Breaking Rank (56 page)

“And that would be . . .
you?”

He laughed. A big, honest laugh. Not a politician's laugh.

“You got it.” He went on to talk about his need to be kept informed, not surprised by his chief, and a number of other commonsense boss-subordinate stuff. All of it sounded reasonable, not micromanagerial—or megalomaniacal. When he finished, I asked him if he wanted to hear
my
expectations. Of him.

He stared at me, eyebrows raised. But I figured if he didn't want to hear what I had to say, as much as I hungered to be Seattle's chief, it just wouldn't be worth the trouble. Every subordinate has expectations of his or her boss—it's just that these expectations are so rarely communicated, and when they are it's usually after a blowup, and in angry, passive-aggressive ways. I waited for his answer.

“Well, sure,” he said. He sat back and listened.

I told him that if I were his chief I would expect him to: (1) keep his mitts off my vice, intelligence, and narcotics sections; (2) let me handle
all
internal discipline, no matter how hot it got for him (or for me); and (3) let my staff and me decide who got promoted and where they got assigned.

He nodded, then laughed again, something he would do often throughout our relationship. “I think I can meet those conditions,
boss.”

It was my turn to laugh.

“I've got one more,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Go for it.”

“I'd prefer not to get blindsided by some policy from the twelfth floor of city hall, or some big decision that affects the PD.”

He nodded. The look on his face suggested that he was able to picture himself in the role of police chief. “Agreed.”

I was on a roll, but decided against asking him if I could turn in the retiring chief's baby blue Buick LeSabre for a new company car. “Your
expectations make sense,” I said. “If you make me your chief I'll meet or exceed every one of them. And I'll make you proud that you picked me.”

Our relationship began inauspiciously. At a meeting with the editorial board of the
Seattle Times
, I was asked if I favored citizen review boards. I said yes. Seated to my right, the mayor said, “No, he doesn't.” It was our first disagreement, but far from our last. We disagreed often on budget issues. I wanted more cops, he wouldn't give them to me. I wanted a new work schedule for my cops, he wouldn't hear of it—not without union concessions. But Rice was absolutely true to his word, right down the line.

He gave me feedback on the performance of my chiefs and precinct commanders, word he'd heard from the street. But he never “recommended” anyone for promotion. He never asked me to put this captain here or that one there. He monitored vice, narcotics, and intelligence operations but never once interfered.
*
He held his tongue on internal discipline.

While we warred over budgets and work schedules, Rice came through for me when he provided (unbudgeted) funds that allowed me to equip my cops with semiautomatic weapons, bulletproof vests, and, with council support, computers for detectives. Time and again he ended touchy conversations with, “You're the chief.”

Put everyday mayor-chief tensions in the context of “differential” press attention (between egos like Giuliani's and Bratton's, for example) and you get a clear picture of the enormity of the challenge. Who gets the credit when things go well? Who gets the blame when they don't? With Rice, it was something I never thought about.

And he never blindsided me. I couldn't have asked for a better boss. We were a team, he and I. Seattle's public safety team.

It was not a happy day for me when Norm Rice decided not to run for a third term, but instead to throw his hat in the ring for governor (he lost in the primary to Gary Locke, the nation's first Chinese-American governor). To this day, my former boss and I get together for dinner a couple of times a year. It's always a treat, no matter who's buying.

Rice's decision to leave the mayor's office left me dangling. Who would be my new boss? How would we get along? One thing became clear during the primary: Jane Noland, a three-term city council member, saw herself as the next mayor, and she'd made it abundantly clear that, if elected, she'd replace me. Had she won, I'd have saved her the trouble.

The woman didn't care much for Rice, and for that reason alone had little use for me. It didn't look good. She had the strong backing of the police union, had raised a ton of money, and was considered the frontrunner. But she came in fourth in the primary, with 15.8 percent of the vote.

Paul Schell, a wealthy developer-architect-attorney, became my new boss in January 1998. He was brilliant. A deep thinker, well-traveled, a true visionary with plans to upgrade the city's infrastructure, add amenities, and solve Seattle's horrendous traffic congestion. He was a likable sort. We'd crossed paths a few times when he was on the campaign trail. I think we had a good feel for each other, and a good feeling about each other.

Between his victory and his inauguration we met for an “expectations” conversation similar to the one I'd had with Rice. Our first year together went well, each of us abiding by the terms of our unofficial contract. But in his second year things began to happen that would damage our relationship.

It started when he created a citizens panel to examine department policies in the wake of that “unfortunate incident” I mentioned earlier (the $10,000 theft by a homicide detective). The mayor was already populating the panel when he bothered to inform his police chief.
Blindsided.

In a nod to “bipartisanship,” Schell appointed Mike McKay, George W. Bush's Washington State campaign chair, to head the panel. Although the panel's “investigation” produced several solid recommendations (including one that at least marginally strengthened citizen review), it was badly handled from the beginning. Confidences were breached, files lost, inaccurate information leaked to the press, reputations damaged.

We got through the “scandal” but in November of '99 Schell poured a bucket of salt into my healing wounds. The “Battle of Seattle” over the WTO meeting was brewing. Y2K was threatening to halt transportation, paralyze ATM machines, cut heat to homes and businesses, freeze public
and private payrolls, and generally create massive chaos. It was a tough time for the two of us, but the mayor made it worse for everyone by publicly insulting my colleague, Sheriff Dave Reichert, and in the process damaging relations between the mayor's office and city and county law enforcement.

Schell became the first incumbent mayor since 1938 to lose a reelection bid in the primary. You don't have to be genius to conclude that he lost it because of WTO.

And “Mardi Gras.”

A year after I retired, the city's annual Pioneer Square celebration turned violent. I read about it, almost dispassionately, as a citizen at large. As usual, the streets were clogged, youthful knuckleheads using the opportunity to ogle and grope bared breasts. But on the last of four nights of celebration, following steadily escalating troubles, “Fat Tuesday” erupted into a full-scale riot. Gil Kerlikowske, the city's new police chief, pulled his cops out—much to their dismay. Whether he made that decision because it was “too dangerous” for his officers or because the police would have “further inflamed” the crowd, both of which theories were tossed around in the aftermath, it was a fatal mistake. Twenty-year-old Kristopher Kime witnessed a young woman being trampled by the crowd. When he went to her assistance he was struck in the head with a bottle, then kicked and stomped to death. While the cops watched, and the mayor slept.

Despite our philosophical differences, power struggles, and personality conflict, I took no pleasure in Paul Schell's downfall. He always wanted what was best for the city, and he had an exciting vision for Seattle's future. But he learned the hard way that the shortest route to failure in the mayor's office is to mishandle—or to be perceived as mishandling—public safety.

As Schell's experience proves, even mayors have bosses. Norm Rice and Paul Schell had 530,000 of them. Rudy Giuliani had eight million.

Prior to September 11, 2001, many New Yorkers entertained significant doubts about their mayor. Sure, he'd cleaned up the city, but at what cost to civil liberties? Crime was down, but citizen complaints were up. Giuliani used his clout, and the city's treasury, to censor art and needlessly antagonize liberals and civil libertarians. He fired a respected police commissioner
who'd made tangible crime-fighting progress—and who'd shown firmness in curtailing unlawful police practices.

With Bratton gone, the mayor installed at One Police Plaza a safe, acquiescent commissioner. Former fire commissioner Howard Safir was blindly obedient to Giuliani, a puppet, according to many NYPD cops. When Safir stepped down Guiliani replaced him with his former
driver.
Bernard Kerik was a hell of narcotics detective in his day, and his life story is gripping, truly inspiring. But what organizational or administrative skills led Guiliani to believe that Bernie Kerik was qualified to become, first the mayor's chief of corrections, and five minutes later, the head of the NYPD, the largest law enforcement agency in the country? In light of the hugely embarrassing, near disastrous appointment of Kerik as President Bush's director of Homeland Security, quickly withdrawn for “character” reasons, it's apparent that the mayor had also failed to vet his pal for either job. The mayor, with compliant commissioners in place, continued to jump to the automatic defense of police officers during a run of “tragic” incidents involving people of color—Louima, Diallo, Dorismond, et al.
*

Who knows? Had Giuliani been eligible to run for a third term, he very well may have lost. Remember, this was
before
9/11.

Like so many others throughout the world, I was extremely impressed and deeply moved by Rudolph Giuliani's leadership in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in 2001. Giuliani earned his day in the sun, and his own picture on the cover of
Time
, as “Person of the Year.” But we shouldn't lose sight of a painful, indisputable fact that speaks to Giuliani's failures in overseeing public safety in the years leading up to 9/11.

Had the mayor provided adequate budgetary support, particularly in radios and other communications equipment—and had he insisted that his
police and fire departments develop reliable means of communicating with one another—it is likely that lives would have been spared on 9/11. The former mayor's livid response to criticism and questions of his handling of these issues is unseemly: Over four hundred firefighters, police officers, and other emergency service providers perished on 9/11.