Let’s Try Some More Community Chiefing

Gangs. Crack cocaine. A methamphetamine epidemic. Soaring juvenile and violent crime. Intense poverty. Threatened neighborhoods.

Spokane has a crime problem. The city also has a top law enforcement expert, brim full of the latest ideas about how troubled cities most effectively address problems like ours.

Police Chief Terry Mangan is a nationally respected innovator, lecturer, convention-goer, grant-chaser, networker and committee creature. But there is one innovation his well-traveled resume might not mention. Mangan’s out of town so much he has had to perfect a new management technique: administration by voice-mail.

All his staff has to do if they need a decision, Mangan says, is leave a message on voice mail and every day he’ll pick up that hotel phone, hear them out, read a fax if necessary, call to confer and render his advice.

It’s an innovation that might be hindering his actual effectiveness - as opposed to the kind of effectiveness implied by a list of grants won, seminars taught, programs invented.

Mangan was out of town on business last year for a total of 58 days. That’s a lot. Rank-and-file officers grumble and joke about it. Mangan and his aides discount this morale problem as uninformed, low-level bitching. They insist no decisions have been delayed, no harm has been done. They feel Mangan’s efforts make Spokane a focal point for law enforcement innovation.

There is logic to Mangan’s side of this story. At a time of rising crime and tight budgets, his nationwide connections and credibility do bring in grants that beef up his department, as well as ideas from police in other cities that struggle with crime trends like Spokane’s. Neighborhood policing, begun on Mangan’s watch, created neighborhood focal points with ability to address the roots of crime. And, crime has plummeted in West Central, where community policing began. There’s no better measure of police effectiveness.

Yet there also is a blind spot on Mangan’s side of this story. No one knows how much better our police department would be if its chief spent more of his time here, in closer communication with his officers and the community. Mangan’s community-policing model shifts more decision making to the front lines. His own hands-on style includes - requires - direct contact with front-line officers. But no amount of voice mailing, faxing and cellular telephoning offers the quality of communication that physical presence provides.

The City Council, slow to hold this strong personality accountable, has a duty to face the situation and explore whether the extraordinary travel schedule is short-changing the community that pays Mangan’s salary.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board