Claremont has a new police chief. As we predicted, Paul Cooper has been named Police Chief. Rather than going outside for a chief, Claremont stayed with one of its own.
We remember Cooper as the man who with former Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy co-authored the 1999 staff report (open the PDF) justifying the city's proposal to have mental health professionals on call at city council meetings to monitor speakers. The reason? So that speakers deemed threats to public safety by the council or city manager could be silenced and removed. That should give you an ideal of Cooper's management style.
Cooper is a product of the Southard School of Business Management, meaning he can be counted on to surround himself with yes-men, and punish those who try to propose views and ideas that are different his own by giving them lower raises and by denying them promotion. As our piece on Philip Zimbardo and James Suroweicki indicated, this is generally guaranteed to design in institutional failure.
Hubris always precedes crisis, and Claremont is no exception. Write this down and put in an envelope: There will be another Landrum crisis. It is as inevitable as the fire that burned down the homes in Palmer Canyon. It's simply a function of fuel load and heat.
That mess was a byproduct of a system, of which Cooper was a part. When it happens, call Helaine Goldwater and thank her, if she's still around at that time. Goldwater, a former Police Commission Chair and a key Claremont 400 member, has been behind the push for Cooper. Goldwater and the 400 Cooper, who is a son of Claremont, because is will take the Police Department back to the Southard days.
Call current Mayor Peter Yao, too, when the crisis comes. He may still be on the council at that time. Yao, who was hired in large part in reaction to the Landrum incident, has stood by while the the Police Commission has been neutered and the Vehicle Stop Study was halted. Yao's backing of Cooper represents his bowing to the will of Goldwater and the 400.
One of the ironies of Will Bigham's Bulletin piece on the hiring is that Bigham writes:
The response to the [Landrum] shooting - including the two officers involved in the incident being named city employees of the year - led to charges of institutionalized racism and cast a pall over the department and City Hall.
So the answer to hire a key member of the institution to bring change to that agency's management culture?
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