The Temp
On Monday, March 16, Mayor Greg Nickels will announce his choice for an acting police chief to fill the post while current chief Gil Kerlikowske heads to the other Washington to become White House “drug czar” and the search proceeds for a permanent replacement. The Great Mentioner, who previously tapped Kerlikowske for a high post in the Obama administration, now says that Deputy Chief John Diaz will get the temp top post and that two other members of Kerlikowske’s command staff, Deputy Chief Clark Kimerer and Assistant Chief Nick Metz, are prospects for the permanent job. That should please City Council members who must approve the appointment; Diaz has often reported to the council as the department’s operations chief and he’s seen as taking minority and accountability issues seriously and being open to admitting that cops are at fault, qualities that warm political hearts. But it probably won’t go down so well in the rank and file.
“I can only imagine one worse pick [among the current brass],” says one veteran officer, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity. Diaz, the officer says, doesn’t back up his officers and "can’t make a decision to save his life." Another SPD veteran echoes the complaints. Both recite a litany of alleged and rumored personal misconduct on Diaz’s part, mostly long before Kerlikowske arrived and promoted him to deputy chief, the department’s second-highest position.
As commander of the East Precinct in the late ’90s, then-Captain Diaz had a reputation for being unenergetic and disengaged from the community. His superiors lit a fire under him, and he got on the stick and out to community meetings.
Kimerer, by contrast, is widely seen as the smartest member of the command staff, and Metz as decent and trustworthy. But if the rank and file got to vote for a chief, they might pick a longtime commander whom Kerlikowske didn’t promote to the top ranks: Captain Dan Oliver, who currently heads the Special Investigations Bureau. “But there’s not a chance in hell,” says one of the veteran officers, regretfully. “Oliver is the type of commander who takes charge of a situation, has confidence in his subordinates, and allows him to do their job." And, when complaints come in, “he’d probably say, ‘Complaints? They’re going to happen, but we need to do our job.’”
If so, that may help explain why Oliver has languished at captain level; such talk evokes fears in political circles of a return to old hard-ass, racial-profiling days. Another reason: Oliver was for years president of the Seattle Police Management Association, which represents the captains and lieutenants and often makes common cause with the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild. Union activity is not a good path to promotion.
The Guild reached an entente with Kerlikowske early in his administration, but their relationship has since soured. About two weeks ago Guild president Rich O’Neill gave Mayor Nickels a “report card” on each member of the command staff, but he declines to disclose whom he gave As or Fs: “Whoever’s chosen, we’ll have to work with them.” O’Neill has however suggested in the past that the mayor look at the assistant chief and captain levels for chief-worthy talent. “It’s the mayor’s choice,” says O’Neill. “If he wants someone who will continue the status quo, that’s what he will get.
“But the ship needs to be righted. We need a shakeup.” If so, no one imagines that Chief Diaz is the one to provide it.
UPDATE On Monday, June 16, the Seattle Times reported that Diaz had accepted Nickels’ offer of the temporary chief’s job but that some officers were waging what Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis called an "unjust" effort to undermine him.
