L. B. Police Union Gives Chief a Vote of No Confidence

The Police Officers Assn. handed Chief Lawrence Binkley a vote of no confidence, then failed to iron out its differences with him in a heated meeting that ended abruptly Wednesday.

Nearly two-thirds of the union’s 600 members responded to a survey mailed by the union, according to union President Mike Tracy. Of those, 322 voted no confidence in Binkley, while 52 expressed confidence in the chief. The department has 642 officers.

“That’s OK. They don’t have to like me,” Binkley said. “Once they figure out it won’t make any difference that they don’t like me, I hope they spend more time on public safety.

“I really feel sorry for them. They continue to embarrass the Long Beach Police Department and themselves.”

Tracy said he is disappointed with Binkley’s response to the survey after he gave it to the chief Wednesday morning. According to Tracy, the chief rejected the union’s request that he work with them to determine why 322 officers have no confidence in him.

“I’m very disappointed that he isn’t interested in solving the department problems,” Tracy said.

City Manager James Hankla said Binkley’s goal “has always been to improve” working conditions and morale, so city and police officials are baffled as to why the union has not already identified the issues that concern the officers.

“The city management position is, ‘Fine, tell us what the issues are,’ ” Hankla said.

Tracy said union officials do not have a set list of complaints, because the no-confidence vote was conducted at the request of the members and not the board of directors.

“Now, we have to find out why they’re unhappy and what we can do about it,” Tracy said, adding that the union’s directors plan a three-day retreat next week to determine their next move, which probably will include another poll of officers.

In the past, union members have complained of Binkley’s style of management, including stepped-up discipline and the way he deploys officers.

Binkley said he understands that officers have been under greater stress because of an increase in workload. The crime rate in Long Beach has sharply increased in the last two years.

The chief bills himself as a strict disciplinarian who has sharply increased both training and reprimands in the department.

“Unfortunately, (the department has) been an undisciplined, untrained and unhappy organization. Now, it’s pretty well disciplined, pretty well trained, but they’re still unhappy,” Binkley said.

He referred other questions to Hankla and the City Council.

Binkley said he ended the meeting with Tracy and the union’s vice president, Terry Holland, abruptly when Holland began shouting obscenities at him.

“I concluded the meeting when they began using profanity and got angry,” he said.

But Holland said that “I did not use one profanity” and that he told Binkley that “he absolutely does not care about the men in this department. He has no loyalty to the Long Beach Police Department.

“I told him that because of the direction he’s heading this department in, he will be known as the last police chief in the Long Beach Police Department.”

Holland was referring to the city’s proposed plan to have Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies patrol parts of Long Beach--a move some see as a precursor to possibly having sheriff’s deputies replace police officers throughout the city.

Mayor Ernie Kell, noting that the City Council recently gave Binkley a vote of confidence, said: “The Police Department is not a democracy. They (the officers) will not determine who their boss is. I have expressed total support for the police chief, and that hasn’t changed.”

According to union officials, the only time a Long Beach police chief was officially rejected by his officers was in 1978, when officers asked city management to fire then-Chief Carl J. Calkins. He resigned the next year.