How to Pick a Top Cop

The stunning fall of former Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo reveals a lot about the best way to select a police chief, and how not to do it.

Experts in policing and good government say it’s crucial for the process to be a public one that seeks the opinions of all the city’s communities. The kind of plan that Miami leaders started – and then abandoned – in selecting Acevedo.

“The process has to be a transparent one,” said Katy Sorenson, a onetime county commissioner who later led the Good Government Initiative at the University of Miami. “A procedure that the people can have some trust in.”

“Key questions need to be asked and need to be answered, and a process needs to be developed,” said Norm Stamper, a former Seattle police chief who wrote the acclaimed book “To Protect and Serve: How to Fix America’s Police.”

A selection committee “is a good idea,” Sorenson said, with input from all sides, including various racial and ethnic communities, to find someone who has “knowledge of trends in policing, with Black Lives Matter” being a crucial topic of any selection process these days.

Miami started its search for a new police chief with a process that had broad community input, at least in appearance. But then Mayor Francis Suarez and City Manager Art Noriega ignored their own procedures and appointed Acevedo, whom Suarez described at that time as the “Michael Jordan” of police chiefs.

Within months, Acevedo imploded after a broad range of missteps, including accusing judges and lawyers of aiding crime, using the phrase “Cuban Mafia,” firing some officers without due process and then – his death knell – accusing three city commissioners of hampering his police work. In the end, all five city commissioners voted to fire him.

The irony is Acevedo made changes that some Black leaders viewed as positive in changing an atmosphere that had caused years of federal oversight because of the high frequency of Miami police officers killing Black men.

“The chief has done a great job,” said Clarence Dickson, the city’s first Black police chief. “They were looking for a change-maker who could address the culture” that ran deep in the department, and Dickson believes Acevedo was doing that.

Still, in the way he got the job, Miami’s former top cop never obtained buy-in from the sectors of the community he needed most to do his job.

That’s why many advocate a thoughtful public process. Some go as far as pushing for elections. That’s what Miami-Dade County will do starting in November 2024, by electing a sheriff in a partisan Republican versus Democratic race – a process that was forced on the county by state politicians who pushed a statewide amendment to make Miami-Dade like all the other counties in Florida in electing its top law-enforcement official. That’s reversing the policy Miami-Dade voters decided on in the 1960s, after several sheriffs were found to be corrupt.

For most Florida cities, the police chief is selected by the mayor, city manager or its commission or council.

Miami's Sham Process

The task to select Miami’s new police chief began ordinarily enough. Ken Harms, a Miami police chief in the late 1970s and early ’80s, was part of a community advisory committee. He said a different committee, headed by longtime Coral Gables Police Chief Ed Hudak, reviewed three dozen applicants and narrowed the field to eight.

Those eight spoke in January to a committee that consisted of Harms, Dickson, a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union, a Hispanic former judge, a leading businessman and several others. The interviews were conducted in the city commission chambers and viewable by the public.

Still, Harms decried this session as “simply window dressing.”

The panel submitted questions in writing, and a few were picked by the city’s director of human resources, who gave each candidate 30 minutes to speak. Panelists weren’t allowed to question applicants directly, nor were they asked for their opinions of the candidates.

Harms had plenty of other criticisms of the process – he thought the best candidate didn’t make the final list, among other things – but he reserves his most vehement remarks for Suarez.

“I don't think [Suarez] had a clue what he was doing,” said Harms. “They set up the rules and then violated the rules. Acevedo didn’t even have an application (submitted) when he was selected. They did no background check. He absolutely should not have been considered.”

The eight finalists included five from inside the department and three outsiders, experienced cops from New York City, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Two finalists were Black.

Whatever deficiencies the process had, the candidates at least appeared in a public forum that was open to commissioners and others to hear. That meant the eight were invested in taking positions that could get Miamians to accept them. Acevedo didn’t go through that process. Because of that, Harms says, he didn’t have to learn what the community was seeking and was beholden to no one outside Suarez and Noriega.

What’s more, by circumventing the established process, the mayor and city manager turned those involved against Acevedo. Harms and perhaps others on the committee fed damaging information on Acevedo to city commissioners. Two of the finalists ended up testifying against Acevedo at his final commission hearing.

How to Get it Right

Abandoning a selection process is “asking for trouble” because it alienates all who went through the process said Stamper, a cop for three decades before becoming Seattle's chief. “When you get the rug pulled out from under you, you're not going to be happy. It's a way to make it very difficult for the new chief.”

Stamper believes the job of chief, especially in an era when officers’ actions can spark riots, “calls for the most competent leadership we can provide ... Police chiefs have the overarching responsibility to set a tone and provide transparency.”

Today’s chief needs to “listen attentively and respectfully to police critics as well as blind supporters,” said Stamper. “They attend community meetings, walk the beat, ride with their officers. They need interpersonal skills.”

Selecting such a person requires “very strong community participation, grassroots, civic leaders at the table,” including elected officials and law-enforcement critics, says Stamper.

Harms and Stamper point out selection groups can be aided by organizations designed to sift through applications and do background checks, such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Police Executive Research Forum.

In Seattle, Stamper says, he went through an elaborate, monthslong process that included a 22-member panel of community activists, civic leaders, business leaders, housing and homeless experts, police union representatives, a former judge and a crime prevention specialist. The final decision was ultimately the mayor’s, but city council members or their aides often monitored the proceedings.

The Perils of Being an Outsider

Stamper was an outsider from San Diego when he took on the role of Seattle’s police chief, and he knows that coming in cold to a new city can be a challenge. That’s especially true in Miami. Harms agrees.

“You have to be very careful bringing in someone who doesn’t know about the major ethnic groups, about the landmines, about the crazy politics,” he said.

Delrish Moss understands what it’s like to be an outsider, too. He was a major with Miami PD when he beat out more than 50 candidates to become the first Black chief of police in Ferguson, Mo., which was devastated by riots after a white officer killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed Black man, in 2014.

“It’s always difficult,” Moss said of coming from the outside. In Ferguson, officers were opposed to changes, and the community viewed him with suspicion.

He says he made an early misstep when he put a lion symbol on a police vehicle. For reasons he didn’t understand, the sign was viewed as an indication that he supported the officer who shot Brown. He ended up going door-to-door explaining his goals to local residents.

Moss, who spent two years in Ferguson before returning to Miami as a captain with the Florida International University police, said he didn’t want to comment on the Acevedo affair, but did share his belief that a good leader must be “learning to relate to people.”

Dickson believes Acevedo had one big advantage in that he wasn’t beholden to local politicians. He thinks Noriega was right in his decision to select Acevedo to fix “a long-standing problem that plagued and demoralized the Miami Police Department and the Black community in particular.”

Dickson, who earlier this year had the Miami Police Academy named after him, says changing the culture of a police department is “very hard.” He says he saw Acevedo dealing with matters directly – going to roll call, visiting classes in the academy – and explaining directly how important it is to treat all persons equally, and that’s why it was good an outsider was picked.

“Insiders don’t even realize about the culture, as racism just seeps into [it],” Dickson said. “Black officers are both sides of that. They’re overhearing the n-word in the headquarters. They’re a victim of it, and they’ve watched the Black community be a victim of it.”

That’s why many Black officers supported Acevedo, but the rest of the force did not.

Letting Voters Decide

In 2024, voters will see an entirely different process at the county level – the election of a sheriff. That’s because in 2018, Florida voters approved an amendment to the state constitution requiring Miami-Dade to join other counties in electing a sheriff. Most Miami-Dade political leaders opposed the move, fearing a return to the corruption that marred the office for decades when elected sheriffs were the order of the day.

County Commissioner Dennis Moss said at the time of the 2018 vote: “Our system safeguards the fact that there will be a professional law enforcement officer.”

Said Sorenson, “I think we might be in trouble. Do we want the person who has the best campaign consultant?”

“I don’t like it, personally,” said Dickson. “It can work, but history shows me it opens the doors for all sorts of problems.” People and businesses make big contributions to the candidates and “it’s almost like buying a sheriff. It invites too much chance for corruption.”

One enthusiastic supporter of the election is County Commissioner Joe Martinez, who spent 17 years with county police, rising to the rank of lieutenant. He’s frequently mentioned as a likely candidate.

“I’ve always thought that an election was the best way,” he told this reporter. Becoming sheriff would be “like going back home,” but he says he hasn’t decided whether yet to run. “I just turned 64, and I don’t know if I’d have that fire in my belly a year and a half down the line. The job I could easily do. I hate the campaigning.”

Martinez says he opposed the voters’ decision to make it a partisan Republican versus Democrat race, but he dismisses the idea that an elected sheriff would be too political compared to an appointed professional.

“Have you seen what’s going on in the city of Miami?” he asked.

Stamper says electing a sheriff works in many places, “But I'm vehemently opposed to a partisan situation," which is what Miami-Dade is headed to. “That makes it too political.”