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Coffee Conversation with “If I can increase the department’s staff from 70 to 79, I am confident we can provide security and most of the services the public expects from a police department.”
“Events like the Woodward Dream Cruise and Arts, Beats & Eats are good for the Police Department, and I’m not talking about overtime pay!”
Those forthright, even forceful statements were made by a polite and soft spoken man, 42, who is as comfortable talking about his wife, Sandy, and his eight kids as about the civic/political environment in which a chief of police must operate.
Interim Police Chief Corrigan O’Donohue and I had a coffee conversation at Jimi’s Restaurant less than three weeks after he had been appointed to that position by City Manager Don Johnson.
O’Donohue has served 18 years with the Royal Oak Police Department, following a career path which includes time in the Marine Corps and seeking a degree in Criminal Justice whose curriculum includes attending the Police Academy, from where Corey became a City of Northville police officer. He has three courses to complete to obtain his degree. That’s doubly important, because he must have the degree to become eligible to have “Interim” removed from his title.
As always in these coffee conversations, this was not a Q&A in which I bombarded Corrigan with question-after-question. Instead, in no particular order, we exchanged knowledge and opinion about several topics, a process which generates a conversational mosaic. That mosaic is reflected in this report.
O’Donohue has served under Public Safety Director John Ball and police chiefs Mel Johnson, Ted Quisenberry, and Chris Jahnke, whom Corey has just replaced. We touched lightly on the differing management styles and such incidental observations as how Johnson’s tenure was made more difficult by his being promoted from sergeant to chief.
Significantly, when I asked for his impressions of what I call the “bad old times,” O’Donohue began talking about morale in the department and the department’s relationships with the city administration. (I use the term to refer to those years of excessive crime, even a shooting that anti-alcohol people always bring up when new liquor license is requested.)
Corey agreed that downtown was experiencing more fights than usual and added the observation,” Crime was skyrocketing nationwide in the 90s.” But “bad old days” brought to his mind the police department’s internal problems and its relationships with other departments in city hall. Several times during this conversation, we came back to situation Quisenberry faced when he came on the scene.
Some of O’Donohue’s comments: “The department was a nasty place.” . . . “There was animosity between police officers and command and within the levels of command.” . . . “Inside city hall, we were an island”
Those observations made it impossible not to spend some time talking about the transitional role played by Quisenberry and his management style. Corey and I agreed that Ted was tough and that, within the department, his toughness was both admired and detested. The net effect of the Quisenberry era was positive – internally and on the streets -- even though the public sometimes got glimpses of discipline taking the form of the chief chewing out a subordinate for not saying “Good morning.” I recalled Quisenberry asking me, “What was that about?” when a detective stopped driving out of the parking lot to chat with me as I left city hall.
Corey’s take on such incidents:. “A police force is a paramilitary organization.” He says former chiefs Quisenberry and Jahnke are on-call tutors when he needs their input.
I asked Corey his reaction to the never-ending claim that downtown’s need for police presence deprives neighborhoods of services. He maintains that a car on patrol downtown “will cross the Central Business District boundary if its presence is required.” That led me to ask about the differing interpretations of police statistics by city commissioners. “In terms of providing statistics, we serve Royal Oak by making them available. More often than not, if one commissioner asks for information, we provide the same data to all of them.”
And that led to our going around the commission table, during which Corey described briefly what each elected officials reaches out for. Of interest: O’Donohue’s relationship with Terry Drinkwine has its own personality because Terry, a retired cop, was Corey’s training officer. Prior to Jim Rasor’s election as commissioner, Corey dealt with Jim as a defense attorney. Pat Capello’s primary reach-out has to do with the Animal Shelter, Chuck Semchena’s with alcohol-related matters.
Corey and I didn’t touch on whether the additional nine additional officers he hopes for will beef up the force enough that residents won’t have to go to the police station to file burglary reports and the like. "They don’t have to now and certainly would not have to if I received the staffing increase."
I mentioned and Corey acknowledged that there are people who don’t like police – of any rank, of any city – and that the current impasse in contract negotiations has soured the public a bit. I agreed with Corey that his troops are unfairly “getting a bad rap” because of that situation. (Relatedly, a few regular readers of Versagi Voice get confused or irritated – on one side or the other -- because I argue against a dedicated millage for Police and Fire at the same time that I publish neutral or favorable summaries about their activities.)
About Governor Rick Snyder’s suggestions that cities consider combining Police and Fire into a single Public Safety Department O’Donohue said, “I think it is something that needs serious consideration. I believe it is a mistake to reject the idea without carefully studying the issue. We need to really start thinking outside the box because the status quo is no longer acceptable.”
Corey asked me what I think about the expansion of the Arts, Beats & Eats footprint, I explained that I am temperamentally opposed to massive gatherings like ABE and the Dream Cruise because all those staff-hours, all that overtime do not benefit the city financially. I discount the claim that they bring recognition to Royal Oak. Aas though Royal Oak needs recognition.
His answer, though, adds a new
dimension to the debate.
List of other coffee conversations
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“Police officers are getting a bad
rap. Our people on the streets continue to perform
professionally. The hassle over contract negotiations
hasn’t resulted in questionable actions like slowdowns
or excessive sick calls.”