all fairness. I need to hear his full response. . . . Maybe he thought he was talking guy to guy and these things were not going to be printed.”

Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who said she did not favor his resignation, added: “I feel that he has not absorbed San Diego into his soul.”

Meanwhile, the president of the POA condemned Murray’s comments as “irresponsible, intemperate, unprofessional and inflammatory.” In a letter hand-delivered to council offices Wednesday afternoon, POA President A. L. (Skip) DiCerchio scored Murray for his remarks about the Penn trial.

“Is Mr. Murray having trouble adjusting to the spirit of harmony and compatibility in San Diego?” DiCerchio asked. “Is he dissatisfied with the history and environment of cooperation between the citizens of this community and the members of their police department? Does he seek the confrontations that he claims occur in Cincinnati, where he lived last?”

DiCerchio wrote: “No matter how you read this article, Mr. Murray is inciting violence in the streets.”

Lee Grissom, president of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, said that he received a “flood” of calls from chamber members Monday morning about the Murray interview.

“He was considered to be in a honeymoon period, but I guess that ended abruptly at 7 a.m. Sunday when people began reading their Los Angeles Times,” said Grissom.

Councilmen Uvaldo Martinez and William Jones were more reserved in their reaction to Murray’s interview.

Martinez said “he really didn’t say anything that was that outrageous.” Jones said that Murray is a “very competent person, he is very able and he’s demonstrated that since he’s been here, as far as I’m concerned.”