Magnus making friends in Calif.

I wonder if he made as many "friends" as he did at the I-Beam in Moorhead?

No matter how old you are, moving to another city can always be a difficult transition.

Just ask former Fargo Police Chief Chris Magnus.

Since he started as police chief in Richmond, Calif., in January 2006, his tenure has been marked with mostly negative press, until now.

In mid-January, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip Davis marked the beginning of the chief’s fourth year on the job by detailing his slow but steady rise in the eyes of his staff and the Bay-area community of Richmond.

Davis pointed out 2007 drops in violent crime

(14 percent), homicides (40 percent) and aggravated assault (21 percent).

Need some context for how rough Richmond can be? According to FBI 2007 crime statistics – the most recent available – the city of 102,000 recorded 1,220 violent crimes, 47 murders and 650 aggravated assaults.

By contrast, Fargo, with a population of 90,000, recorded 241 violent crimes, three murders and 150 aggravated assaults in the same period.

So what was Magnus’ secret weapon to effective policing? Speak louder? Carry a bigger stick? Parting his hair to the side?

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Magnus is getting big props for taking a different approach to the same problems, and a big part of it is listening to what the community really wanted.

A new plan split the city into three patrol areas. Officers were assigned to each section and charged with building relationships by better understanding that area, the piece explained.

“Cops have to be convinced they can be more productive, have a greater impact on crime and help people,” Magnus told Davis. “Because they can also be reduced to report-writers and paper-pushers – and we just want them to take greater ownership in what happens in their neighborhood.”

“Our priority was to stop shootings, loitering and armed robberies, but for some (community) people, the priorities were abandoned vehicles and homeless encampments near people’s back yards,” Sgt. Mike Wang said in the column. “We had to get out of our tunnel vision and listen – and we responded to the problem. … We established a trust and got more cooperation from residents because of it.”

Not all of Magnus’ 180 officers have seen eye to eye with the chief.

Just more than a year after he started, a group of eight black officers filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the chief. They allege he made racist comments including telling one, “Dance, jigaboo, dance.”

In the column, Magnus does not talk about the ongoing lawsuit, but has in the past denied the claims.

He wasn’t available for comment for this column.

When Magnus came to Fargo in 1999, he shook things up and took some knocks from the media and public for aggressive policing and things such as the party patrol. (Full disclosure: I was twice cited by the party patrol.)

But as his stay continued, critics came around and saw an effective cop.

Magnus’ stay in Richmond could depend on the outcome of the discrimination case, but it sounds like he’s fitting in.

http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/229716/
 

 

Posted by: KevindF on 2/01/2009 at 9:55 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink