Oxnard to Begin Its Search for a New Police Chief : Law enforcement: Candidates are lining up to succeed Robert Owens, who is retiring. Officials say he will be tough to replace.

A search for a new Oxnard police chief will begin in earnest in January, and already a half dozen candidates are knocking at the door.

Among the candidates are two from Los Angeles County, two from Ventura County and one from central California, Oxnard Police Chief Robert P. Owens said in a recent interview. He declined to identify them.

Oxnard Assistant Police Chief James A. Latimer, 52, also has told his boss that he wants to succeed him. Latimer plans to become a formal candidate next month, when the search for the police chief formally begins.

“I know the whole management scheme, I’ve been involved in the community,” said Latimer, who joined the Oxnard Police Department 26 years ago, one year before Owens became chief.

Finding a replacement for the popular and nationally respected Owens won’t be easy.

“Any top executive is hard to find,” said Oxnard City Manager Vern Hazen, who will make the final decision on the new chief.

Most important is how the new chief will fit into the community, he said. “In the final analysis, it’s chemistry.”

Hazen and others in government and police work agree that few Owens clones work in the nation’s 20,000 police and sheriff’s agencies.

“Bob Owens is going to leave some very large shoes here, so we’re going to have to find some big feet to fill them,” said Dene Jones, Oxnard’s personnel director.

Owens, 60, who plans to retire in June, will not be directly involved in picking his successor.

The selection begins Jan. 7, when the Oxnard City Council is scheduled to vote on a contract for a management search firm that will provide a list of two dozen or more candidates.

Hazen, who will pick the new chief by June, said he will seek advice from Steve Blanchard, the president of the Police Officers Assn. of Oxnard; city department heads; City Council members and community leaders.

“I plan to make it a collaborative process,” Hazen said.

The list provided by the search firm will be narrowed to about half a dozen candidates, who will be interviewed by a panel.

“We’re going to do a thorough job,” Hazen said.

Among those advising Hazen will be Owens.

In a recent interview, Owens said the new chief should be sensitive to the needs of crime victims and be committed to community-oriented policing. Oxnard has the highest crime rate in the county.

One way the Oxnard Police Department reaches out to residents is by employing two civilians who help crime victims and provide emotional first aid, Owens said.

Also, under Owens’ leadership, Oxnard police try to head off problems before they explode into violence.

For example, in La Colonia, the yard of a small house became the hangout of drug dealers and alcoholics. Police contacted the property owner, who hadn’t been to the property for years, and she threatened to evict the tenant.

“The clandestine activities have been driven elsewhere, perhaps underground,” Owens said in a Nov. 25 memo to Hazen, explaining community-oriented police work.

“The process really begins with a commitment within the Police Department to actively solve problems and not merely react to conditions,” Owens wrote.

Owens said a chief should be measured by the community he comes from. “Is he seen as a progressive chief? Has he maintained contact within ethnic and racial organizations?”

Owens said that, in 1965, he was acting commander of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s Lennox substation when the Watts riots broke out nearby.

“I remember sitting back and thinking, ‘What if we had a similar problem in Lennox? Who would I go to in the black community to gain assistance?’ We did not pay enough attention to who the movers and shakers were in that black community.

“That was a lesson I learned there. We hadn’t done our homework.”

The new chief will make $75,000 to $108,000 a year. Owens makes $91,000 annually.

This should be an inducement, said Gerald Arenberg, executive director of the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police, based in Florida. A sampling of police chiefs’ salaries in 300 major cities, he said, showed that this year their annual income averaged $55,000 to $60,000.

But Oxnard’s ratio of police officers to population could cause a top cop to think twice about the job, Arenberg added.

The new chief will inherit a police force of about 150 officers who must patrol the county’s largest city with a population of about 145,000, or 1.07 officers per 1,000 population.

“The average in the U.S. is three officers per 1,000,” Arenberg said. Los Angeles’ ratio is about 2.4 officers per 1,000.

“So a candidate might say, ‘You may pay me a helluva lot of money, but if I don’t have the troops to fight crime you will have an unhappy population.’ ”

Owens acknowledged that in a recent police management survey, Oxnard was ranked last in police staffing among 18 cities surveyed.

“But I’m not too alarmed,” he said. “When I came here, we were understaffed.”

Owens said Oxnard lawmakers recognize the problem and have indicated they will support expansion of the police force.

As for his personal plans, Owens said he is looking forward to becoming a law enforcement consultant.

“My doctors advised me six years ago to avoid stress,” he said. He said he had a heart problem last year and wears a pacemaker.

“Well, telling a police chief to avoid stress,” he said with a laugh, “that can’t happen. And it’s not getting any easier.”