City's returning police chief ready to roll

by: NICOLE MARSHALL World Staff Writer
9/2/2007
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article. ... Tulsa82671

Tulsa World asked newly hired Police Chief Ron Palmer, who served as chief here from 1992 through 2002 before retiring and working in private security consulting, about three high-priority issues facing the department.

Issue: reducing crime in the city

One of the top priorities for Tulsans is reducing violent crime in all areas of the city.

Palmer plans to draw from his newly acquired business skills and experience with private security when he returns as Tulsa's top cop with ambitious goals to reduce crime.

But as in his first tour of duty as chief, he also intends to use technology, including programs based on computerized analysis of crime, to maximize the department's resources.

''First, you have to understand the crime problems you face," he said. "Second, you have to direct the resources you want to hit those crime problems head-on.

''And, lastly, if you have a better understanding of the entirety of the city and where that crime might be displaced after you hit it, . . . you can work as a team with a lot of input from citizens and do better, and the crime stats will come down.''

Palmer also plans to draw from his experience as chief in 2000, when Tulsa saw the lowest crime rate in 20 years.

''I look back at 2000 and try to say, 'Well, what was actually happening good there?' And it was a whole combination of things. We had a really good level of staffing at that point.

''We seemed to be filing a lot of cases in both state and federal court, putting a lot of bad people in jail for a long time and using federal statutes to put them away, which reduced the gang violence dramatically, as I recall.

''There were two or three universes coming together as one, creating this really good dynamic to make the crime stats go down.''

Palmer said he believes that the method of creating that perfect crime-fighting environment is to ''make sure all the players are on board.

''When I say 'all the players,' the community is part of that, as well. It is my belief that the citizens will only tolerate so much crime. They have a comfort level of crime, and anything that rises above that, then there is an outcry either to the police, city administration -- somebody -- that there is too much crime.''

Issue: unifying and stabilizing the city’s police department

The city has been without a permanent chief since Dave Been retired May 1.

Meanwhile, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge still has a legal challenge pending by three rejected internal candidates for the chief’s position who claim that the city charter requires the mayor to hire one of them.

Palmer said he has already begun working to unify and stabilize the department. He met with the department’s command staff just before the mayor announced his hiring and laid out his goals as returning chief.

‘‘I also told them that we have to do this together and if you don’t necessarily like the person sitting next to you, you learn to like them because we have to move forward together within the Police Department and the community to make this all good,â€