After 26 Busy Years, It’s Over and Out

In the end, it was pictures of his daughters that convinced Jerry Sanders to step down after 5 1/2 years in the 75-hour-a-week job as chief of police in the state’s second-largest city.

“I have some pictures of my daughters from when I was sworn in as chief,” Sanders said last week in announcing his retirement. “They were little rascals. Now they’re teenagers. I don’t remember much in between.”

With that, the 48-year-old Sanders, a San Diego cop for 26 years, the son of a Los Angeles cop, shocked San Diego by announcing that he is shifting careers to spend more time with his wife, Rana Sampson, and his children from a previous marriage, Jamie, 12, and Lisa, 15.

“We’ve decided to go back to being a one-chief household,” Sanders joked. His wife is director of safety at the University of San Diego, a Catholic institution.

If Sanders’ resignation was a surprise, so too was his selection of a new career.

On April 15, he will become president and chief executive of United Way of San Diego County--which is still struggling to overcome the lingering effects of recession, a scandal in the early 1990s over the high salary and lavish lifestyle of United Way’s national president, and squabbling among the 170 groups competing for a share of the San Diego chapter’s annual fund-raising monies.

“Jerry takes over at a crucial time for the organization,” said Rabbi Jonathan Stein, United Way board chairman for San Diego. “He brings to us moral integrity, trustworthiness, credibility and a proven track record in running a large organization.”

While others might be surprised at his job switch, Sanders sees a similarity between the Police Department and United Way: “Both are involved in helping to strengthen communities and in giving dignity to the disadvantaged.”

This is a city where support for the police department runs strong. But even at that, the outpouring of respect for Sanders from politicians, community group leaders, the police officers’ labor union and others was unusual.

Mayor Susan Golding, who sponsored Sanders for the job in 1993, said he has nearly done the impossible by uniting disparate factions, interest groups and politicians. She noted that under Sanders, crime has plummeted in San Diego even further than the drop seen in other big cities in recent years.

City Manager Mike Uberuaga, who will choose Sanders’ successor, subject to City Council confirmation, said, “I say a Jerry clone would be excellent.”

Street Sensibility

in the Top Office

Sanders was, in many ways, the perfect fit for the San Diego chief’s job: affable, low-key, earnest, comfortable with the press but not a headline-grabber--a hybrid of street cop and sociology professor. And such a believer in an open-door policy that the door could have been removed from the hinges.

He came to the job with extensive street experience, from beat cop to division commander to head of Internal Affairs and later the SWAT squad. Even as chief, he would respond occasionally to 911 emergency calls to make sure he never lost touch with what his officers must face daily.

“Jerry is a tough cop. He doesn’t live in a bed of flowers,” said former City Manager Jack McGrory, who promoted Sanders to chief. “But he knows . . . San Diego wants its police to work with the community, to get out of their cars and listen to the citizens, and Jerry is in perfect agreement. This is not Los Angeles or San Francisco.”

Under Sanders, the department, which has 2,058 officers, has won praise from Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and others as a model for how to implement community-oriented policing. Just the day before Sanders’ surprise announcement, Reno returned to San Diego to laud the city’s anti-crime efforts, including the use of volunteers (1,000 and rising) and programs for youth.

It is a Sanders characteristic to redirect praise to others.

“My major strength has been my ability to listen to people who are very smart in this department,” Sanders said. “They see it as their department, and they’re right.”

When Sanders was hired in 1993, one of the job specifications was a commitment to diversity in hiring and promotion. As he retires, the top candidates to succeed him include two Latino males and an African American woman, all assistant chiefs.

Responsibilities

Brought Stress

To be chief in San Diego is to attend an endless string of meetings with neighborhood groups; march in every parade; stay attentive to the concerns of the mayor and eight City Council members; maintain personal ties with every segment of the city from the university intelligentsia to the Rotary Club to street-gang members; walk a fine line between the police officers’ labor union and city management; and be prepared to respond at 3 a.m. to a call from the watch commander about an officer-involved shooting.

Sanders did all of this and, inevitably, it took a toll.

There were stomach problems until he learned stress management. The off-duty suicides of two officers last year left him so shaken that at a news conference he was overcome with emotion and had to leave. He had a gout attack recently. He battles his weight.

“I don’t have any [health] problems now,” Sanders said. “But I want to get out before I have any problems.”

Although imperceptible to others, Sanders believed that in recent months he had begun to slow down, to ask others to do things the chief should be doing.

“I think I’m moving at about 97% rather than 100%, and I just don’t think that’s fair to the department or the city,” Sanders said. “I’ve seen people who stay too long and let an organization start to stagnate, and that’s something I never wanted: to hold people back.”

Sanders, who was born in San Pedro, attended Long Beach City College and joined the San Diego police in 1973. He received a bachelor’s degree in public administration from National University and is a handful of credits shy of a bachelor’s in English literature from San Diego State. His taste in literature runs to Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot; in music, to Led Zeppelin.

United Way’s

New Hope

At United Way, Sanders has been given a three-year contract starting at $165,000 a year. In the early 1990s, the organization’s fund-raising, which had reached a peak of $30 million, dropped by a third.

Under the direction of a retired Navy rear admiral, United Way has climbed halfway back to the 1991 peak. But at the same time, more groups are being added to its list of beneficiaries, so the competition is fierce.

United Way leaders hope Sanders can both quell the interagency rivalry and bring fund-raising back to its glory days--two tall orders in a city without major corporate donors.

“Jerry Sanders has a management style that is engaging. He listens, he builds consensus,” Rabbi Stein said. “We think we’ve pulled off a coup.”

But Sanders, for his part, says his departure from the police department will probably not even be noticed by the public.

“You know what,” Sanders said, “the line-level people in this department do such a wonderful job, they won’t even miss a step.”