Police courtesy must be a given

COLUMN GOSIER E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times
published December 18, 2001

Barely three months after he took office, St. Petersburg police chief Mack Vines is prancing on hot coals after a comment that, at best, included a poor choice of words, and, at worst, was racially derogatory.

But beyond City Hall, where the seriousness of Vines' remarks are being evaluated, the coals his rhetoric has him dancing on are not of great concern. Of more import is the powder keg he sits on as police chief.

The city has a volatility his predecessor knew well, taking office as he did soon after it exploded.

Former chief Goliath Davis left some huge footprints at St. Petersburg's police department, some with the imprints of squashed toes he stepped on in the process.

But that was necessary. He took over a department that seemed content with the adversarial relationship it had with much of the city, a circumstance that was one of the major catalysts for several days of civil unrest.

Davis put his foot down. Hard.

Officers could no longer curse the people they served. They had to use common sense during vehicle stops, no longer allowed to stand behind or in front of a car while the driver was still in it, or reach inside to try to drag an uncooperative operator out, all tactics that often led to violent confrontations that gave officers an excuse for using deadly force. Davis' officers were forced, under threat of severe sanctions, to practice a defusing technique that seemed to have dropped out of the St. Petersburg police handbook: courtesy.

People who didn't follow the rules, and there were a few, suffered the consequences.

To do that, Davis had to step on some toes, and dodge not a few retaliatory punches thrown his way.

The result, however, was that the city was allowed to see what a tractable police force can be.

Then Davis took his nameplate off the door and walked down the street to City Hall to tackle another perennial problem, economic blight in the area formerly known as the south side.

Barely three months after Davis took his plaques off the wall at the police department, the footprints he left there don't appear as deep as they were. No one is actively running a grader over them to smooth them over. That would no longer be tolerated by a citizenry that, thanks to Davis, now knows how a police department is supposed to look.

It's more a case of an occasionally gusting wind of change slowly filling them in a few grains of sand at a time.

Cases of brash, confrontational behavior by officers keep cropping up; decisive punishment for them doesn't.

There is evidence of hedging on the vehicle approach policies, a retreat that left unchecked will inexorably lead to another episode like the one which involved TyRon Lewis.

The new chief is worried about exercising too much oversight over his officers.

Mack Vines should know better. No one should know better than he where a department that's not completely accountable can go. Vines has dealt with that very situation here before, and in Dallas and Charlotte, N.C.

Vines should realize more than anyone that the roughly 450 officers he has patrolling the city possess the same flaws, prejudices and imperfections as the rest of the population. And they also have guns and handcuffs and the authorization to use them. Vines, more than anyone, should know he has to manage that potential for abuse. Too much oversight should be on the second page of his concerns, pretty close to the bottom of it.

Vines will be judged by the actions of his officers. Period.

Even as question marks bracket him for using the word "orangutan" in describing to police personnel the actions of a black suspect being pulled from a vehicle, it is the actions of his officers that will define his administration.

Differing accounts of Vines' comment, and the city hadn't sorted through it all Thursday, according to employee relations director Gary Cornwell, make it hard to infer meaning beyond the basic one that it is generally imprudent and uncomplimentary to compare people to animals. It is doubly unfortunate when the person Vines was discussing is black and the animal is one that has been used in racial slurs for centuries.

Vines has conceded his poor selection of words, apologized to police personnel and proclaimed that his failing had more to do with semantics than ideology. The mayor needs to determine if his aides' investigation leads to the same conclusion.

If it doesn't, if it determines that there was more to Vines' comment than poor word choice, then Mayor Rick Baker needs to act immediately to prevent the poison from spreading throughout the department.

Throughout his campaign, Baker made it clear that he liked what Davis had done with the department and wanted to continue in that direction. He still does.

"I have made it clear that the way Chief Davis was running the department is the way I want it to run," he said Thursday.

Maybe Mack Vines listens more carefully than he speaks.

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