Newport Beach Police Chief Bob McDonell has...

Newport Beach Police Chief Bob McDonell has served in a variety of

law enforcement positions in several California police departments

over his 35-year career.

An Oakland native, he started out in Mountain View in Santa Clara

County. There, he served as both a motorcycle enforcement officer and

a hazardous devices technician. He later worked as a sergeant for

Corte Madera Police in Marin County and as a lieutenant with San

Clemente Police. The latter stint included a year as acting chief.

In 1986, he became the police chief for the city of Woodland,

where he spent seven and a half years. And, finally, in 1993, he

became Newport’s chief of police following a statewide search.

On Thursday, City Editor James Meier met McDonell at his office to

discuss how Newport Beach Police is prepared in this post-Sept. 11

world.

How has homeland security changed in Newport Beach since Sept. 11?

It’s not changed to any great extent except to ensure that our

field personnel are more focused in terms of these issues. As I’ve

mentioned before, because we provide such a high level of service

already, there isn’t a noticeable difference.

We respond to minor calls for service as well as major calls for

service. We have fielded a number of inquiries about suspicious

persons and activity and follow up on them. We either handle it

ourselves or refer to a joint terrorism task force. We have supplied

some investigators to that task force on an ad hoc basic when they

can’t handle everything.

Does law enforcement change much during wartime?

No, because you’re deadline with the same issues in terms of the

concern over some kind of reprisal, some kind of statement by those

who want to disrupt the United States. So, post Sept. 11 or the Iraqi

war, the issues are the same.

How, if any, has the city’s relationship with neighboring agencies

had to change since Sept. 11?

Again, I don’t think it’s needed to because we have an excellent

working relationship with the Harbor Patrol, which we work with on a

daily basis. As you know, we’re in a joint powers authority with the

city of Costa Mesa for the airborne law enforcement program, so we

share that asset and those resources.

We’ve always had a close working relationship with the neighboring

jurisdictions so really hasn’t needed improvement as a result of the

war situation. It’s already existed.

Is there more police presence on the street these days?

Again, we’re very well staffed for this community. We’re staffed

for cities much larger than ours, population wise, because we are a

tourist-oriented community, a destination community in terms of

business and shopping. So our community has valued service levels to

the extent that they haven’t been afraid to fund us that allowed us

to be very responsive. So we have not had to add personnel to put

more people on the streets because we have those resources.

Now, you’re still the president of the California Police Chiefs

Assn., right?

I just finished my year as president in February. Prior to that, I

served as vice president and first vice president. So I’ve been

involved in the group for a little over a decade. I currently serve

as immediate past president on the executive committee.

So it was an interesting year for me and the association. We went

out on our own and got an executive director. I should say we

contracted through another organization to manage us, but we decided

that we wanted to declare our independence and go out on our own.

Obviously, it’s been a difficult year from a budgetary standpoint.

We’re very concerned as California law enforcement about what the

budget has done to us.

On a statewide basis, there have been well over 1,700 law

enforcement positions frozen because of the concern over the vehicle

license fee and, on the local level, a lot of city managers have been

concerned that the money just won’t be there to fund those positions.

So there have been these vacancies.

We delivered that message, or I did personally, to the governor

and tried to essentially tell him just what the proposal was doing to

local safety at a time when we can at least afford it in this state.

Maybe we’ll get a balanced budget here so we can that public safety

can be restored.

Especially, there has not, at least until very recently, been a

move from the federal government to send some of those [post-Sept. 11

reimbursement] funds down to local government. So each city was

required to essentially accommodate the additional responsibilities

we have with homeland security without any additional resources.

Any final thoughts?

Only that I feel very fortunate as an organization to serve this

community because of how much they support us and every thing we do.

We’ve very pleased to be able to provide such a high level of service

and we know they expect it.