Top Police Jobs: Hop, Skip to Retirement

During the first years of a 26-year police career, Kelson McDaniel was on a steadily rising curve.

He worked his way up from street cop in Newport Beach to one of 115 candidates for the job as chief of police in San Clemente, finally landing the job of his dreams in 1985.

And then, after just 18 months at the top, it all fell apart. His officers, angered at McDaniel’s admittedly hard-nosed management style, last spring gave him a 91% vote of no-confidence. Then his boss, City Manager James B. Hendrickson, told him to quit or be fired.

McDaniel quit, then changed his mind. But the city would not take him back, and McDaniel was left to explain to his wife and four children how, at age 50, he was suddenly unemployed.

“It was devastating,” McDaniel, now a consultant for the Westminster Police Department, recalled in a recent interview. “I wouldn’t want to wish it upon my worst enemy.”

Claim Against City

McDaniel’s forced ouster was so upsetting that, in a $4.3 million claim he later filed with the city, he contends it very nearly drove him to suicide. McDaniel, who had been earning $63,000 a year, survived the tough time. San Clemente has also moved on by naming a lieutenant, Al Ehlow, to the chief’s post.

The controversial circumstances behind McDaniel’s departure were unique among Orange County police agencies. What wasn’t unusual was the change of command.

Police chiefs in six of the county’s 26 cities resigned, retired or, like McDaniel, were forced out in 1987. The trend mirrors a national pattern, said experts, who cited several reasons for the generally high turnover rate among top local law enforcement officials. Among them: good retirement benefits, the inability of most police officers to make it to chief until they are in their 50s and the many political and social pressures on police chiefs in small communities.

Besides San Clemente, the turnover has occurred in the county’s three most populous cities--Anaheim, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach--as well as Seal Beach and, most recently, Westminster, where Chief Donald Saviers, 51, last month announced his retirement, effective Jan. 29.

With the exception of McDaniel and former Seal Beach Police Chief Stacy T. Picascia, who left citing job-related stress, all the other chiefs who have quit have done so to take advantage of lucrative early retirement offered by the state.

Under liberal terms of the state’s Public Employees Retirement System, a police chief with 30 years of experience on the force can collect up to 75% of his salary by age 55 and up to 50% by age 50.

‘Working ... for Free’

So, from age 50 to 55, “you start working almost for free,” said City Manager David N. Ream of Santa Ana, where 53-year-old Police Chief Raymond C. Davis retired April 17 after 14 years in the $70,000-a-year chief’s post.

Earle Robitaille, chief of the Huntington Beach Police Department for nearly two decades, left that $74,796-a-year job in February at age 55. And Jimmie D. Kennedy, who has announced his intention to leave as chief of the Anaheim Police Department this week, after five years in the post, is retiring at age 53.

Kennedy, who was paid $77,935, said he would have taken retirement next year, but decided to take it this year because Anaheim imposed a new rule making its retirees pay any cost increases in their medical insurance, beginning in 1988. The city will continue paying increases for employees who retire before Jan. 1.

Seal Beach’s Picascia, 43, said he developed hypertension from being chief. Too young to draw early retirement, he has applied for disability retirement. A hearing date has not been scheduled by the city to determine whether Picascia will receive disability. He has been placed on paid medical leave, at his salary of $61,660, pending that determination.

Because of their lobbying power, the retirement benefits of police chiefs and other state law enforcement personnel are considered the “Cadillac” in the Public Employees Retirement System, said Sandra Lund, assistant executive officer of the state agency which handles benefits for 600,000 state employees.

High Rate Criticized

The liberal PERS benefit program has come under fire from some taxpayers’ groups for its high rate of disability retirement payments to state employees and, particularly, police officers, Lund said. The critics contend that some disabilities, such as hypertension, are not necessarily related to the job, she said, because hypertension can be hereditary.

Despite the leadership changes, the turnover among police chiefs should have little impact on the public, chiefs, city managers and law enforcement analysts all said. However, they said the departures do result in some turmoil and unrest within the departments until a new chief is selected.

“The most immediate problem is loss of continuity and direction,” San Clemente City Manager Hendrickson said. “It goes without saying that the head of each department sets the tone of each organization.”

Anaheim’s Kennedy said the turnover has positives and negatives. On the positive side, he said it opens up positions of command that can be filled from within the ranks. On the negative side, “it causes a temporary vacuum in terms of knowledge and expertise.”

Kennedy added that Anaheim’s situation is particularly difficult because the change in the city’s medical insurance program is forcing other veteran police employees to retire along with him. Other Anaheim police retirements this month have included a lieutenant, two captains and four civilians, he said.

‘Well-Qualified’

“The people here are well-qualified in doing a good job, but for a period of time they will have to double up,” Kennedy said.

Anaheim city officials last week named Martin Mitchell, a 30-year veteran of the department, as interim chief. He is 55.

Few municipal leaders in the county expressed surprise that so many chiefs were quitting.

“It looks like it’s a cyclical thing,” Seal Beach City Manager Robert Nelson said. “Most of the chiefs were appointed at about the same time in age, and there’s a magic point in public retirement, 51 or 52.”

Turnover among police chiefs is also not an unusual phenomenon at the national level, for precisely the same reason. A recent FBI study found that the average tenure of police chiefs in major U.S. cities is less than three years.

And in a survey of 3,000 chiefs being released this month by the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, two-thirds of the chiefs questioned had been on the job less than nine years. Of those, two-thirds had been on the job less than five years.

“One reason is that it’s an artificial situation to begin with,” said Charleston, S.C., Police Chief Reuben Greenberg, who is nationally known for his department’s anti-crime programs.

“A guy doesn’t get to be chief until he’s well down the line, almost 60 years old,” Greenberg said. “Consequently, at best he’s got five years coming before retirement. Plus, small-town politics will absolutely kill you.”

‘Occupational Hazard’

Small-town politics is “an occupational hazard” that many chiefs have to face, said Arnold Binder, a criminologist at UC Irvine. Binder said the chief acts as a lightning rod for criticism from the public, the city government and members of his own force.

“Given all of these things, the pressure on any one individual is great,” Binder said.

Some chiefs try to relieve the pressure by taking up leisurely pursuits such as golfing or fishing. Others, like Picascia in Seal Beach, are unsuccessful in finding an escape valve and simply have to quit.

“I’m a cop, and I would like to keep being a cop,” Picascia said at the time of his medical departure last June. “But my doctor has not left me with much of a choice. The medicine combinations we’ve tried after four years just haven’t lowered my blood pressure. It’s that simple.” McDaniel, too, wants to keep being a cop. But his run-in with the San Clemente Officers Assn. derailed that ambition, at least temporarily. A believer in the tough, disciplined management styles of the Newport Beach and Los Angeles police departments, McDaniel encountered a more “laid back” force in San Clemente, where the officers were accustomed to wearing shorts, sneakers and baseball caps on their summertime patrols.

He aroused the ire of the officers when he, among other things, abolished the summertime casual wear and told officers to wear black shoes and tan slacks year-round. He also instituted new personnel policies that included frequent, written reprimands. The officers responded by taking an overwhelming no-confidence vote against McDaniel on May 23.

Hendrickson, who just two weeks earlier had given McDaniel a superior rating on his performance evaluation, responded to the officers vote by giving the chief his walking papers.

‘Left Some Scars’

“(He) had everybody in a great deal of turmoil,” Hendrickson said. “It has left some scars.”

The episode has left some scars on McDaniel as well. But he remains optimistic, nonetheless, that he will land back on his feet. Despite his experience in San Clemente, he said he still hopes to head another county police agency.

“I’m not satisfied to retire,” he said during a recent lunch break from his consulting work in Westminster, where is on a four-month project to help streamline burgeoning police operational costs. “I became a policeman because I could help people. I’m going to buck the odds. I’m going to work ‘til 60.”

Part of Westminster’s current belt-tightening effort has been “golden handshake” early retirement offers to highly paid administrators such as Chief Saviers.

As for himself, Saviers said he’s not going to miss the sleepless nights and hectic days in which he has had to perform like a “one-armed juggler” to accommodate diverse interests.

“I was the number two man for several years, and that position is marvelous because you’re answering to one man, and he’s taking all the heat,” said Saviers, who now earns $70,000 a year. “But when you become chief, you’re answering to just about everyone in the community.”

Saviers, like all of his colleagues, leaves the job with some regrets.

“You cannot spend over half your life in a job and not have regrets about leaving,” he said. “But I’m not going to work another 60-hour-to-80-hour-a-week job, which is what this is. If I decide I want to go fishing, I’m going to go fishing.”