Veteran Officer Named Ventura Police Chief

In a surprise announcement Monday night, the City Council selected Mike Tracy as the city’s new police chief during its regular meeting.

The appointment of the 49-year-old veteran officer was effective immediately.

Negotiations continued up until the last minute, Tracy said just minutes before the announcement was made public.

Council members met in closed session on the issue until 6 p.m., after which city Manager Donna Landeros met with Tracy privately until 7:45.

A hiring decision was not expected until later this week.

Tracy’s appointment ends a four-month search for a chief to replace Richard Thomas, who retired at the end of last year.

“This is a big thing,” Landeros said. “It’s been a long process.”

Tracy was beaming.

“I’m proud of this, personally,” Tracy said. “But this also shows that there is a lot of support in this community for the Police Department. . . . If the men and women on the front line were not doing a good job, there would be no support.”

Tracy, who has been on the Ventura force for 24 years, said there would be some changes: “It’s not going to be night and day, but it won’t be status quo.”

Tracy said the 123-member department already does a lot of things well. He said he would focus on building up Ventura’s community policing program--though he did not specify how. He also pledged to continue strong gang-prevention efforts.

“I started out as a probation officer,” Tracy said. “In some respects, I’m a little bit of a social worker,” he said.

The process of picking a new police chief for Ventura was quietly stalled in recent weeks by allegations that Tracy was part of a “good ol’ boys network” that created an atmosphere of sexual harassment and discrimination within the department.

But city officials said late last week that they had found those claims to be unfounded.

“I’ve heard criticisms of Mike and it’s part of the reason I wanted a full background check,” Landeros said last week. “But we’ve been doing this for the past four months now. If there was a smoking gun, I think it would have come up by now.

“Quite frankly, I expected to find something here,” Landeros said. “And I haven’t. We have pursued every allegation, and I haven’t found anything of substance.”

Sheriff Bob Brooks, who conducted the background check, said the accusations “complicated the background process.” Brooks said he interviewed 25 people in an effort to determine whether there was any truth to the discrimination and harassment accusations.

“It was far more extensive than what we normally do,” Brooks said in an earlier interview. “We were asked to look at any problematic area. Once we found that information out, we wanted to get to the bottom of it so there would not be any surprises for the city.”

Landeros said Tracy will be officially sworn in during the next two weeks. A date has not yet been set.

Times staff writer Tina Dirmann contributed to this story.