Police finalist tough, charming

FEDERAL WAY – It was a slack tourism year and a Memphis classifed ad that steered Anne Kirkpatrick out of her intended hotel career and into policing. Twenty-four years and four cities later, Kirkpatrick has a law degree and runs the cop shop at the state’s ninth-largest city. Colleagues, friends and Federal Way officials describe the 46-year-old as a solid leader, who blends no-nonsense authority and directness with a disarming Southern style.

“She’s a pretty tough hombre,” said Ed Crawford, a former deputy chief of the State Patrol. “Tough, but with a lot of charm.”

A key element of her style as boss are her five inviolable “cardinal rules,” all of which she has fired someone for. Among them: no sex on duty, no lying, no insubordination.

“She’s a very principled person who knows the difference between right and wrong and is tough enough to hold the officers under her accountable,” said Don Pierce, executive director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. “And that’s not always easy. There’s a lot of competing interests when you’re police chief.”

“The more pressure she’s under, the more from Memphis she is,” said Sumner Police Chief Colleen Wilson, a longtime friend.

It’s a style that Kirkpatrick would like to bring to Spokane as its next police chief.

One of four finalists for the job, she said she’s a transparent, community-minded people person.

“When I saw what they were looking for,” she said, “I thought, ‘That’s me.’ “

Southern Discomfort

Memphis was a turbulent place in the 1960s and 1970s, with deep divisions between whites and blacks. One of Kirkpatrick’s childhood memories is the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down at a Memphis motel. She remembers the city riots, National Guard troops and a government curfew.

The third of four children of an entrepreneur and his wife, Kirkpatrick had grown up expecting to be a homemaker raising a family of her own. She went to King College, a small Christian school on the Tennessee/Virginia state line, and she figured she’d meet someone and marry.

She didn’t. So she took her bachelor’s in business administration and planned to go into the hotel business. But she couldn’t find a job. Frustrated, she took to scanning the classified ads.

That’s where she found her career. The Memphis Police Department was hiring 50 officers. She applied.

“It was a fluke,” she said.

What Kirkpatrick didn’t know at the time was that the city was under federal orders to hire minority officers, including women. She got the job.

“I thought it was me, my talent,” she said, chuckling. “Now that I look back on it, I don’t think so.”

But the job turned out to be a good fit.

By Christmas 1982, Kirkpatrick was issued a Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver and was patrolling in K-Car, sliding around on its bench seat on speedy turns. She patrolled Memphis’ south precinct, a high-crime area full of public-housing projects. She was often the only white police officer in a predominantly black area.

“I really believe respect goes both ways,” she said. “I was raised colorblind in my home.”

She loved the job. She liked the legal aspects, the problem solving. She liked interacting with people and studying human behavior. (She’d later get degrees in both law and counseling.)

Tough choices

In 1987, she moved to Redmond, Wash., as a patrol officer and sergeant. She began teaching at the state law enforcement academy. She was president of the local police union. By 1995, she was assistant commander of the academy.

Then, after 12 years in the profession, she ran into something that led her to quit policing.

Some recruits at the academy were caught cheating, she said. She thought they should be booted out of the program. She was overruled by superiors.

“I remember thinking that if this was OK at the academy level, this is going to happen when nobody’s looking in the middle of the night,” she said. “It was a character issue for me, and I wasn’t high up enough to do anything.”

So she quit law enforcement, thinking it was forever.

“Instead of my being there and being a whiner, I went on my way,” she said.

She landed at Green River Community College, teaching criminal justice for two years. Then a retiring Ellensburg police chief called and asked her if she’d apply for his job.

“God’s timing and God’s hand involved,” Kirkpatrick says of the surprise call. “And I’m glad, because I have to admit I wanted to go back.”

Soon, she was running a 30-member department. And that’s where she launched her five cardinal rules.

“They’re character-based,” she said of the rules. “People are going to make mistakes. But character-based mistakes are not tolerable.”

The rules: No harassing, bullying or discriminatory language, “including zero tolerance of male white-bashing.” No lying. No abuse of authority. No insubordination. And nothing that causes lack of trust in the department, such as sex on duty or failing to take a rape report.

One former officer and her attorney, however, contend Kirkpatrick applies those rules unevenly.

Former Federal Way officer Jessica Nelson was fired for what Kirkpatrick concluded was insubordination and lying about misuse of a department computer. Nelson maintains that it was a miscommunication – and that other officers were lightly disciplined for far worse offenses.

Nelson’s Portland attorney, Beth Allen, said that officers were suspended for a few days, “if that,” for allegedly sexually harassing other officers, discharging a firearm in the station and having a detainee escape from a police car.

Kirkpatrick, citing an appeal, would say little about the case. But she stands by her decision.

“I do not take action against a person unless I can look you in the eye and say, ‘This is what I think,’ ” she said.

Moving up

In 2001, Kirkpatrick took over the 158-person department in Federal Way, a fast-growing bedroom community sandwiched between Seattle and Tacoma. The city’s wrestling with last year’s spike in homicides – to eight – and a rash of auto thefts.

The two-year-old City Hall – with a soaring modern sculpture in the lobby, near the espresso cart – is in an office park. Kirkpatrick’s salary: $122,000 a year, plus $9,000 in deferred compensation.

She continues two traditions from Ellensburg: going out periodically on patrol and meeting individually with all 158 staffers.

“People want to be heard and listened to,” said Wilson. “They understand she’s the decision maker, but they want her to take the time to hear their concerns.”

She’ll delegate authority, he said, and she’s not threatened by differing opinions.

He said Kirkpatrick was a change from her predecessor, a by-the-books man who insisted on standardized equipment. After appeals from officers, Kirkpatrick relaxed some of those rules. Officers now have a choice of five firearms and about eight holsters. Wilson, the Sumner police chief, said Kirkpatrick has relaxed some of the dress code, too, such as the rule that made neck ties mandatory even for graveyard shift officers.

Her office is decorated with police photos, several college degrees, awards and a Bible verse from Isaiah: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.”

Her bookshelf is crowded with volumes on exercise, management and policing. Jimmy Carter’s childhood memoirs share shelf space with a biography of Martin Luther, the psychological treatise “On Killing” and “Leadership Secrets from the Bible.”

Colleagues say Kirkpatrick would make an outstanding Spokane police chief.

“She’d be a really good fit for Spokane,” said Wilson. “Spokane is growing rapidly with lots of change, but Spokane has a very firm sense of what it is.”

“Would there be some transition and some learning curve because of the community, economy and the size of the department (in Spokane)? Sure,” said former State Patrol Chief Lowell Porter. But he said she’s a smart, energetic leader with an upbeat outlook.

“I’m not talking about rose-colored glasses. I’m talking about being a professional and a diplomat,” he said. “The public doesn’t want to hear from the police about what you can’t do. They want to hear what you can do.”