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Can Chief Davis Survive? Pt. 2

How did the once-popular Rob Davis become the most controversial top cop in recent San Jose history?

by Erin Sherbert on Apr 08, 2009
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Downtown Siege

In his office on a recent Friday afternoon, Davis sat upright in his office chair, dressed in a suit and a yellow and blue striped tie. He had just flown back from a chiefs association conference in New York, where he and other big-city law enforcement leaders had met with leading academics to discuss a recently announced study on San Jose racial profiling stats and trends.

Perhaps true to form, he refused to divulge much about this trip. But Davis was clearly excited about the experience. An avid reader who has set the educational bar high for San Jose cops, encouraging them to get postgraduate degrees, Davis is famously fond of big thinking. A graduate of San Jose State University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in English, he later earned a master’s in public administration from Golden Gate University.

As we talked about his background and schooling, Davis quickly veered off into a curious tangent—comparing police work to writing an English paper. “You read a novel, try to figure out the characters and what is motivating them and then you write about
them,” he said, adding that with a routine police call, “you go to the house, figure out the character and figure out what’s motivating, then write about it.”

Davis is also known for crunching numbers and charting trends. As we spoke, Davis used stats and numbers to reframe one of the more controversial topics on his desk: San Jose’s drunk-in-public arrest rates.

Davis doesn’t try to skirt the issue. He admits that San Jose police in recent years have hauled more people to jail for public intoxication than any other city in the state. He’s already sat through meetings and public forums, taking “slings and
arrows,” as he puts it, about how cops are making bad busts, going as far as making so-called “attitude arrests”—handcuffing clubgoers because they mouthed off or refused to cooperate.

“I can’t say I don’t think an officer could have been engaged in an attitude arrest,” Davis says bluntly. “I don’t believe that was what was making up a majority of those arrests. But I can’t prove that one way or another.”

According to statistics, 57 percent arrested for public intoxication were Latino, in a city that’s 32 percent Latino. “We’re not happy with that,” Davis says. “Nobody is happy with that.”

On Oct. 30, a week after the story broke, Davis knew the community was upset. He picked up the phone and made a call to Victor Garza, president of the La Raza Roundtable.

Davis explains that he had formed a close bond with Garza over the years, as he tried to get to know the Latino community better. If anyone had a pulse on how the community was feeling, Davis knew it was Garza.

After talking it over with Garza, the chief, with Mayor Chuck Reed at his side, held a press conference with the La Raza Roundtable and other community leaders.

The chief defended the arrests while assuring the community that he would make sure police were not targeting Hispanics.

One of the first things they said was ‘Chief, why don’t you do something?” Davis recalls.

After that meeting, the pressure was on. Davis armed officers with breathalyzers. Although the device’s results are not permissible in court, they would make a case for arresting someone for being drunk in public, Davis says.

Since then, those arrest rates have dropped dramatically—by as much as 50 percent. Davis says he can’t explain the recent decline but that he’s somewhat relieved.

The decline, however, has only sharpened suspicion among the community.

Skyler Porras, director of the ACLU in Northern California, says the change is evidence that police were in fact making unwarranted arrests.

“The drop-off rate says to us there was a huge number of bad busts that were happening, and now that they have been caught, they have all of a sudden stopped,” says Porras.

A few weeks after that meeting, the council held a public hearing and created the Public Intoxication Task Force, with the chief, the city manager and members of the community. The task force is supposed to come up with alternatives to arresting people who might be drunk in public.

The task force pushed the chief to release all 4,000-plus drunken arrest reports. Davis opposed the release, with the support of the city manager. At first, he cited privacy issues. Later, he said redacting names and private information would be too burdensome on department resources.

On Feb. 25, more than a month after the group started meeting, frustrated task force members fired off a letter to the city manager explaining that the group was “stuck.” Community members on the task force weren’t willing to move forward without getting access to all the drunk-in-public arrest reports.

Those records would help paint a clearer picture of patterns and underlying problems that have possibly led to the high rate of arrests, Porras says.

The chief later agreed to release a sample of 200 redacted arrest reports. Some members of the task force grew suspicious after the city announced its plan to create a “consortium” to analyze the arrest records. The task force felt as though it was nothing more than a PR tool to placate the community, Porras says. The group still cannot understand why the city will not release those records to them.

“This is not about going after rank-and-file officers,” Porras says. “This isn’t some sort of witch-hunt. The city is in the middle of a $20 million lawsuit with three plaintiffs that are alleging bad busts and racial profiling in these drunken arrests.
So you would think the last thing the city would want to do is stonewall.”

The Tide Turns

On Feb. 24, Chief Davis showed up at the afternoon City Council meeting, dressed in uniform. He took a seat in the front of the chambers.

A few rows behind the chief sat Bobby Lopez of the police officers association. And on the other side of the chambers were a handful of lobbyists and downtown club owners.

The council raced through a few items on its agenda before Mayor Reed called for the presentation on downtown policing. Before Davis got to his presentation, Councilman Sam Liccardo made a motion for the council to approve his own memo on that very topic.

It was well known that the chief and the councilman have different views about how to police downtown. Liccardo gambled that he had the council votes on his side.

At this point, nightclub owners in the council chambers fired off text messages to each other, declaring victory.

Unfazed, the chief spoke confidently as he flipped through slides describing some of the crimes police have to tackle downtown. He talked about public urination and carjackings. Club owners rolled their eyes.

True to form, Davis delivered an organized, clean PowerPoint presentation to make his argument.

Downtown club and bar owners have been pushing for years to get the City Council to change the way San Jose police operate downtown. They’ve complained that on weekends downtown feels like something akin to a police state, with nightly 1:30am strikes. That’s when the “police surge” begins.

David Powell, president of the San Jose Restaurant and Entertainment Association, says he feels as though Davis has been digging his heels in.

“Everyone knows that what we have now doesn’t work,” Powell says. “People are afraid to come downtown because of the police presence, whether the police like to hear that or not.”

Liccardo’s plan asked for a friendlier police model for downtown’s nightlife. Essentially, Liccardo said he wanted to scale back the number of police officers late at night, when sometimes there are as many as 60 officers spanning the area from San Pedro Square to the SoFA district.

Moreover, under Liccardo’s plan, the downtown clubs and bars would have to start paying for police presence. Right now, the city spends at least $800,000 every year on police overtime in downtown. It was suggested that the chief remove the ban on secondary employment to allow bars and clubs to employ off-duty cops in front of their venues.

Despite Davis’ opposition, Liccardo’s plan sailed through the council 11-0. “What we are hearing from the chief is, ‘I’m very open to hearing all of your suggestions, but that [suggestion] won’t work,’” Liccardo said after the meeting. “After a while,
when you hear that over and over, again you start to question the premise.”

Davis shrugs off the 11-0 vote. In fact, many saw it coming. The chief says much of what the council is now requesting, like fewer officers, has already been implemented. He points out that in March 2006 he scaled back the number of cops in downtown after people complained that there were too many. He also eliminated the unpopular checkpoints on Santa Clara Street, which made downtown San Jose look more like the West Bank than a place to enjoy free time.

“I don’t think you need to shoo people away, and that’s why we have gotten away from doing that,” Davis says. He also now says he’s agreeable to the idea of having downtown officers get specific training to cater to nightlife issues.

Meanwhile, the number of people hitting clubs and bars in downtown has declined. So then, why have police resources not dwindled, Liccardo asks?

Even some members of his own organization conclude that downtown desperately needs a new police philosophy.

“I think Rob still has his mission, but the problem is it’s not what everyone else wants,” Lopez says. “And that’s when a plan becomes outdated. He is perfectly content with holding a lid on what is going on downtown, and it’s not working.”

As if to prove Lopez’s point, Davis responds by insisting that there are huge venues downtown that cater to large drinking crowds, where many problems occur. Yet he is correct.

On Feb. 20, two people were stabbed inside the nightclub Wet, one of the newer and larger venues downtown. Recalling the incident, sitting behind his desk, Davis explains that there are still serious crimes happening downtown. He says he would like to see the City Council emphasize smaller clubs downtown.

“It’s not that the police department has problems with nightlife,” Davis says. “It’s getting framed that way for political reasons.”

After a 2005 shooting near the Ambassadors nightclub, Davis went to the City Council to get more authority. With the help of then-Councilwoman Cindy Chavez, Davis was able to get a so-called “urgency ordinance” passed that gave him the power to shut down any bar or club that was deemed a public safety threat.

“We had gangs running gun battles and shooting as they were driving by and cops were present. It was horrible,” Davis recalls. “There was a huge concern about retaliation, so if we had that ordinance, we would shut that club down the next day.”

However, Davis has yet to exercise the powers granted to him in this ordinance. Many downtown club owners say that if Davis sees perpetual problems with a few, larger clubs, he ought to use the urgency law to deal with them, instead of destroying the business climate for the entire downtown.

The ongoing friction between downtown clubs and the Police Department has put Liccardo in a tough spot. He’s trying to balance public safety with the growing demand for a more vibrant, friendly entertainment district—and the city’s need for tax dollars to fund city services. Liccardo hasn’t been shy about taking on the chief on this issue.

“I think traditionally there has been an enormous amount of deference toward the chief,” Liccardo says. “But more and more, because of the problems that have arisen, particularly with the Latino community, I think there is a growing realization that it’s important for us to assert control over how we are policing.”

The End, or a New Beginning?

The morning after the Feb. 24 council hearing, where the council decided to explore new policing models for downtown, City Manager Figone and the chief met in her office.

According to City Hall staffers, the city manager was incensed about the chief’s presentation to the council the night before. Some believe the Davis-Figone relationship has become strained in recent months.

“Not so,” says Figone. “The chief is no different than any other department head. My expectation of all department heads is that they bring their best professional perspective to discussions and that we speak candidly in reaching decisions.”

Davis, who reports to the city manager not the City Council, was clearly annoyed when asked about the meeting during a recent interview. He says that he regularly meets with Figone, and just because he’s asked to her office doesn’t mean she is calling him on the carpet.

Asked about the meeting, Davis says, “I won’t go into detail, but the purpose of the meeting had nothing to do with what transpired at the council meeting. In fact, we had a very pleasant meeting. There was absolutely nothing, absolutely zero.”

Staffers at City Hall say, however, that the city manager is losing patience with the chief, and she has the power to replace him. One City Hall staffer who works closely with the city manager’s office says Figone often gets frustrated with the chief’s apparent stubbornness, particularly as it relates to solving the downtown policing issue.

“There is tension, but not huge blowups,” the staffer says. “I think they both have the same goals and visions. But I think they may have some different ways of getting there.”

This staffer, who asked to remain anonymous, says the chief seems to be more agreeable these days. “Maybe he is starting to see the writing on the wall,” the staffer says.

Figone won’t discuss the chief’s performance. However, in an email, she points out that “the Chief has already made a number of changes in response to community and downtown concerns.

“I have recently hired a national expert on Entertainment Zone policing to evaluate the current practices and make independent recommendations,” she wrote. “And as a result of conversations I have had with the Chief, he will be reviewing other relevant department policies, as well.”

When pressed about whether the chief’s job is secure, Figone didn’t say no. She didn’t say yes either.



by Erin Sherbert on Apr 08, 2009
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