The Seattle Times continues its series profiling the three remaining police chief candidates.

Today, we get a look at East Palo Alto chief Ronald Davis:

Davis took dangerous assignments, including undercover narcotics busts. In 1988, a cocaine dealer fired a .38-caliber revolver at Davis and missed, but the gun was so close that Davis got powder burns on his face.

Two years later, Davis and another officer shot and wounded a 15-year-old suspect who pointed a .22-caliber pistol at them.

Davis was awarded two medals of merit from the department, one for organizing a "reverse" drug sting in which undercover police targeted mostly white drug buyers who drove into black neighborhoods to buy cocaine.

"We were picking up doctors and lawyers," he recalled. "It really showed that the problem is not just rooted in a bad neighborhood; that it is more of a global problem."