Suspicion, Rumors Reign at Police Headquarters : Changes: The Burgreen-Stamper reorganization plan has the lesser brass wondering if they’ll be left out in the cold.

For weeks now, nervousness and uncertainty have permeated the seventh floor of San Diego police headquarters as Chief Bob Burgreen and Assistant Chief Norm Stamper have tried to decide who of their top administrators should go and who should stay.

Burgreen has officially announced that five positions and two levels of command are being eliminated, but the Burgreen-Stamper management team may undertake even deeper cuts. Seven top managers eligible for retirement have been asked if they want to leave.

In addition, Burgreen has said that a buyout could be extended to many of the department’s 15 captains, suggesting a massive change of management in an agency that has been unusually stable for more than a decade.

The reorganization is rooted in Burgreen’s desire to put together his “dream team,” as Stamper has called it, people who share his idea of putting more police out on the street, getting closer to the community and being equipped with the latest crime-fighting technology.

“If three to five captains go, which is my best guess, and top management people go, it’s going to have a heck of a ripple effect,” said Harry O. Eastus, president of the Police Officers Assn., which represents most of the 1,850-member force. “You’re going to have people moving up the ranks very quickly.”

Talk of buyouts has sparked anxiety, which some say has been channeled into a growing hostility toward Stamper, the bespectacled academician who engineered a lengthy study that prompted the changes.

A 195-page audit Stamper produced last month suggested revolutionary changes in the way San Diego police operate. Among other things, it discussed doing away with the agency’s paramilitary structure, a change that Stamper believes would encourage healthy discussion rather than blind obedience within the ranks.

It also signaled, for the first time, the elimination of high-level jobs. Stamper recommended a management team of a chief and seven assistants rather than the current setup of a chief, an assistant, four deputy chiefs and seven commanders.

Although some administrators agree with the plan to trim upper management, they are unhappy with the way Burgreen and Stamper have spoken about it publicly.

Shortly after producing the audit last month, Stamper held a press conference to explain his findings and attended newspaper editorial board meetings to promote his recommendations. Then he met with the administrative staff to describe how they would be affected.

But what most outraged managers was a staff meeting Stamper held upon his return from Washington, where he had given a speech on his audit to police executives.

At the morning meeting, Stamper noted that another speaker in Washington had given a talk about how to make a smooth job transition from a public agency to the private sector.

“How cruel and cold and naive can a person be?” said one official who attended the meeting and asked not to be identified. “This is the only career we’ve ever known. You’re telling us that you released a report last week, and this week, here’s how you can get a new job.”

It made matters worse earlier this month when The Times broke news of the plan to buy out top-level administrators. In the story, Burgreen said implementation of the reorganization “will be a feather in Norm’s cap as well as mine for pulling it off,” which heightened a perception that the plan was being promoted to bolster the resumes of both men.

Burgreen has said that he will retire in late 1993, shortly after his 50th birthday. Many see Stamper’s audit as an effort to propel the assistant chief into position as Burgreen’s successor.

“I’m sure there are several people who share that perception,” Eastus said. “They see that Stamper instituted the audit, and they see that Burgreen is retiring. Nobody is pointing the finger at Burgreen as the bad guy. They point at Stamper.”

In separate interviews, Stamper and Burgreen emphasized that the department’s reorganization has nothing to do with personal gain and all to do with creating better communication from the rank of chief to patrolman, which is muted by too many levels of bureaucracy.

“There are some hard feelings with the way it was put forward,” Burgreen said. “People think that Norm and I are working hard to put a feather in our cap, but what we are putting forward are sound business decisions. I’m not trying to get a statue of myself built in Horton Plaza. I’m acting in the best interests of the department.”

Both men acknowledged that they probably should not have spoken publicly about the plan for early retirements until all the details had been set and offers made and accepted.

Last month, the chief came up with a plan of offering “golden handshakes,” or early retirement incentives, to members of his administrative team who are at least 50 years old and have served the department 20 years or more.

No definitive plan has been offered anyone, and Burgreen says nobody will be fired or demoted, but the underlying message, according to some police officials, is that just about everyone is expendable, and a brand-new management team with fresh ideas is needed.

“Those of it who have talked about it have contributed to the confusion,” Stamper said. “The primary lesson we’ve learned is that a lot should have been left unsaid.”

Since news of the buyouts surfaced, the mood has been “ugly” at headquarters, in the word of one administrator, as managers try to figure out who will will stay on. The city manager’s office has been weighing the idea for nearly a month, adding to the speculation.

The task of trimming is daunting. Of the seven managers who qualify for retirement, none has less than 28 years with the department and four have 30 years or more. Each man has spent most of his adult life with the agency.

Who will stay and who won’t hasn’t been determined, although at the top ranks, deputy chiefs Mike Rice, Ken Fortier, Cal Krosch and commanders Larry Gore, Bob Thorburn, Jim Kennedy and Keith Enerson all are eligible to retire. Deputy Chief Manny Guaderrama has already taken another job but is eligible for the buyout.

It remains unclear whether captains will be included in the buyouts. Several are eligible for retirement, and Eastus of the police labor organization said he is involved in representing the captains, who are Civil Service employees. Anyone over the rank of captain serves at the pleasure of the police chief.

Vowing that everyone will be treated “with dignity and respect,” Burgreen said he will not “go in with a meat cleaver and chop off heads.”

But the unanswered questions of who will keep their jobs has “everyone distracted to some extent,” said Cmdr. Jerry Sanders, who at 40, is the youngest of the management team and not eligible for retirement. “It’s an uncertain time.”

On the seventh floor of police headquarters, many top managers are figuring out their futures while trying to manage their regular duties.

“I’ve heard that it is hard to concentrate on the long-term programs and long-term implications of some of the policy discussions we’ve had,” Stamper said. “But it’s just an episode in the life of an organization.”

If the City Council does not authorize the buyouts, Burgreen said, he will enact his plan more slowly by waiting for deputy chiefs and commanders to retire and not replacing them.

In the meantime, Burgreen is fighting a long list of rumors: that he will put some commanders into patrol stations as a means of forcing them to retire; that he already has a team of executives ready to promote; that he has a list of people he wants to leave.

“My decision has been to make incentives on a volunteer basis,” he said. “Everything else is rumor and innuendo. The PoLice Department is the biggest bunch of rumor mongers outside of the U.S. Army.”

Cmdr. Larry Gore, the head of administrative services and public affairs, said nothing has officially been offered any of the management team. He did not want to publicly discuss his plans.

“Everyone wants to be a valued member of the team,” he said. “We all have to make a business decision and a family decision. There are a myriad of variables. If the numbers of people interested in retiring are sufficient (to do what Burgreen wants), those who don’t choose to retire will remain part of a powerful management team.”

Until specifics are decided, the department will remain “in a state in which individuals feel they don’t have much control,” Stamper said.

“People in this department are fearing for the future,” Stamper said. “That fear is justified only if they don’t want a more community-oriented police department that is in closer contact with neighborhoods. Some police personnel have the feeling that we know what’s best. . . . That kind of thinking is dying out in the top reaches of government.”