Overhaul Set for District Police
Lanier to Undo Changes Made By Last Chief

By Allison Klein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 24, 2007

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier is set to announce a wholesale reorganization of the department today, abandoning the structure established by her predecessor and mentor and reducing the number of African Americans in the agency's top brass.

To make the 3,900-member force more agile and increase police presence, Lanier is shrinking her senior staff, beefing up technology and putting patrol officers under one citywide command. It is the first major departmental overhaul in almost 10 years.

"I'm trying to improve efficiency and communications so we can do things faster and better," said Lanier, 40, who took over the department in January from Charles H. Ramsey.

The racial shift in some respects mirrors staff changes that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) made when he replaced African Americans in several key Cabinet positions. The appointments angered some residents, who complained that Fenty's choices created a Cabinet that does not reflect the majority-black city it governs.

Four of eight assistant police chiefs were African American under Ramsey; two of six assistant chiefs will be black under Lanier, who is white.

"I didn't sit down and go, 'Who can I promote with what race and gender?' " Lanier said. "I looked at who has been working at the highest level and put them in key positions. Then I looked to see if everything is balanced, and I think it is."

The announcement of the changes, scheduled to take effect Sunday, comes a week after an off-duty officer fatally shot a 14-year-old in Southeast Washington, generating community outcry.

Residents across the District regularly complain that they do not see police officers on the streets, and violent crime is on the rise, with homicides up about 10 percent from this time last year.

City Administrator Dan Tangherlini said Lanier's goal is to prevent crime by implementing a plan that supports street officers and encourages them to get involved in communities.

"It's consistent with the administration overall, where we want a stronger relationship between leadership and the ground troops," Tangherlini said.

Fenty said that he signed off on the reorganization but that "the architecture belongs to the chief. . . . We encouraged the chief to set her own course."

Lanier is dismantling the structure Ramsey created in 1998, which carved the city into three regional operations command centers, or ROCS, each headed by an assistant chief.

Lanier is reestablishing the bureau system, which puts assistant chiefs in charge of a function rather than a chunk of the city. This way, Lanier said, patrol officers will be assigned to areas with the greatest need, and the investigative staff will become more cohesive and effective. One newly appointed assistant chief, Patrick Burke, who had been a commander in the special operations division, will head a new bureau for homeland security.

The city's 2,000 patrol officers will be under the direction of Assistant Chief Diane Groomes, who was promoted from 1st District commander. Groomes, a 17-year member of the department, will have the authority to reassign officers quickly in response to crime. Currently, making those changes involves several layers of bureaucracy, Lanier said.

"We had too much chain of command," Lanier said.

Detectives and other investigators will report to Assistant Chief Winston Robinson, who was head of ROC east, or the police districts east of the Anacostia River.

Lanier said she and Ramsey come from different generations of policing.

Lanier, who earned two master's degrees at Ramsey's urging, said it has been years since Ramsey studied cutting-edge policing and technology. "I've been immersed in it the last 10 years of my career," she said. "It's not that long ago I was a patrol officer. That helps reduce the gap between strategy and tactics."

Lanier said she is automating police reports and streamlining databases after 11,000 police reports were initially not included in a tally of crime statistics last year. She is distributing 400 laptop computers to patrol officers, and she encourages district commanders to keep residents informed about crime on Web-based community message boards.

In overhauling the department, Lanier said she looked back at more than a dozen years of D.C. police organizational charts, as well as setups in 15 major cities across the country.

She said it took more than nine months to come up with her plan, in part because she interviewed scores of police officials, asking them their goals and whether their personal lives could sustain the round-the-clock work hours she demands of her top officials.

"I set a direction, and if anyone could keep pace, I wanted to keep them on," Lanier said. "I expect a very high level of output."

D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), who chairs the public safety committee, said last night that he is pleased with Lanier's reorganization.

"It's to the chief's credit that she waited nine months and got a feel for the department before she did it," he said. "Some of the people moving up to assistant chief have a very good track record."

Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police Labor Committee, did not return calls last night seeking comment on Lanier's reorganization.

The chief has left the seven police districts intact, although two will have new commanders. Apart from patrol officers, district commanders are the most visible department members in the community because they hold neighborhood meetings and have frequent interaction with individual residents.

The 1st District, which includes Capitol Hill and the area around Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, will be led by Cmdr. David Kamperin, who is coming from the special operations division. The 5th District, which includes the Brookland and Fort Lincoln neighborhoods, is also getting a new leader. Cmdr. Jennifer Greene is being replaced by Lamar Greene, who has been in charge of a 1st District substation.

Capt. C.V. Morris is moving from the violent crimes branch to the forensics bureau. Morris, known for wearing brightly colored suits as he briefed the public on homicide investigations, is being replaced by Inspector Rodney Parks of the internal affairs division.

Lanier is demoting two assistant chiefs, Willie Dandridge and Alton Bigelow, to commander-level positions. Another assistant chief, Brian Jordan, is no longer in that position, but it is unclear what his role will be. Shannon Cockett is retiring.

Of Lanier's six assistant chiefs, four are new appointees, and two, Robinson and Peter Newsham, have been assistant chiefs for years.

Two of the new assistant chiefs, Alfred Durham and Joshua Ederheimer, had left the force because they were unhappy under Ramsey. Durham, who helped run day-to-day operations for Richmond police, will play the same role for Lanier. Ederheimer, who was working for the Police Executive Research Forum, a national organization, will head the department's professional development bureau. Both have been working for the department since January and were part of Lanier's transition team.

Lanier said Durham would take over the department "if anything happened to me." But she also said that all of her assistant chiefs are at the same level.