I. THE ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT THROUGH 1994
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
1. A New Mayor and a New Push for Community Policing
Community policing thereby sputtered along slowly in Albany for about three years until 1994, when a new Mayor brought not only a broader vision for the effort, but also, and perhaps more important, greater credibility with the rank-and-file.
That Mayor was a man named Jerry Jennings, an Albany alderman for thirteen years who had long stood up for police interests against Whalen’s budget cuts.
Community policing had a direct connection to at least one of these battles, as Jennings joined one other alderman to oppose the Mayor when he shut down the Arbor Hill and South End substations.
Jennings did not represent either ward at the time, but he explains that as a school administrator (a position he had held since the 1970s), he “understood the importance” of these units, which he felt did an excellent job of holding the line against growing crime problems.
Moreover, when Whalen began pushing his new version of the outreach unit in 1991, Jennings felt that the efforts left much room for improvement.
“The community was crying for more,” he maintains.
Public safety was not the only area in which Jennings clashed with Whalen: Long something of a dissident who had insisted on the Common Council’s independence, Jennings alienated the party mainstream and became a pariah to many Democratic stalwarts.
For example, when he sought to defend his alderman’s position in 1989 elections, the party not only failed to endorse him, but it actively worked to disqualify his Democratic primary petition, forcing Jennings first to run a write-in campaign, and then, when he lost that campaign by seven votes, to run as an independent in the general election (which he won).
This history poised Jennings as a maverick candidate for mayor, and he found himself running against a well-financed candidate named Harold Joyce, who had the Democratic party’s endorsement and had only recently been the party’s chairman.
The contest was a highly unusual one for Albany: No one had upset the party pick for mayor since World War I, and even lesser races were still rarely contested.
But Jennings gradually assembled a diverse coalition of supporters who helped him win a close Democratic primary and then an easy victory in the general election.
Part of this coalition came from those who disapproved of Whalen’s reforms, including a number of Corning loyalists who felt Whalen had betrayed their patron’s legacy, as well as a few dissident ward leaders who lamented their declining clout in city decisions. 12
But Jennings also had strong support from organized labor, receiving endorsements from the Albany Permanent Professional Firefighters Association, its statewide parent organization, and the New York state police union.
The local Albany Police Officers’ Union declined to endorse either candidate, citing potential conflicts of interest if someone in a campaign became the target of an investigation. 13
But most Albany police officers clearly supported Jennings, who they were grateful to for his opposition to Whalen, and who was close friends with then-union president James Tuffey.
Substantively, Jennings ran on a mixture of issues, but public safety was among his most prominent themes.
“Crime was a major concern as I walked the neighborhoods, talked to people, and tried to become Mayor of the city,” Jennings explains.
“And it’s something that we quickly focused on.” 14
Jennings saw public safety as part of the larger issue of quality of life, which he considered indispensable for further economic development in the city.
At the same time, Jennings sought to build “community trust” in the police, primarily by increasing their visibility.
“You only do that [build trust] by maximizing the exposure of the men and women in the department,” Jennings explains.
In contrast with his opponent, who intended to commission a professional management study to make recommendations about the APD because he felt “it’s not the mayor’s job to run the police department,” Jennings laid out a fairly specific plan, arguing that a management study would be a waste of money that could better be spent on manpower.
Three proposals stood out in Jennings’s plan: First, he intended to add 25 officers as a way to increase patrols in the city.
Second, he intended to restructure the department’s management team by adding two new Assistant Chief positions and dividing accountability among them, by filling the long-vacant Deputy Chief slot, and by adding two “non-union” commanders who would ensure loyal, 24-hour supervision.
(At the time, the highest rank working nights was a Lieutenant, and the most important supervisors during days were Captains. Both ranks belonged to the same union, and Jennings and others felt this situation created a conflict. “That doesn’t work,” Jennings told an audience at the time. “Where’s the allegiance?”)
Finally, Jennings wanted to implement community policing department-wide, expanding foot patrols and creating a special unit focused on crime hot spots in the process.
Jennings estimated his plan’s cost at $1 Million, but he felt that the money could be raised by cuts in other areas (including reductions in overtime expenses within the police department) or, in a pinch, by raising taxes.
“It’s a matter of priorities,” Jennings told the crowd assembled to hear his proposal. 15
TO BE CONTINUED ...
HISTORY OF ALBANY POLICE
Re: HISTORY OF ALBANY POLICE
I. THE ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT THROUGH 1994
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
Robert Grebert and the Vision for Community Policing
Jennings wasted no time carrying out his proposals for the police department, filling the vacant Deputy Chief’s position in his first week on the job.
The man he appointed was a 42-year-old Lieutenant named Robert Grebert, who had started as a patrolman in the APD 20 years before and had served in the old neighborhood outreach units in the 1970s.
In fact, Jennings cited that experience, together with Grebert’s strong educational background, in his decision to appoint the Albany Lieutenant to the APD’s number 2 slot. 16
In any event, department insiders had for some time suspected that Jennings would appoint Grebert to the position, as he had been friendly with the mayoral candidate for a while and, together with union president Tuffey, he had apparently helped Jennings develop his strategy for the police department.
Grebert received a broad mandate for reform from Jennings, including scattered administrative issues like bringing overtime under control and reining in the APD’s special investigations unit.
But Grebert’s central charge was clearly to work with Chief Dale to expand the APD’s community policing program.
Indeed, Grebert remembers that if anything, Jennings’s initial resolve to put community policing in place struck him as too ambitious:
I get promoted to the Deputy Chief position and the first thing that happens is the Mayor says, “I want community policing and I want it next month.”
So (I said), “Whoa, wait, you can’t do this."
"This is really a major change in how we look at the organization and how the organization looks at itself, and this is not something we can do overnight."
"This really takes a generation of police officers to bring it about completely."
Grebert also felt that the department simply was not ready to embark on the effort immediately: He himself was among those most knowledgeable about community policing in the department, but he had only been exposed to it tangentially.
(His first exposure came during a session at the FBI Academy in 1989, a period when many in the law enforcement community were beginning to question the so-called “professional model” of policing and looking for alternatives. He had since followed its development in the literature and learned about it from colleagues in his role as an adjunct faculty member at two local colleges.)
As a result, he received support to spend some time at Michigan State University’s Center for Community Policing, where he was joined by another APD member; and a number of high-level APD administrators attended further training locally and through the Department of Justice’s Community Policing Consortium.
Grebert took away from this experience a better sense of what community policing entailed.
“I [was] at least beginning to get my own handle on some of the concepts,” he remembers.
Grebert particularly became convinced about the importance of giving officers a sense of responsibility for the areas they patrolled — something he felt the current assignment system did not accomplish.
[One of the] things that I think are incredibly important is the sense of ownership on the part of police officers: This is my neighborhood; this is where I work.
How dare you commit a burglary?
How dare you commit a robbery out here?
So this was really the first thing that we tried to work on is the sense of ownership or identification with a particular neighborhood.
The city used to be divided into eighteen patrol zones and two divisions.
You could come in to work on any given night and you could be in any one of those cars, you could be in any area in the city.
There was really no opportunity to develop the sense of ownership with a neighborhood.
Equally important, however, was convincing officers to pay attention to the full range of problems that arose in their beats — not just serious crime.
Grebert explains the importance of this idea with a reference to the New York City Police Department, which at the time was beginning to carry out its now-famous focus on quality of life issues.
I’m a big fan of NYPD.
I think they really made tremendous gains down there, and certainly what they’ve done with the broken windows idea . . . is a part of the proper message. 17
If the boys can hang around on the corner and smoke a joint, then it’s just a short step to stepping in and shoplifting a carton of cigarettes, and another little step to sticking the place up.
So when you send a message that there are consequences for your actions regardless of how unserious people might consider those actions — I think that's an important part of the message.
Grebert’s early forays into the community, which served to announce the department’s plans, confirmed that this focus made sense:
You’re in law enforcement for twenty years and you go and say, “OK, folks, what’s the problem in your neighborhood?”
In law enforcement, what do you expect to hear?
Burglary, robbery, rape, murder.
That’s not what we were hearing.
What we were hearing was, “The kids are out with the boom box all night,” and “The dope dealers are on the corner” — and those are essentially quality of life issues.
This focus would grow even stronger over time as it dovetailed with a citywide effort led by Jennings to improve quality of life in the city.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
Robert Grebert and the Vision for Community Policing
Jennings wasted no time carrying out his proposals for the police department, filling the vacant Deputy Chief’s position in his first week on the job.
The man he appointed was a 42-year-old Lieutenant named Robert Grebert, who had started as a patrolman in the APD 20 years before and had served in the old neighborhood outreach units in the 1970s.
In fact, Jennings cited that experience, together with Grebert’s strong educational background, in his decision to appoint the Albany Lieutenant to the APD’s number 2 slot. 16
In any event, department insiders had for some time suspected that Jennings would appoint Grebert to the position, as he had been friendly with the mayoral candidate for a while and, together with union president Tuffey, he had apparently helped Jennings develop his strategy for the police department.
Grebert received a broad mandate for reform from Jennings, including scattered administrative issues like bringing overtime under control and reining in the APD’s special investigations unit.
But Grebert’s central charge was clearly to work with Chief Dale to expand the APD’s community policing program.
Indeed, Grebert remembers that if anything, Jennings’s initial resolve to put community policing in place struck him as too ambitious:
I get promoted to the Deputy Chief position and the first thing that happens is the Mayor says, “I want community policing and I want it next month.”
So (I said), “Whoa, wait, you can’t do this."
"This is really a major change in how we look at the organization and how the organization looks at itself, and this is not something we can do overnight."
"This really takes a generation of police officers to bring it about completely."
Grebert also felt that the department simply was not ready to embark on the effort immediately: He himself was among those most knowledgeable about community policing in the department, but he had only been exposed to it tangentially.
(His first exposure came during a session at the FBI Academy in 1989, a period when many in the law enforcement community were beginning to question the so-called “professional model” of policing and looking for alternatives. He had since followed its development in the literature and learned about it from colleagues in his role as an adjunct faculty member at two local colleges.)
As a result, he received support to spend some time at Michigan State University’s Center for Community Policing, where he was joined by another APD member; and a number of high-level APD administrators attended further training locally and through the Department of Justice’s Community Policing Consortium.
Grebert took away from this experience a better sense of what community policing entailed.
“I [was] at least beginning to get my own handle on some of the concepts,” he remembers.
Grebert particularly became convinced about the importance of giving officers a sense of responsibility for the areas they patrolled — something he felt the current assignment system did not accomplish.
[One of the] things that I think are incredibly important is the sense of ownership on the part of police officers: This is my neighborhood; this is where I work.
How dare you commit a burglary?
How dare you commit a robbery out here?
So this was really the first thing that we tried to work on is the sense of ownership or identification with a particular neighborhood.
The city used to be divided into eighteen patrol zones and two divisions.
You could come in to work on any given night and you could be in any one of those cars, you could be in any area in the city.
There was really no opportunity to develop the sense of ownership with a neighborhood.
Equally important, however, was convincing officers to pay attention to the full range of problems that arose in their beats — not just serious crime.
Grebert explains the importance of this idea with a reference to the New York City Police Department, which at the time was beginning to carry out its now-famous focus on quality of life issues.
I’m a big fan of NYPD.
I think they really made tremendous gains down there, and certainly what they’ve done with the broken windows idea . . . is a part of the proper message. 17
If the boys can hang around on the corner and smoke a joint, then it’s just a short step to stepping in and shoplifting a carton of cigarettes, and another little step to sticking the place up.
So when you send a message that there are consequences for your actions regardless of how unserious people might consider those actions — I think that's an important part of the message.
Grebert’s early forays into the community, which served to announce the department’s plans, confirmed that this focus made sense:
You’re in law enforcement for twenty years and you go and say, “OK, folks, what’s the problem in your neighborhood?”
In law enforcement, what do you expect to hear?
Burglary, robbery, rape, murder.
That’s not what we were hearing.
What we were hearing was, “The kids are out with the boom box all night,” and “The dope dealers are on the corner” — and those are essentially quality of life issues.
This focus would grow even stronger over time as it dovetailed with a citywide effort led by Jennings to improve quality of life in the city.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: HISTORY OF ALBANY POLICE
I. THE ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT THROUGH 1994
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
Robert Grebert and the Vision for Community Policing, continued ...
The First Plan
Grebert sought to flesh out this vision by crafting a long-range plan, one that would lay out the specific reforms needed to make this version of community policing a reality.
To be sure, the newly-minted Deputy Chief was realistic enough to recognize that Albany politics could easily overwhelm a naïve and overly ambitious plan; he explains:
Given the way the city worked, you could never run a strategic plan — a three year plan, a five year plan.
It would be futile because you couldn’t stick to it. . . .
This is such a political environment that the minute some stakeholder group began to yip about something, we’d be modifying that strategic plan, and then somebody else would begin their yipping and you’d have to modify it again to where it became the point that you didn’t have a plan. 18
Nevertheless, Grebert apparently felt that it was possible and helpful to lay out some sense of the direction that community policing would entail, even if it were not a detailed “five year plan” that programmed every element of reform.
To that end, Grebert put together a “transition team” made up of fifteen officers from different parts of the department, asking each to outline necessary changes that would orient their unit towards community policing.
(At the time, some criticized the planning effort for failing to involve the community, but Grebert insists that the group met with Neighborhood Associations, and in any case he was happy with the results.)
Some of the team members came with Grebert to local seminars on the subject, and all reviewed the literature collected from these events and Michigan State.
The document that emerged in the fall of 1994 laid out an ambitious plan to restructure the entire Albany Police Department.
Patrol would undergo the biggest changes: The department’s two divisions would give way to six geographic sectors, and officers would have constant assignments to a particular sector until they bid into a new one.
This arrangement, the planners hoped, would not only provide the sense of ownership that Grebert viewed as crucial, but it would also create teams of officers who could meet regularly to discuss troublespots in their areas.
The sector cars would be supplemented by 20 zones of foot patrol officers that were drawn, according to Grebert, according to “unofficial neighborhood boundaries” in those areas where foot patrol seemed appropriate (Grebert explained this decision to a newspaper reporter by saying, “In areas where the social life is in the family room or the backyard pool, foot patrol doesn’t work. In areas where the social life happens on the street corner and the porch, foot patrol is the ticket.”19)
In his eyes, foot patrol had always been a valuable tool, and he looked forward to bringing it back to Albany.
“I’ve always been a believer in foot patrol,” he explains.
I don’t think there’s anything more reassuring to a citizen who’s looking out her front window than seeing a cop walk down the street.
Can he answer as many calls?
No.
Can he make as many arrests?
No.
But it’s an information-gathering tool, [and] it’s a tool that makes people perceive themselves as being safer when they see that.
Each zone was to be staffed with a single officer who would serve as “an ombudsman of positive change in the neighborhoods he patrols.”
With flexible schedules and minimal 911 responsibilities, these officers would have ample opportunity to get to know their assigned communities and the conditions that most concerned them.
The plan made a special effort to clarify the scope of concerns that these officers might encounter:
The Foot Patrol Officer should be attentive to all types of community problems and concerns ranging from criminality to parking violations and including such things as vacant buildings in need of stabilization, pavement in disrepair, speeding on neighborhood streets, debris strewn lots, abandoned cars, elderly persons in need of assistance, etc. (p. 4)
Finally, the plan particularly encouraged foot patrol officers to access other city agencies for help dealing with these problems, calling for the department to authorize them to make the necessary contacts.
The foot patrol officers would be managed by a Lieutenant (who would in turn report directly to “a person above the rank of Captain who has the responsibility of overseeing Community Policing”), but he would act more as their support staff than their supervisor, helping the officers by following up on their requests to other agencies and departmental units, bringing serious crimes on their beats to their attention, and maintaining files on neighborhood and business groups.
Other units would undergo less dramatic transformations, but all were affected in some way.
Detectives, for example, would for the most part begin assigning cases by sector rather than by incident type, allowing them to get a better overall picture of crime patterns in individual neighborhoods.
(The main exceptions were illegalities like white collar crime, which was felt to have a citywide rather than a neighborhood character — for example, these criminals often committed crimes at banks far away from their own neighborhoods.)
The Administrative Services Bureau, charged with jobs like evaluation of the entire effort, would be expanded by three positions, including two in the training division, which would see its duties grow exponentially: Not only would the community policing effort demand significant training for all staff at its inception, but the department would also have to revise its curriculum for recruits, and it would need to train volunteers to perform outreach duties.
Finally, the plan gave all units a mandate for improved coordination, calling, for example, for SIU to include foot patrol officers in drug raids.
In the deliberations that underlay the report and the reactions to it when it was released, a few areas of controversy turned up.
First of all, while the report proposed that the foot patrol officers would walk one-man beats, officers themselves insisted that many areas were too dangerous for that; as a compromise, the plan allowed some officers in adjacent zones to walk together.
Second and more important were disagreements about how to fill new assignments like the foot beats: Management wanted to use the so-called review board process, which governed special assignments like detectives or the traffic unit and gave the Chief significant say in who got particular jobs.
The union, however, insisted that the positions should be filled through the seniority-based bid system.
Despite its misgivings, management conceded to officer demands on this issue, and in return the union agreed to the proposed flexibility in the foot patrol officers’ hours. 20
(The existing union contract required fixed schedules for officers, but the union agreed to make an exception for the foot patrol officers, who would be allowed to flex their own schedules with supervisory approval, and who would sometimes be ordered to work different hours when the need arose.)
TO BE CONTINUED ...
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
Robert Grebert and the Vision for Community Policing, continued ...
The First Plan
Grebert sought to flesh out this vision by crafting a long-range plan, one that would lay out the specific reforms needed to make this version of community policing a reality.
To be sure, the newly-minted Deputy Chief was realistic enough to recognize that Albany politics could easily overwhelm a naïve and overly ambitious plan; he explains:
Given the way the city worked, you could never run a strategic plan — a three year plan, a five year plan.
It would be futile because you couldn’t stick to it. . . .
This is such a political environment that the minute some stakeholder group began to yip about something, we’d be modifying that strategic plan, and then somebody else would begin their yipping and you’d have to modify it again to where it became the point that you didn’t have a plan. 18
Nevertheless, Grebert apparently felt that it was possible and helpful to lay out some sense of the direction that community policing would entail, even if it were not a detailed “five year plan” that programmed every element of reform.
To that end, Grebert put together a “transition team” made up of fifteen officers from different parts of the department, asking each to outline necessary changes that would orient their unit towards community policing.
(At the time, some criticized the planning effort for failing to involve the community, but Grebert insists that the group met with Neighborhood Associations, and in any case he was happy with the results.)
Some of the team members came with Grebert to local seminars on the subject, and all reviewed the literature collected from these events and Michigan State.
The document that emerged in the fall of 1994 laid out an ambitious plan to restructure the entire Albany Police Department.
Patrol would undergo the biggest changes: The department’s two divisions would give way to six geographic sectors, and officers would have constant assignments to a particular sector until they bid into a new one.
This arrangement, the planners hoped, would not only provide the sense of ownership that Grebert viewed as crucial, but it would also create teams of officers who could meet regularly to discuss troublespots in their areas.
The sector cars would be supplemented by 20 zones of foot patrol officers that were drawn, according to Grebert, according to “unofficial neighborhood boundaries” in those areas where foot patrol seemed appropriate (Grebert explained this decision to a newspaper reporter by saying, “In areas where the social life is in the family room or the backyard pool, foot patrol doesn’t work. In areas where the social life happens on the street corner and the porch, foot patrol is the ticket.”19)
In his eyes, foot patrol had always been a valuable tool, and he looked forward to bringing it back to Albany.
“I’ve always been a believer in foot patrol,” he explains.
I don’t think there’s anything more reassuring to a citizen who’s looking out her front window than seeing a cop walk down the street.
Can he answer as many calls?
No.
Can he make as many arrests?
No.
But it’s an information-gathering tool, [and] it’s a tool that makes people perceive themselves as being safer when they see that.
Each zone was to be staffed with a single officer who would serve as “an ombudsman of positive change in the neighborhoods he patrols.”
With flexible schedules and minimal 911 responsibilities, these officers would have ample opportunity to get to know their assigned communities and the conditions that most concerned them.
The plan made a special effort to clarify the scope of concerns that these officers might encounter:
The Foot Patrol Officer should be attentive to all types of community problems and concerns ranging from criminality to parking violations and including such things as vacant buildings in need of stabilization, pavement in disrepair, speeding on neighborhood streets, debris strewn lots, abandoned cars, elderly persons in need of assistance, etc. (p. 4)
Finally, the plan particularly encouraged foot patrol officers to access other city agencies for help dealing with these problems, calling for the department to authorize them to make the necessary contacts.
The foot patrol officers would be managed by a Lieutenant (who would in turn report directly to “a person above the rank of Captain who has the responsibility of overseeing Community Policing”), but he would act more as their support staff than their supervisor, helping the officers by following up on their requests to other agencies and departmental units, bringing serious crimes on their beats to their attention, and maintaining files on neighborhood and business groups.
Other units would undergo less dramatic transformations, but all were affected in some way.
Detectives, for example, would for the most part begin assigning cases by sector rather than by incident type, allowing them to get a better overall picture of crime patterns in individual neighborhoods.
(The main exceptions were illegalities like white collar crime, which was felt to have a citywide rather than a neighborhood character — for example, these criminals often committed crimes at banks far away from their own neighborhoods.)
The Administrative Services Bureau, charged with jobs like evaluation of the entire effort, would be expanded by three positions, including two in the training division, which would see its duties grow exponentially: Not only would the community policing effort demand significant training for all staff at its inception, but the department would also have to revise its curriculum for recruits, and it would need to train volunteers to perform outreach duties.
Finally, the plan gave all units a mandate for improved coordination, calling, for example, for SIU to include foot patrol officers in drug raids.
In the deliberations that underlay the report and the reactions to it when it was released, a few areas of controversy turned up.
First of all, while the report proposed that the foot patrol officers would walk one-man beats, officers themselves insisted that many areas were too dangerous for that; as a compromise, the plan allowed some officers in adjacent zones to walk together.
Second and more important were disagreements about how to fill new assignments like the foot beats: Management wanted to use the so-called review board process, which governed special assignments like detectives or the traffic unit and gave the Chief significant say in who got particular jobs.
The union, however, insisted that the positions should be filled through the seniority-based bid system.
Despite its misgivings, management conceded to officer demands on this issue, and in return the union agreed to the proposed flexibility in the foot patrol officers’ hours. 20
(The existing union contract required fixed schedules for officers, but the union agreed to make an exception for the foot patrol officers, who would be allowed to flex their own schedules with supervisory approval, and who would sometimes be ordered to work different hours when the need arose.)
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: HISTORY OF ALBANY POLICE
I. THE ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT THROUGH 1994
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
2. A New Chief for Albany
Before the new effort could make much headway, dissent broke out in the department after Chief Dale’s February, 1995 announcement that he would retire, explaining only that he was “in the 37th year in my profession, and when it’s time to go, you know it.” 21
The problem was Jennings’s choice for a replacement — State Police Sergeant Kevin Tuffey, brother of the department’s recently-departed union president, and a long-time friend of the Mayor’s.
Union leaders were up in arms about the choice even before Jennings formally announced it (like Dale’s retirement, the appointment of Tuffey had been rumored for months).
Albany had not made an outsider Police Chief in over a hundred years, and the Civil Service Commission — prompted by Jennings and opposed by the police union — had only made it possible to do so a few months earlier, adding language to the position’s job requirements that would allow candidates to have “equivalent experience in a municipal or State Police unit within the state of New York.”
In any case, union leaders accused Jennings of cronyism for appointing his long-time friend, and they insisted that Deputy Chief Grebert was the most qualified man for the position.
“I don’t think Kevin Tuffey is up to the job,” then-union president and APD Detective James Galante told a Times-Union reporter at the time.
“He has no urban policing experience, [and] I don’t feel that [he] has a real feel for the goings-on in the city of Albany."
"I believe the people we have are more qualified and experienced and educated.” 22
Regardless of Tuffey’s qualifications, union leaders and others (including two Common Council members) criticized the fact that there would be no formal search process at all for the important post.
When Jennings finally made the appointment official in a March, 1995 press release, he defended his choice of Tuffey as someone who would bring “loyal, progressive leadership” to the APD, insisting that he selected Tuffey “not because I am his friend or because I do not recognize the talent that exists within the Albany Police Department, but because he shares my vision for the future of the department and he has the experience, energy, and qualifications to implement it.” 23
“As an elected official, you go with your gut, and I went with my gut,” Jennings explains of the appointment today.
“I was confident that he would be forthright and up front with me, and tell me, ‘You’re wrong.'"
"'You’re right.’. . . ."
"I went with someone that I was confident in, that would be someone that would work with the present police structure and change it if appropriate.”
Jennings also points to Tuffey’s experience with the State Police, which had given him experience in its own fledgling community policing program, and which had helped him to develop strong connections in regional law enforcement circles.
Local media at the time made much of the fact that Tuffey and Jennings were close friends, and some commentators suggested that Jennings appointed him for that reason — a suggestion that Jennings rejects.
But while the media interpreted the friendship through the lens of “cronyism,” Tuffey argues that his close association with the Mayor meant that the two shared a view about the challenges facing law enforcement.
“The Mayor and I have been friends for a long time,” Tuffey explains.
“So we would always sit and talk about visions, and about where we thought the Police Department should go, and what I thought."
"And we would sit and talk for hours.”
Tuffey remembers several recurrent themes in these discussions, including the importance of training in police work and what he saw as problems with the APD’s command structure.
But at the broadest level, he simply tried to convey his underlying convictions about policing:
The problem with police work is it changes but it’s the same.
Faces, names, and places change, but basically it’s the same.
I mean, a robbery is a robbery, a burglary is a burglary, and a homicide is a homicide.
You investigate them all the same way, basically — there are certain steps you take.
And every homicide is different, every robbery has a little different quirk to it or whatever you want to call it.
But basically, you investigate them the same.
This idea was particularly important for his conception of community policing, which he and Jennings also discussed in their conversations.
“Community policing is — again, I mean call it community policing, call it what you want: All it is just doing regular, honest, basic police work,” Tuffey explains.
For example, for Tuffey, foot patrol is “getting back in touch with the community.”
The basic principle of a beat cop is, you walk up and down your certain area.
You get to know who the people are.
You help them.
They trust you.
You build a bond with them, and when they have a problem, you take care of it.
Whether the problem is loud music in this day and age, whether it be litter, whether it be a code enforcement problem for your neighbor.
It hasn’t changed.
The only thing that has changed is the way the police agencies have handled it, based on different factors. . . .
If you have higher manpower you can do more: You can put more beat officers out; you can put more police cars out . . .
[But] the basic principle of taking care of the people and doing some things never changes . . . .
You arrest people when you have to.
If Mrs. Jones cat is up a tree, try to get the cat out of there.
If she has a burglary, investigate it and try to arrest the perpetrator.
If Mrs. Jones has fallen down in her house, you go in and try to get her out and get her whatever help she needs.
If Mrs. Jones or Mr. Jones is senile and nobody is taking care of them, you get a hold of the proper social service agency to take care of them.
That’s all police work is.
You know, people always see . . . TV shows and they say all you do is run around every day and arrest people and all that stuff.
That’s not really what it is.
Thus over the course of years of conversations like these — including discussions about Jennings’s plans to run for mayor — the two men came to share important aspects of their vision for the APD.
Moreover, beyond the question of personal loyalty came from a long-time friendship, Tuffey recognized that it was his job to carry out the Mayor’s vision: “If I’m not following his philosophy, you know what?"
"I’m not going to be here,” Tuffey explains.
“Whether he and I were personal friends, or whether he just hired me, I will tell you the exact same thing.” 24
TO BE CONTINUED ...
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
2. A New Chief for Albany
Before the new effort could make much headway, dissent broke out in the department after Chief Dale’s February, 1995 announcement that he would retire, explaining only that he was “in the 37th year in my profession, and when it’s time to go, you know it.” 21
The problem was Jennings’s choice for a replacement — State Police Sergeant Kevin Tuffey, brother of the department’s recently-departed union president, and a long-time friend of the Mayor’s.
Union leaders were up in arms about the choice even before Jennings formally announced it (like Dale’s retirement, the appointment of Tuffey had been rumored for months).
Albany had not made an outsider Police Chief in over a hundred years, and the Civil Service Commission — prompted by Jennings and opposed by the police union — had only made it possible to do so a few months earlier, adding language to the position’s job requirements that would allow candidates to have “equivalent experience in a municipal or State Police unit within the state of New York.”
In any case, union leaders accused Jennings of cronyism for appointing his long-time friend, and they insisted that Deputy Chief Grebert was the most qualified man for the position.
“I don’t think Kevin Tuffey is up to the job,” then-union president and APD Detective James Galante told a Times-Union reporter at the time.
“He has no urban policing experience, [and] I don’t feel that [he] has a real feel for the goings-on in the city of Albany."
"I believe the people we have are more qualified and experienced and educated.” 22
Regardless of Tuffey’s qualifications, union leaders and others (including two Common Council members) criticized the fact that there would be no formal search process at all for the important post.
When Jennings finally made the appointment official in a March, 1995 press release, he defended his choice of Tuffey as someone who would bring “loyal, progressive leadership” to the APD, insisting that he selected Tuffey “not because I am his friend or because I do not recognize the talent that exists within the Albany Police Department, but because he shares my vision for the future of the department and he has the experience, energy, and qualifications to implement it.” 23
“As an elected official, you go with your gut, and I went with my gut,” Jennings explains of the appointment today.
“I was confident that he would be forthright and up front with me, and tell me, ‘You’re wrong.'"
"'You’re right.’. . . ."
"I went with someone that I was confident in, that would be someone that would work with the present police structure and change it if appropriate.”
Jennings also points to Tuffey’s experience with the State Police, which had given him experience in its own fledgling community policing program, and which had helped him to develop strong connections in regional law enforcement circles.
Local media at the time made much of the fact that Tuffey and Jennings were close friends, and some commentators suggested that Jennings appointed him for that reason — a suggestion that Jennings rejects.
But while the media interpreted the friendship through the lens of “cronyism,” Tuffey argues that his close association with the Mayor meant that the two shared a view about the challenges facing law enforcement.
“The Mayor and I have been friends for a long time,” Tuffey explains.
“So we would always sit and talk about visions, and about where we thought the Police Department should go, and what I thought."
"And we would sit and talk for hours.”
Tuffey remembers several recurrent themes in these discussions, including the importance of training in police work and what he saw as problems with the APD’s command structure.
But at the broadest level, he simply tried to convey his underlying convictions about policing:
The problem with police work is it changes but it’s the same.
Faces, names, and places change, but basically it’s the same.
I mean, a robbery is a robbery, a burglary is a burglary, and a homicide is a homicide.
You investigate them all the same way, basically — there are certain steps you take.
And every homicide is different, every robbery has a little different quirk to it or whatever you want to call it.
But basically, you investigate them the same.
This idea was particularly important for his conception of community policing, which he and Jennings also discussed in their conversations.
“Community policing is — again, I mean call it community policing, call it what you want: All it is just doing regular, honest, basic police work,” Tuffey explains.
For example, for Tuffey, foot patrol is “getting back in touch with the community.”
The basic principle of a beat cop is, you walk up and down your certain area.
You get to know who the people are.
You help them.
They trust you.
You build a bond with them, and when they have a problem, you take care of it.
Whether the problem is loud music in this day and age, whether it be litter, whether it be a code enforcement problem for your neighbor.
It hasn’t changed.
The only thing that has changed is the way the police agencies have handled it, based on different factors. . . .
If you have higher manpower you can do more: You can put more beat officers out; you can put more police cars out . . .
[But] the basic principle of taking care of the people and doing some things never changes . . . .
You arrest people when you have to.
If Mrs. Jones cat is up a tree, try to get the cat out of there.
If she has a burglary, investigate it and try to arrest the perpetrator.
If Mrs. Jones has fallen down in her house, you go in and try to get her out and get her whatever help she needs.
If Mrs. Jones or Mr. Jones is senile and nobody is taking care of them, you get a hold of the proper social service agency to take care of them.
That’s all police work is.
You know, people always see . . . TV shows and they say all you do is run around every day and arrest people and all that stuff.
That’s not really what it is.
Thus over the course of years of conversations like these — including discussions about Jennings’s plans to run for mayor — the two men came to share important aspects of their vision for the APD.
Moreover, beyond the question of personal loyalty came from a long-time friendship, Tuffey recognized that it was his job to carry out the Mayor’s vision: “If I’m not following his philosophy, you know what?"
"I’m not going to be here,” Tuffey explains.
“Whether he and I were personal friends, or whether he just hired me, I will tell you the exact same thing.” 24
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: HISTORY OF ALBANY POLICE
I. THE ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT THROUGH 1994
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
2. A New Chief for Albany
Before the new effort could make much headway, dissent broke out in the department after Chief Dale’s February, 1995 announcement that he would retire, explaining only that he was “in the 37th year in my profession, and when it’s time to go, you know it.” 21
The problem was Jennings’s choice for a replacement — State Police Sergeant Kevin Tuffey, brother of the department’s recently-departed union president, and a long-time friend of the Mayor’s.
Union leaders were up in arms about the choice even before Jennings formally announced it (like Dale’s retirement, the appointment of Tuffey had been rumored for months).
Albany had not made an outsider Police Chief in over a hundred years, and the Civil Service Commission — prompted by Jennings and opposed by the police union — had only made it possible to do so a few months earlier, adding language to the position’s job requirements that would allow candidates to have “equivalent experience in a municipal or State Police unit within the state of New York.”
In any case, union leaders accused Jennings of cronyism for appointing his long-time friend, and they insisted that Deputy Chief Grebert was the most qualified man for the position.
“I don’t think Kevin Tuffey is up to the job,” then-union president and APD Detective James Galante told a Times-Union reporter at the time.
“He has no urban policing experience, [and] I don’t feel that [he] has a real feel for the goings-on in the city of Albany."
"I believe the people we have are more qualified and experienced and educated.” 22
Regardless of Tuffey’s qualifications, union leaders and others (including two Common Council members) criticized the fact that there would be no formal search process at all for the important post.
When Jennings finally made the appointment official in a March, 1995 press release, he defended his choice of Tuffey as someone who would bring “loyal, progressive leadership” to the APD, insisting that he selected Tuffey “not because I am his friend or because I do not recognize the talent that exists within the Albany Police Department, but because he shares my vision for the future of the department and he has the experience, energy, and qualifications to implement it.” 23
“As an elected official, you go with your gut, and I went with my gut,” Jennings explains of the appointment today.
“I was confident that he would be forthright and up front with me, and tell me, ‘You’re wrong.'"
"'You’re right.’. . . ."
"I went with someone that I was confident in, that would be someone that would work with the present police structure and change it if appropriate.”
Jennings also points to Tuffey’s experience with the State Police, which had given him experience in its own fledgling community policing program, and which had helped him to develop strong connections in regional law enforcement circles.
Local media at the time made much of the fact that Tuffey and Jennings were close friends, and some commentators suggested that Jennings appointed him for that reason — a suggestion that Jennings rejects.
But while the media interpreted the friendship through the lens of “cronyism,” Tuffey argues that his close association with the Mayor meant that the two shared a view about the challenges facing law enforcement.
“The Mayor and I have been friends for a long time,” Tuffey explains.
“So we would always sit and talk about visions, and about where we thought the Police Department should go, and what I thought."
"And we would sit and talk for hours.”
Tuffey remembers several recurrent themes in these discussions, including the importance of training in police work and what he saw as problems with the APD’s command structure.
But at the broadest level, he simply tried to convey his underlying convictions about policing:
The problem with police work is it changes but it’s the same.
Faces, names, and places change, but basically it’s the same.
I mean, a robbery is a robbery, a burglary is a burglary, and a homicide is a homicide.
You investigate them all the same way, basically — there are certain steps you take.
And every homicide is different, every robbery has a little different quirk to it or whatever you want to call it.
But basically, you investigate them the same.
This idea was particularly important for his conception of community policing, which he and Jennings also discussed in their conversations.
“Community policing is — again, I mean call it community policing, call it what you want: All it is just doing regular, honest, basic police work,” Tuffey explains.
For example, for Tuffey, foot patrol is “getting back in touch with the community.”
The basic principle of a beat cop is, you walk up and down your certain area.
You get to know who the people are.
You help them.
They trust you.
You build a bond with them, and when they have a problem, you take care of it.
Whether the problem is loud music in this day and age, whether it be litter, whether it be a code enforcement problem for your neighbor.
It hasn’t changed.
The only thing that has changed is the way the police agencies have handled it, based on different factors. . . .
If you have higher manpower you can do more: You can put more beat officers out; you can put more police cars out . . .
[But] the basic principle of taking care of the people and doing some things never changes . . . .
You arrest people when you have to.
If Mrs. Jones cat is up a tree, try to get the cat out of there.
If she has a burglary, investigate it and try to arrest the perpetrator.
If Mrs. Jones has fallen down in her house, you go in and try to get her out and get her whatever help she needs.
If Mrs. Jones or Mr. Jones is senile and nobody is taking care of them, you get a hold of the proper social service agency to take care of them.
That’s all police work is.
You know, people always see . . . TV shows and they say all you do is run around every day and arrest people and all that stuff.
That’s not really what it is.
Thus over the course of years of conversations like these — including discussions about Jennings’s plans to run for mayor — the two men came to share important aspects of their vision for the APD.
Moreover, beyond the question of personal loyalty came from a long-time friendship, Tuffey recognized that it was his job to carry out the Mayor’s vision: “If I’m not following his philosophy, you know what?"
"I’m not going to be here,” Tuffey explains.
“Whether he and I were personal friends, or whether he just hired me, I will tell you the exact same thing.” 24
TO BE CONTINUED ...
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
2. A New Chief for Albany
Before the new effort could make much headway, dissent broke out in the department after Chief Dale’s February, 1995 announcement that he would retire, explaining only that he was “in the 37th year in my profession, and when it’s time to go, you know it.” 21
The problem was Jennings’s choice for a replacement — State Police Sergeant Kevin Tuffey, brother of the department’s recently-departed union president, and a long-time friend of the Mayor’s.
Union leaders were up in arms about the choice even before Jennings formally announced it (like Dale’s retirement, the appointment of Tuffey had been rumored for months).
Albany had not made an outsider Police Chief in over a hundred years, and the Civil Service Commission — prompted by Jennings and opposed by the police union — had only made it possible to do so a few months earlier, adding language to the position’s job requirements that would allow candidates to have “equivalent experience in a municipal or State Police unit within the state of New York.”
In any case, union leaders accused Jennings of cronyism for appointing his long-time friend, and they insisted that Deputy Chief Grebert was the most qualified man for the position.
“I don’t think Kevin Tuffey is up to the job,” then-union president and APD Detective James Galante told a Times-Union reporter at the time.
“He has no urban policing experience, [and] I don’t feel that [he] has a real feel for the goings-on in the city of Albany."
"I believe the people we have are more qualified and experienced and educated.” 22
Regardless of Tuffey’s qualifications, union leaders and others (including two Common Council members) criticized the fact that there would be no formal search process at all for the important post.
When Jennings finally made the appointment official in a March, 1995 press release, he defended his choice of Tuffey as someone who would bring “loyal, progressive leadership” to the APD, insisting that he selected Tuffey “not because I am his friend or because I do not recognize the talent that exists within the Albany Police Department, but because he shares my vision for the future of the department and he has the experience, energy, and qualifications to implement it.” 23
“As an elected official, you go with your gut, and I went with my gut,” Jennings explains of the appointment today.
“I was confident that he would be forthright and up front with me, and tell me, ‘You’re wrong.'"
"'You’re right.’. . . ."
"I went with someone that I was confident in, that would be someone that would work with the present police structure and change it if appropriate.”
Jennings also points to Tuffey’s experience with the State Police, which had given him experience in its own fledgling community policing program, and which had helped him to develop strong connections in regional law enforcement circles.
Local media at the time made much of the fact that Tuffey and Jennings were close friends, and some commentators suggested that Jennings appointed him for that reason — a suggestion that Jennings rejects.
But while the media interpreted the friendship through the lens of “cronyism,” Tuffey argues that his close association with the Mayor meant that the two shared a view about the challenges facing law enforcement.
“The Mayor and I have been friends for a long time,” Tuffey explains.
“So we would always sit and talk about visions, and about where we thought the Police Department should go, and what I thought."
"And we would sit and talk for hours.”
Tuffey remembers several recurrent themes in these discussions, including the importance of training in police work and what he saw as problems with the APD’s command structure.
But at the broadest level, he simply tried to convey his underlying convictions about policing:
The problem with police work is it changes but it’s the same.
Faces, names, and places change, but basically it’s the same.
I mean, a robbery is a robbery, a burglary is a burglary, and a homicide is a homicide.
You investigate them all the same way, basically — there are certain steps you take.
And every homicide is different, every robbery has a little different quirk to it or whatever you want to call it.
But basically, you investigate them the same.
This idea was particularly important for his conception of community policing, which he and Jennings also discussed in their conversations.
“Community policing is — again, I mean call it community policing, call it what you want: All it is just doing regular, honest, basic police work,” Tuffey explains.
For example, for Tuffey, foot patrol is “getting back in touch with the community.”
The basic principle of a beat cop is, you walk up and down your certain area.
You get to know who the people are.
You help them.
They trust you.
You build a bond with them, and when they have a problem, you take care of it.
Whether the problem is loud music in this day and age, whether it be litter, whether it be a code enforcement problem for your neighbor.
It hasn’t changed.
The only thing that has changed is the way the police agencies have handled it, based on different factors. . . .
If you have higher manpower you can do more: You can put more beat officers out; you can put more police cars out . . .
[But] the basic principle of taking care of the people and doing some things never changes . . . .
You arrest people when you have to.
If Mrs. Jones cat is up a tree, try to get the cat out of there.
If she has a burglary, investigate it and try to arrest the perpetrator.
If Mrs. Jones has fallen down in her house, you go in and try to get her out and get her whatever help she needs.
If Mrs. Jones or Mr. Jones is senile and nobody is taking care of them, you get a hold of the proper social service agency to take care of them.
That’s all police work is.
You know, people always see . . . TV shows and they say all you do is run around every day and arrest people and all that stuff.
That’s not really what it is.
Thus over the course of years of conversations like these — including discussions about Jennings’s plans to run for mayor — the two men came to share important aspects of their vision for the APD.
Moreover, beyond the question of personal loyalty came from a long-time friendship, Tuffey recognized that it was his job to carry out the Mayor’s vision: “If I’m not following his philosophy, you know what?"
"I’m not going to be here,” Tuffey explains.
“Whether he and I were personal friends, or whether he just hired me, I will tell you the exact same thing.” 24
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: HISTORY OF ALBANY POLICE
I. THE ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT THROUGH 1994
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
2. A New Chief for Albany, concluded ...
Dealing with the Backlash
Nevertheless, many APD officers still resented the choice of Tuffey for police Chief, and it began to sour the once-amiable relationship between police and the Mayor.
That relationship had already begun to deteriorate a few weeks before Dale’s retirement because of continued tensions around staffing issues: Union leaders argued that Jennings had been dragging his feet on filling promotions, and they were become impatient about the pace at which he was fulfilling his campaign promise to put 25 new officers on the street (Jennings attributed the delay to unanticipated budgetary problems; the new hires had been chosen in 1994, but some had not yet entered training because of concerns about funding them).
The Tuffey appointment only exacerbated the situation, leading the union to pull its ads from Jennings’s weekly radio show and causing its president to threaten that he would withdraw support from the Mayor in his 1997 re-election bid.
Tuffey himself pointedly stayed out of the fray, telling a reporter he didn’t “have any problem” with the criticisms being levelled against him by the union and explaining, “they have to do what they have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do.” 25
Perhaps because of this attitude, union leaders increasingly qualified their attacks in kind, saying that they were not so much personally opposed to Tuffey as they were upset with Jennings for his methods.
Still, sentiment regarding the new Chief was guarded at best: Many police officers refused to attend Tuffey’s swearing-in ceremony, and a wishful group of detectives hosted a “retirement party” for the Chief one month into his tenure. 26
Thus as he entered the APD in the middle of an organizational change effort, Tuffey faced a clear need to build support for his leadership.
The new Chief was able to capitalize on the fact that he was not entirely the “outsider” that union officials had pegged him as.
His brother, a long-time union leader and a 19-year veteran of the force, was the most obvious example of Tuffey’s ties to Albany.
Indeed, the Tuffey family had a history with the department, as the two brothers’ uncle had been Albany’s Police Chief from 1953 to 1968, and both of their grandfathers had worked for the APD.
(As Chief, Tuffey keeps photographs of these relatives on his office wall and an old service record for the department in his desk, as if to remind department members how his genealogy connects him to Albany.)
Finally, outside of his family ties, since Tuffey had grown up in the city and associated with law enforcement circles, he had a few friends and colleagues in the department (for example, he and Grebert had occasionally run together before Tuffey came to the APD).
All of these ties together meant that Tuffey was not without influential allies in the APD, and at the very least he was able to get a sense of the department’s goings-on more quickly than a complete outsider would have.
More substantively, officers got some reassurance about their new Chief when he made a few long-sought staffing decisions that filled six vacant promotional slots and brought twelve new hires onto the force.
In part these moves helped simply by addressing what had been the burning issue with the police union, which simply wanted to see these opportunities for its members made real.
But Tuffey argues more generally that this wave of promotions and those that followed over the years helped him to gradually build a core of loyal supporters.
“I think by everybody knowing that they have their position because I recommend them to the Mayor, it helps a lot,” Tuffey explains.
“That’s how you develop your loyalty and trust.”
Indeed, many department members — particularly those at high levels — openly acknowledge an obligation to follow Tuffey’s lead that stems from the positions they have been given in the department.
But some department members insist that the most important factor in neutralizing the “Chief Tuffey” issue was a perception that Grebert was still making most of the APD’s important decisions at first.
Tuffey himself hardly discouraged this view: When a newspaper reporter asked him about his inexperience in urban policing (the implication being that he did not understand Albany), Tuffey answered: “The architect of that plan [the department’s community policing plan described above], or one of the architects, was Deputy Chief Grebert."
"Deputy Chief Grebert’s still going to be there."
"So as for my lack of knowledge of the inner workings of the city of Albany Police Department and urban policing, he’ll be there to assist me.” 27
In any case, Tuffey had no plans to upend the plans the department had recently put together, except that he wanted to beef up departmental training even more, and unlike Grebert, he wanted to physically open up at least one new substation to advance community policing.
In any case, while many officers still see Tuffey’s appointment as evidence of cronyism in the city of Albany, outright opposition to the Chief died down over time to the point that he became at least as well-accepted as his predecessor.
Jennings’s reputation, too, rebounded from its low point at the time when he appointed Tuffey — largely, union members explained, because promotions and staffing did begin to increase under the new Chief, even if the total force never reached the promised 345.
In any case, Jennings never became a bête noire for the police union, which eventually endorsed him in his bid for re-election in 1997.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
2. A New Chief for Albany, concluded ...
Dealing with the Backlash
Nevertheless, many APD officers still resented the choice of Tuffey for police Chief, and it began to sour the once-amiable relationship between police and the Mayor.
That relationship had already begun to deteriorate a few weeks before Dale’s retirement because of continued tensions around staffing issues: Union leaders argued that Jennings had been dragging his feet on filling promotions, and they were become impatient about the pace at which he was fulfilling his campaign promise to put 25 new officers on the street (Jennings attributed the delay to unanticipated budgetary problems; the new hires had been chosen in 1994, but some had not yet entered training because of concerns about funding them).
The Tuffey appointment only exacerbated the situation, leading the union to pull its ads from Jennings’s weekly radio show and causing its president to threaten that he would withdraw support from the Mayor in his 1997 re-election bid.
Tuffey himself pointedly stayed out of the fray, telling a reporter he didn’t “have any problem” with the criticisms being levelled against him by the union and explaining, “they have to do what they have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do.” 25
Perhaps because of this attitude, union leaders increasingly qualified their attacks in kind, saying that they were not so much personally opposed to Tuffey as they were upset with Jennings for his methods.
Still, sentiment regarding the new Chief was guarded at best: Many police officers refused to attend Tuffey’s swearing-in ceremony, and a wishful group of detectives hosted a “retirement party” for the Chief one month into his tenure. 26
Thus as he entered the APD in the middle of an organizational change effort, Tuffey faced a clear need to build support for his leadership.
The new Chief was able to capitalize on the fact that he was not entirely the “outsider” that union officials had pegged him as.
His brother, a long-time union leader and a 19-year veteran of the force, was the most obvious example of Tuffey’s ties to Albany.
Indeed, the Tuffey family had a history with the department, as the two brothers’ uncle had been Albany’s Police Chief from 1953 to 1968, and both of their grandfathers had worked for the APD.
(As Chief, Tuffey keeps photographs of these relatives on his office wall and an old service record for the department in his desk, as if to remind department members how his genealogy connects him to Albany.)
Finally, outside of his family ties, since Tuffey had grown up in the city and associated with law enforcement circles, he had a few friends and colleagues in the department (for example, he and Grebert had occasionally run together before Tuffey came to the APD).
All of these ties together meant that Tuffey was not without influential allies in the APD, and at the very least he was able to get a sense of the department’s goings-on more quickly than a complete outsider would have.
More substantively, officers got some reassurance about their new Chief when he made a few long-sought staffing decisions that filled six vacant promotional slots and brought twelve new hires onto the force.
In part these moves helped simply by addressing what had been the burning issue with the police union, which simply wanted to see these opportunities for its members made real.
But Tuffey argues more generally that this wave of promotions and those that followed over the years helped him to gradually build a core of loyal supporters.
“I think by everybody knowing that they have their position because I recommend them to the Mayor, it helps a lot,” Tuffey explains.
“That’s how you develop your loyalty and trust.”
Indeed, many department members — particularly those at high levels — openly acknowledge an obligation to follow Tuffey’s lead that stems from the positions they have been given in the department.
But some department members insist that the most important factor in neutralizing the “Chief Tuffey” issue was a perception that Grebert was still making most of the APD’s important decisions at first.
Tuffey himself hardly discouraged this view: When a newspaper reporter asked him about his inexperience in urban policing (the implication being that he did not understand Albany), Tuffey answered: “The architect of that plan [the department’s community policing plan described above], or one of the architects, was Deputy Chief Grebert."
"Deputy Chief Grebert’s still going to be there."
"So as for my lack of knowledge of the inner workings of the city of Albany Police Department and urban policing, he’ll be there to assist me.” 27
In any case, Tuffey had no plans to upend the plans the department had recently put together, except that he wanted to beef up departmental training even more, and unlike Grebert, he wanted to physically open up at least one new substation to advance community policing.
In any case, while many officers still see Tuffey’s appointment as evidence of cronyism in the city of Albany, outright opposition to the Chief died down over time to the point that he became at least as well-accepted as his predecessor.
Jennings’s reputation, too, rebounded from its low point at the time when he appointed Tuffey — largely, union members explained, because promotions and staffing did begin to increase under the new Chief, even if the total force never reached the promised 345.
In any case, Jennings never became a bête noire for the police union, which eventually endorsed him in his bid for re-election in 1997.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: HISTORY OF ALBANY POLICE
I. THE ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT THROUGH 1994
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
3. Reforming the APD
The Tuffey appointment and the Grebert plan laid the two central foundations of the reforms that would follow.
On the one hand, the plan Grebert spearheaded set the basic course for organizational change in the Albany Police Department — and indeed it had already begun to do so by the time Tuffey took over the Chief’s job.
On the other hand, Tuffey brought a strong commitment to the Mayor and his vision for Albany, and these forces would elaborate, modify, or strengthen some elements of the initial plans.
Consolidating Authority
Tuffey’s first elaboration of the community policing plan came barely three months after he took office, when the new Chief called a group of a high-level department members together to develop a plan to reorganize department management.
This second plan was not an attempt to revise the community policing blueprint that Grebert had spearheaded: Instead it helped complete unfinished elements of that blueprint, notably its vague but significant exhortation to establish “a command structure . . . that clearly defines duties and outlines the chain of command” (p. 15).
The team that examined these issues consisted of a half-dozen APD managers who would eventually become Tuffey’s command staff.
As one of the participants remembers their meetings, the group tried to understand and improve upon the department’s organizational structure.
[We wanted] to look at the department, how it was presently, what the structure and the sub-structure were.
You know, you have a division, and then you have units and sub-units, and who was in charge of those?
And was the workload distributed evenly?
Or how accurately was it being represented on paper?
And you know, a lot of times you can look at an organizational chart which really is not a true representation of how the department is organized.
So that was part of what we did, and he wanted to look at how we were going to deliver service at that time, which was 1995, and where we were going to be within one year, two years.
So we almost wanted to look at like a five-year projection, if you will, as to what we were going to be doing.
The main conclusion that emerged from these sessions was that the department needed to restructure upper management essentially along the lines that Jennings had laid out in his campaign platform: First, the APD would add two assistant Chief positions to bring the total to four, dividing responsibility among them for patrol, investigations, administration, and special operations (which included things like the K-9 unit and the mounted patrols).
Second, the department would create three new appointed positions with the rank of Commander.
Two of these non-unionized positions would oversee all department operations after 5 P.M., and the third would oversee the communications unit.
A number of goals underlay the new command staff positions.
One was simply to provide more high-level management, which many felt had declined too far in recent years: During the Whalen era of little hiring and few promotions, the number of APD Captains had fallen from 10 in the late 1970s to 2 by 1995, and many blamed the problems of coordination and oversight — particularly during the night shift and in the narcotics unit — on the lack of high-level management.
“There was lack of hierarchy to give those mid-managers their direction,” one participant in the planning sessions explains.
“You need the pyramid effect, [where] the Chief is at the top and then it gets wider as it goes down."
"What we found was there was really no upper pyramid — it kind of flattened off.”
Jennings too agreed with this diagnosis, and he argues that the lack of upper management was particularly inappropriate in Albany because of its retirement system: “When you have twenty year retirement,” he explains, referring to the number of years officers must work in Albany before they are eligible for their full pension, “you end up having a very young police department [that] necessitates a lot of supervision, or good strong supervision.”
But beyond this somewhat abstract desire for “more management,” there was a more specific intention to shore up the authority of the Chief’s office compared to the union.
Union power was a comparatively recent force in Albany, where city hall and the Democratic party had long resisted organized labor.
But after the initial unionization of police officers in the mid-1970s, other ranks in the department quickly followed suit, and by 1994, the only non-union positions left were the Chief’s job, two Assistant Chiefs, and a vacant Deputy Chief position.
Just as Jennings had argued during his 1993 campaign, the planning group felt that this situation undermined effective management.
“There were situations where decisions were made by the ranking officer on duty that clearly benefited the union position rather than the department’s agenda,” one APD manager explains.
Another argues that union presence on the command staff was undermining the authority of the Chief’s office, pointing out that a Captain who also worked as a union official was essentially “wearing two hats” (an idea department managers and city officials use often when justifying the changes they made). 28
He gives this hypothetical example of the problems that arrangement led to:
One guy is the chairman of the Captain’s unit for the union, but he’s also on the command staff.
So now on Monday, he goes to the command staff meeting, and you talk about all of these things that you want to do to make it better for the department, but you’ve got to kind of supersede the contract a little bit.
“Hopefully we can get this through, or we can get that through” — that’s what you talk about at a command staff meeting.
Then the next day, he takes his command staff hat off and he puts on his union hat.
He sits at an executive board meeting with the union, and he says, “Well, you know what?"
"I was at the command staff meeting yesterday, and they want to try to do this, and they want to try to do that.”
Participants in the planning sessions hoped that new command positions would help solve this problem for them.
“That’s the reason for these [new] ranks,” one explains.
“He [Tuffey] wanted them on board with the command staff, not on board with the union.”
Finally, Grebert agreed with the need for more non-union command staff positions, but he also saw the reorganization as an opportunity to rationalize department management.
“When I was in grad school,” Grebert explains, “one of [my professor’s] things was that what makes police organizations so complex — and it always stuck with me — is that they have to be organized on three separate dimensions: Task, geography, and the time of the day.”
Community policing had already begun to entrench geography as an organizing principle, and the reorganization offered a chance to firm up organization by task and time:
[In the new plan], Assistant Chiefs were task oriented: One for patrol, one for investigation, one for special operations, . . . and one for administration.
Then the rank of Commander, which was the shift boss, who would be the ultimate [person to] answer [to] on each shift around the clock.
So we did that restructuring to provide some accountability for both task and for the time of the day.
Grebert concedes that these goals came somewhat at the expense of geographic focus: For example, by putting shift-based commanders on duty during the night and evening shifts, the department essentially re-centralized authority not just from the six recently-created “sectors,” but even from the two divisions that had existed for years. 29
Does that fly in the face of decentralization?
Yes, a little bit.
However we were in a situation where very frequently we would have a Sergeant — a unionized Sergeant — being the highest ranking guy on the street in the whole city.
In terms of transferring the message down to the troops, that doesn’t work — because that Sergeant is much closer to being one of the boys, one of the troops, than he is to what the command staff is trying to accomplish.
So I felt it was important that there be one identified non-union command post on each shift.
In any case, the six sectors were still intended to have some degree of autonomy, and in the near future the department would take further steps towards decentralization.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
3. Reforming the APD
The Tuffey appointment and the Grebert plan laid the two central foundations of the reforms that would follow.
On the one hand, the plan Grebert spearheaded set the basic course for organizational change in the Albany Police Department — and indeed it had already begun to do so by the time Tuffey took over the Chief’s job.
On the other hand, Tuffey brought a strong commitment to the Mayor and his vision for Albany, and these forces would elaborate, modify, or strengthen some elements of the initial plans.
Consolidating Authority
Tuffey’s first elaboration of the community policing plan came barely three months after he took office, when the new Chief called a group of a high-level department members together to develop a plan to reorganize department management.
This second plan was not an attempt to revise the community policing blueprint that Grebert had spearheaded: Instead it helped complete unfinished elements of that blueprint, notably its vague but significant exhortation to establish “a command structure . . . that clearly defines duties and outlines the chain of command” (p. 15).
The team that examined these issues consisted of a half-dozen APD managers who would eventually become Tuffey’s command staff.
As one of the participants remembers their meetings, the group tried to understand and improve upon the department’s organizational structure.
[We wanted] to look at the department, how it was presently, what the structure and the sub-structure were.
You know, you have a division, and then you have units and sub-units, and who was in charge of those?
And was the workload distributed evenly?
Or how accurately was it being represented on paper?
And you know, a lot of times you can look at an organizational chart which really is not a true representation of how the department is organized.
So that was part of what we did, and he wanted to look at how we were going to deliver service at that time, which was 1995, and where we were going to be within one year, two years.
So we almost wanted to look at like a five-year projection, if you will, as to what we were going to be doing.
The main conclusion that emerged from these sessions was that the department needed to restructure upper management essentially along the lines that Jennings had laid out in his campaign platform: First, the APD would add two assistant Chief positions to bring the total to four, dividing responsibility among them for patrol, investigations, administration, and special operations (which included things like the K-9 unit and the mounted patrols).
Second, the department would create three new appointed positions with the rank of Commander.
Two of these non-unionized positions would oversee all department operations after 5 P.M., and the third would oversee the communications unit.
A number of goals underlay the new command staff positions.
One was simply to provide more high-level management, which many felt had declined too far in recent years: During the Whalen era of little hiring and few promotions, the number of APD Captains had fallen from 10 in the late 1970s to 2 by 1995, and many blamed the problems of coordination and oversight — particularly during the night shift and in the narcotics unit — on the lack of high-level management.
“There was lack of hierarchy to give those mid-managers their direction,” one participant in the planning sessions explains.
“You need the pyramid effect, [where] the Chief is at the top and then it gets wider as it goes down."
"What we found was there was really no upper pyramid — it kind of flattened off.”
Jennings too agreed with this diagnosis, and he argues that the lack of upper management was particularly inappropriate in Albany because of its retirement system: “When you have twenty year retirement,” he explains, referring to the number of years officers must work in Albany before they are eligible for their full pension, “you end up having a very young police department [that] necessitates a lot of supervision, or good strong supervision.”
But beyond this somewhat abstract desire for “more management,” there was a more specific intention to shore up the authority of the Chief’s office compared to the union.
Union power was a comparatively recent force in Albany, where city hall and the Democratic party had long resisted organized labor.
But after the initial unionization of police officers in the mid-1970s, other ranks in the department quickly followed suit, and by 1994, the only non-union positions left were the Chief’s job, two Assistant Chiefs, and a vacant Deputy Chief position.
Just as Jennings had argued during his 1993 campaign, the planning group felt that this situation undermined effective management.
“There were situations where decisions were made by the ranking officer on duty that clearly benefited the union position rather than the department’s agenda,” one APD manager explains.
Another argues that union presence on the command staff was undermining the authority of the Chief’s office, pointing out that a Captain who also worked as a union official was essentially “wearing two hats” (an idea department managers and city officials use often when justifying the changes they made). 28
He gives this hypothetical example of the problems that arrangement led to:
One guy is the chairman of the Captain’s unit for the union, but he’s also on the command staff.
So now on Monday, he goes to the command staff meeting, and you talk about all of these things that you want to do to make it better for the department, but you’ve got to kind of supersede the contract a little bit.
“Hopefully we can get this through, or we can get that through” — that’s what you talk about at a command staff meeting.
Then the next day, he takes his command staff hat off and he puts on his union hat.
He sits at an executive board meeting with the union, and he says, “Well, you know what?"
"I was at the command staff meeting yesterday, and they want to try to do this, and they want to try to do that.”
Participants in the planning sessions hoped that new command positions would help solve this problem for them.
“That’s the reason for these [new] ranks,” one explains.
“He [Tuffey] wanted them on board with the command staff, not on board with the union.”
Finally, Grebert agreed with the need for more non-union command staff positions, but he also saw the reorganization as an opportunity to rationalize department management.
“When I was in grad school,” Grebert explains, “one of [my professor’s] things was that what makes police organizations so complex — and it always stuck with me — is that they have to be organized on three separate dimensions: Task, geography, and the time of the day.”
Community policing had already begun to entrench geography as an organizing principle, and the reorganization offered a chance to firm up organization by task and time:
[In the new plan], Assistant Chiefs were task oriented: One for patrol, one for investigation, one for special operations, . . . and one for administration.
Then the rank of Commander, which was the shift boss, who would be the ultimate [person to] answer [to] on each shift around the clock.
So we did that restructuring to provide some accountability for both task and for the time of the day.
Grebert concedes that these goals came somewhat at the expense of geographic focus: For example, by putting shift-based commanders on duty during the night and evening shifts, the department essentially re-centralized authority not just from the six recently-created “sectors,” but even from the two divisions that had existed for years. 29
Does that fly in the face of decentralization?
Yes, a little bit.
However we were in a situation where very frequently we would have a Sergeant — a unionized Sergeant — being the highest ranking guy on the street in the whole city.
In terms of transferring the message down to the troops, that doesn’t work — because that Sergeant is much closer to being one of the boys, one of the troops, than he is to what the command staff is trying to accomplish.
So I felt it was important that there be one identified non-union command post on each shift.
In any case, the six sectors were still intended to have some degree of autonomy, and in the near future the department would take further steps towards decentralization.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: HISTORY OF ALBANY POLICE
I. THE ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT THROUGH 1994
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
3. Reforming the APD, continued ...
Putting the Plan in Place
At the time, the most controversial aspect of the plan had nothing to do with decentralization and everything to do with the question of union power.
“It’s classic union busting at its best,” union president Leonard Crouch said of the plan to a Times-Union reporter.
Crouch went on to lambaste the administration’s tactics in putting the plan through, insisting that the Chief’s office shut the union out of decisionmaking about the reorganization and that it even tried to hide the reforms it was making — to the point that he himself did not learn of the new positions until he ran across an entry in the newspaper’s legal notices that advertised the required public hearing for the new positions, which the Civil Service Commission had to approve.
“I don’t like reading it in the newspaper first,” Crouch explained.
“This is back to where we were” — an apparent reference to the poor relationship the police union had with Mayor Whalen. 30
Charges of “union busting” aside, many in the APD simply disliked having so many appointed positions, and they expressed concerns about what one calls “politicization of our upper ranks.”
When the plan was first announced this was simply an abstract concern about the potential for political influence over high-level promotions.
But as Tuffey filled the new jobs with people who some viewed, rightly or wrongly, as part of Jennings’s “inner circle,” some of the old sentiments about cronyism re-emerged.
These objections from the union and some of the rank-and-file did not, however, derail the reorganization proposal.
“They resisted,” one department manager remembers.
“[But] we kind of did it by the books, according to New York State civil service law . . ."
"So, although the unions griped about it, ultimately there was really nothing they could do about it.”
The Civil Service Commission’s cooperation was obviously crucial in this process, and APD management took pains to present a clear rationale for the new positions to them (including many of the reasons already described), and the reorganization ultimately received the Commission’s endorsement. 31
Different concerns arose in the political world, where some city leaders decried a plan that proposed “too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.”
But here too one key ally was all that was needed: Jennings clearly approved of the proposal, which essentially reproduced a significant element of his campaign platform (which in turn apparently emerged out of discussions Jennings had had with friends and acquaintances in the policing world — including Tuffey and Grebert).
In any case, the Mayor was more than willing to sign off on the roughly $100,000 price tag the plan carried.
Tuffey filled most of the new positions in January of 1996, when he appointed three Commanders and one new Assistant Chief (the second Assistant Chief would be appointed the following year).
The move gave the Chief his first chance to put his own stamp on the department’s direction, and he sought to assemble a “young command staff [that was] innovative, creative, [and] that wanted to move forward,” as he puts it.
The Assistant Chiefs had responsibility for reforms that (for the most part) fell under each of their assigned functional areas, and these reforms will be described below.
The Commanders, however, had newer and therefore less-familiar responsibilities.
One of the first people to be appointed to this position was a 23-year veteran named David Epting, a Lieutenant at the time who had worked in patrol for most of his career.
Epting remembers his charge from the Chief clearly: “He called me in and said to me, ‘I’m going to make you Commander.'"
"'You’re going to run the City from five to one.’”
But Epting admits that it took his subordinates some time to adjust to his new role.
It took people a while to realize that there was somebody out there that they had to answer to.
Like the detective office would be sending people to God knows when to pick somebody up, and they never used to notify anybody that they did that.
Now they had to notify somebody.
So I would bump heads with some of the detective supervisors.
The narco guys would be doing their raids.
The next thing I know, I hear on our radio, “We just executed a search warrant at such and such an address.”
I didn’t know anything about it.
So, we bumped heads a few times until they realized that there’s now a person out there.
I mean, I’m not going to tell them how to run their raid, [and] I’m not going to tell them when to do the raid.
But I’ve got to know about something like that.
So it was more getting your middle management and lower-middle management people used to knowing that they had to actually answer to somebody now, because there was somebody ultimately responsible for what they were doing.
Over time, Epting maintains, middle managers did get used to the new Commander role, and he believes that the new position has worked out well.
For many in the APD, this reorganization was far from a minor issue: When asked about organizational change in their department, they insist that the restructuring of upper management — not community policing or any other substantive reform — has been the most significant recent change in the Albany Police Department.
Consequently, it is perhaps not surprising that the reform sparked the initial resistance it did, and that it took some time to settle in.
In any case, most department members seem to have become accustomed to the new arrangement: When asked what happened to the initial concerns about creating the new positions, one department member explains, “I think it’s just an accepted fact.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
3. Reforming the APD, continued ...
Putting the Plan in Place
At the time, the most controversial aspect of the plan had nothing to do with decentralization and everything to do with the question of union power.
“It’s classic union busting at its best,” union president Leonard Crouch said of the plan to a Times-Union reporter.
Crouch went on to lambaste the administration’s tactics in putting the plan through, insisting that the Chief’s office shut the union out of decisionmaking about the reorganization and that it even tried to hide the reforms it was making — to the point that he himself did not learn of the new positions until he ran across an entry in the newspaper’s legal notices that advertised the required public hearing for the new positions, which the Civil Service Commission had to approve.
“I don’t like reading it in the newspaper first,” Crouch explained.
“This is back to where we were” — an apparent reference to the poor relationship the police union had with Mayor Whalen. 30
Charges of “union busting” aside, many in the APD simply disliked having so many appointed positions, and they expressed concerns about what one calls “politicization of our upper ranks.”
When the plan was first announced this was simply an abstract concern about the potential for political influence over high-level promotions.
But as Tuffey filled the new jobs with people who some viewed, rightly or wrongly, as part of Jennings’s “inner circle,” some of the old sentiments about cronyism re-emerged.
These objections from the union and some of the rank-and-file did not, however, derail the reorganization proposal.
“They resisted,” one department manager remembers.
“[But] we kind of did it by the books, according to New York State civil service law . . ."
"So, although the unions griped about it, ultimately there was really nothing they could do about it.”
The Civil Service Commission’s cooperation was obviously crucial in this process, and APD management took pains to present a clear rationale for the new positions to them (including many of the reasons already described), and the reorganization ultimately received the Commission’s endorsement. 31
Different concerns arose in the political world, where some city leaders decried a plan that proposed “too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.”
But here too one key ally was all that was needed: Jennings clearly approved of the proposal, which essentially reproduced a significant element of his campaign platform (which in turn apparently emerged out of discussions Jennings had had with friends and acquaintances in the policing world — including Tuffey and Grebert).
In any case, the Mayor was more than willing to sign off on the roughly $100,000 price tag the plan carried.
Tuffey filled most of the new positions in January of 1996, when he appointed three Commanders and one new Assistant Chief (the second Assistant Chief would be appointed the following year).
The move gave the Chief his first chance to put his own stamp on the department’s direction, and he sought to assemble a “young command staff [that was] innovative, creative, [and] that wanted to move forward,” as he puts it.
The Assistant Chiefs had responsibility for reforms that (for the most part) fell under each of their assigned functional areas, and these reforms will be described below.
The Commanders, however, had newer and therefore less-familiar responsibilities.
One of the first people to be appointed to this position was a 23-year veteran named David Epting, a Lieutenant at the time who had worked in patrol for most of his career.
Epting remembers his charge from the Chief clearly: “He called me in and said to me, ‘I’m going to make you Commander.'"
"'You’re going to run the City from five to one.’”
But Epting admits that it took his subordinates some time to adjust to his new role.
It took people a while to realize that there was somebody out there that they had to answer to.
Like the detective office would be sending people to God knows when to pick somebody up, and they never used to notify anybody that they did that.
Now they had to notify somebody.
So I would bump heads with some of the detective supervisors.
The narco guys would be doing their raids.
The next thing I know, I hear on our radio, “We just executed a search warrant at such and such an address.”
I didn’t know anything about it.
So, we bumped heads a few times until they realized that there’s now a person out there.
I mean, I’m not going to tell them how to run their raid, [and] I’m not going to tell them when to do the raid.
But I’ve got to know about something like that.
So it was more getting your middle management and lower-middle management people used to knowing that they had to actually answer to somebody now, because there was somebody ultimately responsible for what they were doing.
Over time, Epting maintains, middle managers did get used to the new Commander role, and he believes that the new position has worked out well.
For many in the APD, this reorganization was far from a minor issue: When asked about organizational change in their department, they insist that the restructuring of upper management — not community policing or any other substantive reform — has been the most significant recent change in the Albany Police Department.
Consequently, it is perhaps not surprising that the reform sparked the initial resistance it did, and that it took some time to settle in.
In any case, most department members seem to have become accustomed to the new arrangement: When asked what happened to the initial concerns about creating the new positions, one department member explains, “I think it’s just an accepted fact.”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: HISTORY OF ALBANY POLICE
I. THE ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT THROUGH 1994
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
3. Reforming the APD, continued ...
The Retirement of Robert Grebert
The reorganization helped consolidate support for reform among upper management by giving Tuffey the ability to appoint much of his own command staff.
But that process did not come to completion until early 1998, when the APD and the city as a whole underwent a large-scale turnover of personnel.
Tuffey made a total of four more command staff appointments during this second wave of personnel moves, but the central APD figure in the effort was Deputy Chief Grebert.
More than anyone else in the department, Grebert had been inextricably associated with community policing, which to the public, at least, was the single most prominent reform in the APD.
But although top management, city officials, and community leaders all credited Grebert with making that reform possible, the Deputy Chief was becoming increasingly unpopular with his immediate superiors.
“The relationship went downhill from [my first day],” Grebert says of his rapport with Jennings.
I guess I’m fairly independent.
Like when you get to a hostage situation and the Mayor wants to take the phone out of the negotiator’s hands.
You appreciate his support at a scene like that.
But he shouldn’t be the hands-on person there.
So we had four years of these sorts of things.
A couple of high profile cases occurred the last year that I really took what I thought was an appropriate position, and I would take that position again.
Indeed, Grebert was frequently a voice of dissent on many of Tuffey and Jennings’s initiatives, including their decision to open a substation in Arbor Hill and the Mayor’s decisions about the composition of a community advisory board.
Such simmering tensions apparently boiled over in January of 1998, when Tuffey asked for his Deputy Chief’s retirement and got it.
Tuffey and other local officials refused to comment on the reasons for his request, and Jennings insisted that he had nothing to do with the decision, telling a reporter, “I’m the mayor — I’m not going to micromanage the Police Department.” 32
But the refusal to comment only fed speculation, and many local observers concluded that Grebert had been ousted because he had gone overboard responding to recent allegations of police harassment.
The case in question centered on a local college basketball star’s claims that two off-duty officers had handcuffed him and beaten him after a bar fight.
When the officers were suspended without pay and subjected to a thorough investigation, many APD officers attributed this zeal partly to Grebert.
Unpopular with the rank-and-file, and perhaps at odds over the case with Tuffey, Grebert, this theory held, had to go.
But even on the issue of discipline, Grebert’s unpopularity extended beyond this one incident, for officers and other managers alike had long complained that the Deputy Chief favored punishments that were too strong.
Even more broadly, some department members explain that Grebert simply was not on board with Jennings’s and Tuffey’s vision, pointing to disagreements like his dissent on the Arbor Hill station for evidence.
In an environment where loyalty was prized highly, such independence simply did not sit well: One department member explains broadly that “Grebert had to go because he wasn’t grateful to the people who made him [i.e., promoted him];” and a local political scientist commented on Grebert’s situation by saying that although there was a fine line between legitimate political influence and unacceptable meddling, it would be well within Jennings’s right to let someone who didn’t share his vision go:
There’s probably a common amount of tension between any city hall and police department as to the way things should be done.
[But] the chief executive should be commanding the strategies to implement those policies.
And the Mayor is the elected chief executive.
He’s the one answering to the people.
A police department is a paramilitary organization.
It’s not a democracy. 33
Thus although a specific incident may have catalyzed Grebert’s ouster, it seems unlikely that it alone could have caused it, particularly given these much broader disagreements over the APD’s direction.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
3. Reforming the APD, continued ...
The Retirement of Robert Grebert
The reorganization helped consolidate support for reform among upper management by giving Tuffey the ability to appoint much of his own command staff.
But that process did not come to completion until early 1998, when the APD and the city as a whole underwent a large-scale turnover of personnel.
Tuffey made a total of four more command staff appointments during this second wave of personnel moves, but the central APD figure in the effort was Deputy Chief Grebert.
More than anyone else in the department, Grebert had been inextricably associated with community policing, which to the public, at least, was the single most prominent reform in the APD.
But although top management, city officials, and community leaders all credited Grebert with making that reform possible, the Deputy Chief was becoming increasingly unpopular with his immediate superiors.
“The relationship went downhill from [my first day],” Grebert says of his rapport with Jennings.
I guess I’m fairly independent.
Like when you get to a hostage situation and the Mayor wants to take the phone out of the negotiator’s hands.
You appreciate his support at a scene like that.
But he shouldn’t be the hands-on person there.
So we had four years of these sorts of things.
A couple of high profile cases occurred the last year that I really took what I thought was an appropriate position, and I would take that position again.
Indeed, Grebert was frequently a voice of dissent on many of Tuffey and Jennings’s initiatives, including their decision to open a substation in Arbor Hill and the Mayor’s decisions about the composition of a community advisory board.
Such simmering tensions apparently boiled over in January of 1998, when Tuffey asked for his Deputy Chief’s retirement and got it.
Tuffey and other local officials refused to comment on the reasons for his request, and Jennings insisted that he had nothing to do with the decision, telling a reporter, “I’m the mayor — I’m not going to micromanage the Police Department.” 32
But the refusal to comment only fed speculation, and many local observers concluded that Grebert had been ousted because he had gone overboard responding to recent allegations of police harassment.
The case in question centered on a local college basketball star’s claims that two off-duty officers had handcuffed him and beaten him after a bar fight.
When the officers were suspended without pay and subjected to a thorough investigation, many APD officers attributed this zeal partly to Grebert.
Unpopular with the rank-and-file, and perhaps at odds over the case with Tuffey, Grebert, this theory held, had to go.
But even on the issue of discipline, Grebert’s unpopularity extended beyond this one incident, for officers and other managers alike had long complained that the Deputy Chief favored punishments that were too strong.
Even more broadly, some department members explain that Grebert simply was not on board with Jennings’s and Tuffey’s vision, pointing to disagreements like his dissent on the Arbor Hill station for evidence.
In an environment where loyalty was prized highly, such independence simply did not sit well: One department member explains broadly that “Grebert had to go because he wasn’t grateful to the people who made him [i.e., promoted him];” and a local political scientist commented on Grebert’s situation by saying that although there was a fine line between legitimate political influence and unacceptable meddling, it would be well within Jennings’s right to let someone who didn’t share his vision go:
There’s probably a common amount of tension between any city hall and police department as to the way things should be done.
[But] the chief executive should be commanding the strategies to implement those policies.
And the Mayor is the elected chief executive.
He’s the one answering to the people.
A police department is a paramilitary organization.
It’s not a democracy. 33
Thus although a specific incident may have catalyzed Grebert’s ouster, it seems unlikely that it alone could have caused it, particularly given these much broader disagreements over the APD’s direction.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Re: HISTORY OF ALBANY POLICE
I. THE ALBANY POLICE DEPARTMENT THROUGH 1994
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
3. Reforming the APD, continued ...
Decentralization and Problem-Solving
In any case, well before Grebert’s star had fallen, the APD began its implementation of the community policing plan he had spearheaded, and which had been handed back to him for implementation after the group that wrote it disbanded.
Manpower constraints and other considerations forced Grebert to make a few changes to the plan at that stage (for example, the number of foot beats was cut from 20 to 18).
But for the most part Grebert sought to implement the plan as it was.
Reforms to the patrol force were the central thrust of this community policing effort, and they divided into three distinct elements: The creation of a 6-officer directed patrol unit, creation of an 18-officer community outreach unit, and the organization of six coherent teams defined by geography that focused the APD’s attention on individual neighborhoods.
Consider the latter two reforms here.
The Community Outreach Unit
Foot patrols had a long and visible history in Albany in both the old neighborhood outreach units and in the Whalen-era community policing efforts, so it is perhaps not surprising that public attention focused most intently on that element of the APD’s reforms.
For example, the many newspaper articles that announced its arrival tended to mention the directed patrol unit and the reorganization by sectors only in passing, saving most of their reflections for the foot beats. 34
The foot patrol officers took their assignments in late November of 1994 after a week of training arranged by Grebert, in which officers learned about the resources other city agencies could offer to solve community problems.
After that orientation, the officers took to their beats with a mandate to be visible in their assigned neighborhoods and get to know the people who frequented them — everyone from the block captains of local neighborhood associations, to area landlords and businesspeople, to those perceived to be troublemakers; and they were also expected to make contacts with city agencies like the Department of General Services, to which they could relay neighborhood concerns.
The officers were freed up from most 911 responsibilities, giving them considerable time to take care of such business: In fact, as it turned out, some officers often found that they had too little work to occupy their shifts until their supervisors came up with ancillary duties — things like following up on domestic violence calls or trying to serve outstanding warrants in their zones.
Indeed, the potentially light workload, as well as the flex-time options the beat officers enjoyed, initially created something of a problem for the outreach unit, which reportedly attracted some veteran officers for less than virtuous reasons.
Management had little recourse to block bids from these officers, since it had agreed during the planning phase to assign the positions based on seniority; and supervision problems made it hard to motivate officers who simply wanted an easy assignment.
As Grebert puts it:
The very nature of foot patrol, you’re not nearly supervised as closely as a guy in a patrol car.
And because we gave them flexibility in the hours that they could work, different guys might be working from nine in the morning until two at night, and we only had one boss for them [the 18 zone officers reported to a single Community Outreach Sergeant].
At other times they’d be working without a boss and . . . there was a lot of reluctance on the part of the other uniformed supervisors to supervise these guys.
Grebert admits that he would have preferred to have more supervision for the unit, but he explains that the department was unable to increase the number of Sergeants in the budget, so it had to make do with one outreach supervisor.
In any case, he and others insist that most outreach officers took to their jobs with enthusiasm, and that most of those who did not were eventually “weeded out” through the disciplinary process: Thus the result, after some fine-tuning at the start of the program, was a good group of officers who the department has been satisfied with.
Many community members were also happy with the outreach program, feeling that the officers had markedly improved APD visibility and begun to tackle longstanding problems in their areas.
A few neighborhoods complained that their officers were not visible and that they tended to keep banker’s hours, but for the most part the outreach program received strong praise from Albany residents.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
II. THE EVOLUTION OF COMMUNITY POLICING IN ALBANY, continued ...
3. Reforming the APD, continued ...
Decentralization and Problem-Solving
In any case, well before Grebert’s star had fallen, the APD began its implementation of the community policing plan he had spearheaded, and which had been handed back to him for implementation after the group that wrote it disbanded.
Manpower constraints and other considerations forced Grebert to make a few changes to the plan at that stage (for example, the number of foot beats was cut from 20 to 18).
But for the most part Grebert sought to implement the plan as it was.
Reforms to the patrol force were the central thrust of this community policing effort, and they divided into three distinct elements: The creation of a 6-officer directed patrol unit, creation of an 18-officer community outreach unit, and the organization of six coherent teams defined by geography that focused the APD’s attention on individual neighborhoods.
Consider the latter two reforms here.
The Community Outreach Unit
Foot patrols had a long and visible history in Albany in both the old neighborhood outreach units and in the Whalen-era community policing efforts, so it is perhaps not surprising that public attention focused most intently on that element of the APD’s reforms.
For example, the many newspaper articles that announced its arrival tended to mention the directed patrol unit and the reorganization by sectors only in passing, saving most of their reflections for the foot beats. 34
The foot patrol officers took their assignments in late November of 1994 after a week of training arranged by Grebert, in which officers learned about the resources other city agencies could offer to solve community problems.
After that orientation, the officers took to their beats with a mandate to be visible in their assigned neighborhoods and get to know the people who frequented them — everyone from the block captains of local neighborhood associations, to area landlords and businesspeople, to those perceived to be troublemakers; and they were also expected to make contacts with city agencies like the Department of General Services, to which they could relay neighborhood concerns.
The officers were freed up from most 911 responsibilities, giving them considerable time to take care of such business: In fact, as it turned out, some officers often found that they had too little work to occupy their shifts until their supervisors came up with ancillary duties — things like following up on domestic violence calls or trying to serve outstanding warrants in their zones.
Indeed, the potentially light workload, as well as the flex-time options the beat officers enjoyed, initially created something of a problem for the outreach unit, which reportedly attracted some veteran officers for less than virtuous reasons.
Management had little recourse to block bids from these officers, since it had agreed during the planning phase to assign the positions based on seniority; and supervision problems made it hard to motivate officers who simply wanted an easy assignment.
As Grebert puts it:
The very nature of foot patrol, you’re not nearly supervised as closely as a guy in a patrol car.
And because we gave them flexibility in the hours that they could work, different guys might be working from nine in the morning until two at night, and we only had one boss for them [the 18 zone officers reported to a single Community Outreach Sergeant].
At other times they’d be working without a boss and . . . there was a lot of reluctance on the part of the other uniformed supervisors to supervise these guys.
Grebert admits that he would have preferred to have more supervision for the unit, but he explains that the department was unable to increase the number of Sergeants in the budget, so it had to make do with one outreach supervisor.
In any case, he and others insist that most outreach officers took to their jobs with enthusiasm, and that most of those who did not were eventually “weeded out” through the disciplinary process: Thus the result, after some fine-tuning at the start of the program, was a good group of officers who the department has been satisfied with.
Many community members were also happy with the outreach program, feeling that the officers had markedly improved APD visibility and begun to tackle longstanding problems in their areas.
A few neighborhoods complained that their officers were not visible and that they tended to keep banker’s hours, but for the most part the outreach program received strong praise from Albany residents.
TO BE CONTINUED ...