I’ll Be a Back-on-Police-Beat Chief, Not a Society Leader, Burgreen Says

The telephone rang when Bob Burgreen arrived home from Little Rock last Tuesday night. San Diego City Manager John Lockwood was calling to offer him the job he’d wanted all his adult life: police chief.

He accepted without a flinch.

The next morning, meeting at a secluded San Diego Gas & Electric office, Burgreen and Lockwood privately discussed Burgreen’s transition to the top job on the 1,850-officer force.

But this afternoon Burgreen will face the public when he stands before the City Council.

The council must confirm his nomination as police chief, and already several council members have reacted guardedly to his selection, confessing little knowledge of the work Burgreen has done the last 10 years in the shadow of his longtime boss, Bill Kolender.

So who is this man, and what are his views on leading the San Diego Police Department into the next decade?

Question: Bob, you joined the San Diego Police Department in 1960. Describe the police force then, and compare it to now.

Answer: In 1960, almost all the police officers were white males. If you argued with a police officer or you gave a police officer a hard time verbally, you were probably going to get hurt. Community relations hadn’t even been discovered. There wasn’t any such thing as a complaint procedure. There were no such thing as computers. There was no such thing as a Crime Analysis Unit.

Today, it’s been an awfully long time since you heard the term attitude arrest in this city. That is a dead term.

Q: Many of the changes were made under Kolender’s leadership, but what was your role in helping win those changes?

A: I processed paper work and ideas. I handled the day-to-day operations of the department, which means the budget, the personnel decisions, who do we promote, who do we reprimand, who do we suspend, who do we fire? Maintaining appropriate liaison with the city manager’s office, making sure they were kept informed. Answering the reports we have to do and prepare for the City Council. Making a lot of those council appearances. Running a lot of nuts-and-bolts administrative work.

And I’ve gotten an enormous education about this city, about how we fit in as a police agency, where we need to go and some real good ideas about what is the best way to get there.

Q: Describe your leadership style.

A: You’re going to find me a hands-on leader. I think it’s time that the chief of police in San Diego got down in the trenches with the cops, rides around in a police car once in a while, walks with the vice squad, maybe walks the canyons of San Ysidro with the Border Crime Prevention Unit.

At the same time, I think it’s time for the chief to be interacting on a real regular basis with members of the community. We have to listen to the community. We must get back to where we were before the Sagon Penn incident, to where we had a high level of community support. But the Sagon Penn incident, and the Tommie Dubose incident, have impacted that credibility enormously.

And we’ve got to get it back. That’s important to me.

Q: Kolender was gregarious, particularly as a public speaker and in attending numerous social functions. Are you comfortable in that role?

A: I am not going to be a black-tie chief. I would rather be in an article in the Voice and Viewpoint (a black community newspaper) than in San Diego Magazine. We’re not having any problems at the La Jolla balls. But we certainly have some problems with the way black San Diego sees its police.

So I will be out and about and talking to people. But I’m not going to be a social chief. I’m going to get my hands dirty.

Q: How do you respond to critics who say you don’t deserve the chief’s job because of your reprimand in the ticket-fixing scandal of two years ago?

A: I would say they have a point. After that incident was over, I didn’t stand a chance of being chief. There’s no question it hurt my public credibility. I got reprimanded, and I deserved it. It wasn’t a very fun time for me.

Now, at any time my performance doesn’t meet his (Lockwood’s) standards, he doesn’t even have to ask, he can have an undated resignation from me in his desk and I’ll sign it. All he has to do is put today’s date on it. At the time I don’t meet his expectations, I will leave.

I want to be a good chief. If I make mistakes, I want to take whatever medicine I’ve got coming. If I make a fatal mistake, lead me to the gallows.

Q: What qualities do you want in an assistant chief?

A: I need someone who’s a manager, whom I trust implicitly. And someone who is potentially a chief of police because having just come from that position, I can tell you that it really prepares you for the responsibilities of being chief of police.

Q: Describe the individual strengths of your four deputy chiefs.

A: Don Davis is solid and loyal and dependable and is as proud a person of this organization as I know. He is also tremendously experienced and dedicated.

Manuel Guaderrama has shown an ability to give time and effort to this Police Department that is very commendable. His work in the community when he was in charge of field operations was second to none. The man was in church on Sundays talking to community leaders about problems, and in the middle of the night you’d find him out in the streets working with his officers.

Mike Rice is a man who also shares our vision, a guy who is very dependable, a man who sets high standards for the people who work for him. He’s working right now on a very effective task force with community leaders on some of the gang and drug problems.

And of course there’s Norm Stamper, who has probably had more to do with innovation and innovative programs than any single person in the history of the San Diego Police Department. Norm Stamper is also one of the finest minds of any police agency anywhere. He’s sought after from throughout this country. He’s the kind of man that other cities would love to have as their chief.

Q: Do you see progress ahead in opening up more management opportunities for minorities on the police force?

A: You bet. The progress in the last 10 years of bringing minorities and women onto the Police Department has been tremendous. And not just in terms of entry-level, but supervisory too. Five percent of our investigation units were minorities and women 10 years ago. Today, a third.

But we need to do more. And it’s my promise we will. By the time my tenure as police chief is over, I want to be able to look back and say we have continued that momentum.

Q: Outside the department, the minority community continues to harbor significant distrust of the Police Department. How do you win back that trust?

A: I’m not going to sit in my office and have people come in and talk to me. I’m going to go to their offices or their homes or their problem areas.

I’m going to be setting up regular “Times With the Chief” at our community storefronts for the public to come in and sit down and talk to me. Personally. I’m going to be doing them throughout our whole city, on a regular basis. And I’m going to make it in the evening hours when people can come and don’t have to be at work.

You simply have to stay in touch with the people you serve if you’re going to do your job right.

Q: Do you support either of the two police review board proposals on the November ballot?

A: I have very personal feelings, based on a lot of experience. But my No. 1 responsibility as chief of police is to see that the will of the people is carried out. Whatever the people vote for, I’m going to work to the utmost of my ability to try to make it as effective as I can.

So it really doesn’t matter how I feel, because I am going to be saddled with the responsibility of making it work.

Q: After the fatal police shooting last March of Tommie Dubose, you announced new changes in the way officers serve high-risk search warrants. There were also plans to review the police shooting policies. How is that going?

A: Real well. We have implemented changes. And I am satisfied that we are minimizing the potential for that kind of incident to occur again. I now feel very confident that the probability of an incident like that ever occurring again is as low as it can be.

Q: The San Diego Police Department has 1.62 uniformed officers for each 1,000 residents. The average big-city police department puts 2.5 officers on the street for every 1,000 residents. How are you going to get more officers in uniform here.

A: We need to determine if we are using our people as intelligently as we should.

We have an enormous organization here. I think it’s time we sat down and decided what our priorities are in today’s San Diego and that we look at the levels of service in each of our major units.

We’re going to erase the chalkboard and create an organizational chart that may change some things and may result in more people being assigned here than there. And I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but it’s going to be close to providing consistent levels of service in all areas of this city. It will reflect our priorities for what is important in San Diego.

We’re going to put our people where we think we can get the most police work out of them.

Q: What percentage of crimes do you believe are committed by illegal aliens, and what is the police force doing to alleviate this problem?

A: In certain crimes, as much as 25%, particularly burglary and auto thefts. It’s a major problem.

But our policy is hands-off. We don’t arrest people for being illegal aliens; we don’t turn them over to the Border Patrol.

I think it’s a federal government responsibility. You go to the Mexican border and you look at it and there’s no fence. But it’s impacting our crime rate. It’s effecting our service level.

Q: Officer deaths have climbed dramatically in the last decade in San Diego. Your predecessor, in fact, often said that was the single most difficult part of his job--officiating at police funerals. What do you say to the rookie cop?

A: Be careful. We’re going to train you how to take care of yourself. We’re going to give you the best equipment that’s out there. We’re going to make you wear a protective vest when you’re working. That’s not a popular call. But that’s too bad.

At the same time, we want you to treat people with dignity and respect. We think both can be done. We don’t think one excludes the other.

Q: A citizen recently told the City Council that she believes all retired police chiefs should remain in their communities when they step down. She figured that way, if the crime rate is still rising, the ex-chief will know that he is responsible. What will be the Burgreen legacy?

A: First of all, you can’t credit a chief with lowering the crime rate and you can’t blame him for not lowering it. The police chief has very little control over much crime. We can respond to it. We can prevent some of it. But there are so many factors, like unemployment, that have much more influence over the crime rate than policing.

The Burgreen legacy will be a positive one. One in which we made progress, where we used technological advances to become better crime fighters, where we used our people wisely, where we established solid relationships between the police and the community, where we re-established trust in the police.