San Clemente Still Trying to Understand Chief’s Ouster

Kelson McDaniel was sitting on a chintz sofa in his San Clemente home, explaining why he had been fired from his job as police chief, when from nowhere a small white poodle named Cuddles bounced onto his lap.

“I sure look like the mean police chief,” the 50-year-old McDaniel laughed as, cradling the four-pound ball of fluff in his large arms, he fended off a lick.

McDaniel may be a soft touch for miniature poodles, but there is no question that he was not soft on San Clemente’s 50-member Police Department.

In his 18-month tenure in the fast-growing beach town (pop. 34,600), McDaniel tried to impose new standards on a department that, according to police officers and city leaders, had been “laid-back” for too long.

“I’m going to require you to be policemen,” McDaniel remembers telling officers at his first--and only--meeting with the entire department the week of Oct. 15, 1985, his first week on the job.

In the days since McDaniel’s removal, many in the city are trying to understand what happened.

Frequent Reprimands

This is a city that counted only 600 crimes in 1986--mostly robberies, assaults, thefts and burglaries, but no homicides. But in an effort to emulate the style of the Los Angeles and Newport Beach police departments, McDaniel added five new supervisors and instituted new personnel policies that included frequent, written reprimands.

He posted pin maps of crime trends in the roll-call room and circulated statistics showing a slight reduction in crime.

And in a move that many officers saw as an attack on their low-key style of policing, the new chief declared that their traditional summer uniform--khaki shorts, tennis sneakers and baseball caps--looked “silly” and he ordered them to wear black shoes and tan slacks year-round.

San Clemente officers took offense at the many changes. They complained quietly at first. But recently--with tears, shouted protests and, on May 23, a strong “no-confidence” vote--they told City Manager James B. Hendrickson and several council members that McDaniel’s style was autocratic, punitive and demeaning.

‘Crybaby Cop’ Complaints?

On May 28, Hendrickson called McDaniel into his office, and, according to McDaniel and others, asked him to resign from his $62,000-a-year job. McDaniel had committed no misconduct, Hendrickson said; the issue was his management style.

Some city residents, council members and other Orange County police chiefs say they are troubled by what happened.

Were the complaints a reason to fire McDaniel, who on May 11 had received a glowing evaluation from Hendrickson that termed him “outstanding” or “superior” in every category?

Were the complaints labor grievances, brought to a fever pitch by this year’s police contract talks, which could have been resolved by negotiation?

Or were these the complaints of “the crybaby cops,” as a police officer in another Orange County department called them last week?

Some observers also wondered if McDaniel was dealt with harshly because, as an outsider from departments in Los Alamitos and Newport Beach, he had tried to force change on close-knit San Clemente.

“He was the stepfather and we were the family,” said Rick Rivadeneyra, a former San Clemente officer who called for the “no-confidence” vote just before he quit the force. “He (McDaniel) arbitrarily made changes without sitting back and looking at this little city and saying ‘Where can I make the changes?’ ”

McDaniel was the first of two Orange County police chiefs to leave their departments abruptly in the last two weeks. Last Thursday, the day his officers were to be polled on problems in the department, Seal Beach Police Chief Stacy Picascia resigned, citing job-related medical problems.

For now, the full explanation of McDaniel’s removal remains unavailable, because some of the principals refuse to discuss it. Hendrickson and Acting Police Chief Al Ehlow declined to comment last week.

A few San Clemente Peace Officers Assn. board members agreed to talk but said no rank-and-file officer would do so because the issue was behind them.

Another officer added that the POA is negotiating a two-year contract with the city, replacing one that will end June 30, and so discussion might jeopardize the POA’s position.

Mayor Holly Ann Veale also refused to discuss the specifics of McDaniel’s removal. She did call the McDaniel affair “a nightmare. . . . It’s been unfair to everyone involved, and the city has acted in the best way for everyone involved. It’s not a situation anyone would have chosen.”

The controversy is not expected to end soon.

Last Wednesday night, several dozen McDaniel supporters appeared before the council, angrily demanding either an explanation or an apology for the police chief’s removal.

The brouhaha may also lead to scrutiny of City Manager Hendrickson, Councilman Tom Lorch said. Given the serious grievances in a department that the council thought was running smoothly, “you have to wonder about how things are being run,” Lorch said.

Councilman Robert D. Limberg added that the situation was “badly handled. . . . It rapidly became an emotional, no-win situation. It should have been objectively assessed through the grievance process.”

In addition, McDaniel has warned that his case could hurt San Clemente when the city tries to select his replacement. “What professional would want to sit where the police officers’ association can say, ‘We don’t like him, so we’re going to end his career,’ ” the former chief said.

Trying to cope with the shock of dismissal, McDaniel complained last week that he had been removed “without due process”--without being able to present his side to the council, to a consultant who investigated the officers’ complaints or to Hendrickson.

He said he would decide in 30 days whether to sue. “I’ve been an outstanding police chief,” McDaniel said, “and I’ve had no opportunities to defend myself.”

In the fall of 1985, when McDaniel was selected from 113 candidates to be San Clemente’s police chief, all of the background reports were “glowing,” Hendrickson has said.

McDaniel had spent seven years as chief of the 25-man department in Los Alamitos. Before that, he spent 17 years in the Newport Beach department, working as a patrol sergeant, reserve coordinator and adjutant to the police chief.

In San Clemente, McDaniel succeeded an easy-going chief named Gary Brown, who had spent most of his energies on community-oriented programs such as Neighborhood Watch.

McDaniel came to San Clemente with a mandate for change, he said. With Hendrickson’s blessing, he was supposed to institute procedures appropriate to a city expected to grow to 70,000 population by 1990. “I would be responsible for converting a small-town operation to a middle-size operation very similar to the city of Newport Beach,” he said.

In short order, he instituted new systems for patrol, for talking on the police radio, for personnel review. Initially, officers welcomed some of those changes, POA leaders have said.

But some of the changes hit a nerve. “It started with some very minor things and continued to grow and grow” until officers’ working conditions became unbearable, said Detective Russ Moore, the POA president.

There was, for instance, the matter of the summer shorts. McDaniel announced at his meeting with officers in October, 1985, that he was doing away with the summer uniform.

“If you look up and down the coast, you’ll see officers in summer uniforms--shorts and tennis shoes,” Moore said. “And here he comes in and says, ‘This is it.’ . . . It was the chief’s opinion that it was a completely unprofessional uniform, and he changed it without ever consulting the association or his own staff.”

McDaniel said last week that he had changed the uniform partly because it looked unprofessional but also because it could pose a hazard if an officer in shorts ever scuffled with a suspect on an asphalt street.

More troublesome, Moore and other officers said, were other McDaniel policies, such as a new beat system, in which shifts changed every 28 days, and a new “Personnel Incident Report” system that included frequent reprimands.

The new beat system played havoc with officers’ time off with their families and frequently forced them to work 10 days in a row, Moore and others complained. McDaniel last week explained that the 28-day shifts were intended “to ensure that minimum deployment took place” and that the city was covered 24 hours a day. He said he had tried to accommodate those who needed time with their families.

The PIR system created paranoia, low morale and increasing frustration in the department, Moore and others said. Under the system, officers could receive a favorable PIR, but they more often received negative ones, usually for “little nit-picky stuff,” said Detective Barth Massey, a POA board member. One officer received a negative PIR for having a crease in his pants and another received one for having too many spelling errors on a police report, Moore and others said.

Though police departments are by nature “paramilitary organizations,” officers found it difficult to work under the PIR system, Moore said. Rivadeneyra added: “You felt like you had seven, eight eyes on you at all times--like you were doing something wrong when you weren’t.”

McDaniel last week maintained that PIRs are a commonly used police management tool that simply “corrects people. With a written notice, you get that person’s attention.” He did concede that some of his newly appointed supervisors might have been “too aggressive” in meting out PIRs.

Particularly galling to San Clemente officers was McDaniel’s enthusiasm for tickets.

For years, officers said, they had been proud that San Clemente was a “spirit of the law” Police Department rather than a “letter of the law” department. Explaining the distinction, POA board member Massey said, “If you see a drunk (in a ‘letter of the law’ jurisdiction) you go out and arrest him. If it’s the ‘spirit of the law’ and you see a drunk in town, you have a relative come pick him up. . . .”

But according to many San Clemente officers, McDaniel insisted on tickets being written for virtually all violations, with little discretion.

“He didn’t see any reason why an officer wouldn’t be able to write two tickets a night,” said Rivadeneyra, adding, “Sometimes you would go out and look for a couple of tickets right away so you could do normal police work and then you wouldn’t have that on your mind.”

McDaniel last week said that he had no quota for tickets. “It’s wrong to say an officer should write a certain number of tickets,” he said. But calling his philosophy “pro-active,” McDaniel said, “I don’t see any reason why an officer couldn’t write two tickets a night. I didn’t require that. But I know that I could write a couple of tickets just driving to lunch and back.”

McDaniel said his style of enforcement paid off. In 1986, his first full year as chief, there were 3,106 arrests compared to 1,550 arrests the year before. Also in 1986, San Clemente counted 27,095 citations compared to 14,052 the previous year. And in that year, when the population grew by 15%, the number of major crimes dropped by 2%, with 600 major crimes (rapes, burglaries, assaults and the like) compared to 614 in 1985.

Statistics like those impressed the council--and City Manager Hendrickson, who, in McDaniel’s May 11 performance review, rated him “outstanding” in technical knowledge, leadership and initiative and “superior” in judgment and interpersonal relations. According to that report, there were “minor grumblings” within the department over the chief’s management, but overall, McDaniel “directs, motivates, corrects, trains and disciplines effectively” and was “a tremendous role model and tutor for the other department heads.”

Hendrickson and the council members have said they had no inkling of deep dissatisfaction with McDaniel until just before the May 23 vote, when 40 out of 50 officers voted “no confidence” in him.

In retrospect, Councilman Brian Rice said he probably hadn’t heard complaints because “the police officers were obviously very fearful of their position if they made any kind of comment. There was fear of termination,” Rice said.

POA leaders said that no single McDaniel policy triggered the vote. Rather, it happened because Rivadeneyra, the first of half a dozen officers planning to quit because of McDaniel, called for the question. “I had to ask for the vote because others were afraid of getting fired or losing whatever position they had or maybe not getting a promotion,” Rivadeneyra said.

From there, the move to get rid of McDaniel took on a momentum of its own. After several council members met with overwrought officers and Hendrickson called in a consultant, it became clear that retaining McDaniel “would put the town in turmoil,” Rice said.

To McDaniel, the outcome seems horribly unfair. On the eve of the “no-confidence” vote, he said, he told the POA board that he was willing to make a number of concessions, including rescinding the PIRs and the 28-day shifts, but was ignored. He said he still believes that if Hendrickson had defused the emotion and started formal grievance proceedings, the complaints could have been resolved.

“I think Mr. Hendrickson should have said ‘McDaniel is doing the job that I want him to do and have endorsed all along. Go back to the table with him and work things out,’ ” McDaniel said.

But that didn’t happen. Now McDaniel spends weekdays receiving condolences at home or supervising the construction of the 2,800-square-foot “dream house” overlooking the ocean that he and his wife have been building for two years.

McDaniel said he will probably try to finish the house quickly, sell it, and find a new career, possibly in sales or real estate.