The Major Cities Chiefs Association is an organization made up of police executives serving in 69 of the largest cities in the United States. By the Wall Street Journal’s count, chiefs in 18 of those cities have resigned, retired, been pushed out, or fired in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the protests it set off. Atlanta, Milwaukee, Seattle, Louisville, and Albuquerque are all on the list.
The hard number is another in a series of displays of just how bad the relationship is between police departments and elected city officials who have reflexively pushed for drastic change, and it’s further demonstrative of how undesirable it is to lead a department in that type of environment. “You couldn’t pay me enough to do the job,” Janeé Harteau, former police chief in Minneapolis, told the Wall Street Journal.
Police departments and city officials have even been facing off publicly. In September, amid nightly chaos in city streets, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler banned his police bureau from using CS gas for crowd control. The bureau put out a press release in response, saying “Police need all kinds of tools and resources to effectively respond to violence perpetrated by groups of people. Lately, it seems more tools have been taken away than added.”
Wheeler did not take kindly to it. “[The bureau’s] decision to put out a press release questioning my direction was a serious breach of protocol and an inappropriate use of City communications resources,” he said in a statement, according to the Portland Tribune. “I made it clear, in no uncertain terms, to the Chief that this cannot happen again.”
After Seattle’s City Council similarly banned the use of crowd control tools, Carmen Best, who was then the police chief, wrote a letter to business owners and residents saying, “Simply put, the legislation gives officers no ability to safely intercede to preserve property in the midst of a large, violent crowd.” Best announced her retirement in August after the city council voted to cut the police budget.
What no doubt makes police chiefs sour on the job, and what should be concerning to all, is how quickly elected officials have kneecapped police departments and begun slashing their budgets. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and the city council agreed seemingly overnight to reduce the city’s police budget, and the same happened in New York City. Seattle moved to reduce its police budget, and Minneapolis’s City Council voted to start dismantling the police department altogether.
Sylvia Moir, whose last day as chief in Tempe, Arizona, will be Oct. 25, explained the dynamic in telling the Wall Street Journal, “Local officials have very short windows to show change, and that is often inconsistent with real reform work,” she said. For these reasons, the chiefs are leaving, and cities are struggling to replace them. It’s no wonder why.
