Assessing the Underwhelming Field of APD Chief Candidates

design by Zeke Barbaro / photo by John Anderson. data compiled by Austin Sanders (via City of Austin / Public Information Request / Open Records)

Austin has been without a permanent chief of police for nearly one year, but that will soon change when City Manager T.C. Broadnax offers an appointment for City Council confirmation later this year to replace interim Chief Robin Henderson.

Currently, Broadnax has nearly three dozen applicants to choose from – notably, none of whom count themselves as current members of the Austin Police Department’s executive staff – but that list could grow. In total, 32 people applied for the job during the monthlong period the application window was formally open, but the city is still accepting applications for new candidates. (That’s standard practice for executive-level hires at the city.)

Sources in and outside City Hall told us the candidate pool is not dazzling. There are quality candidates, but for a department that employs more than 2,200 people – around 1,500 of whom are sworn officers – in a city with a population of nearly 1 million, the ideal police chief candidate would have experience running a police department at or near that size. None of the 32 do.

We’ve broken down applicants into five categories and highlighted a few of the standouts.

The Cream of the Lackluster Crop

These applicants possess leadership experience at a sizable municipal police department, have expressed commitment to reform/modern policing, and, crucially, don’t come with the kind of political baggage that some of the other qualified candidates do.

Jeffrey Norman, Chief, Milwaukee Police Department: Norman leads a police force of about 1,600 officers in a city of 564,000 people. He joined MPD in 1996 and worked his way up the chain of command, winning the chief job in 2021 and becoming the city’s second-ever Black chief. He’s had a positive reputation outside of struggling to deal with the kind of racially inequitable policing practices common in most American cities.

Ernest Morales III, Chief, Metro Transit PD (Minneapolis, Minn.): Morales is one of two transit police agency leaders to apply for the job. Transit cops don’t perform the exact same kind of job as city cops, but there is significant overlap. Average weekday ridership on the region’s transit system is about 137,000. Morales also applied for the Austin chief job in 2021 (that eventually went to hometown cop Joseph Chacon); he spent most of his career at the NYPD, where he racked up more than two dozen misconduct allegations over 30 years (with one allegation substantiated).

Lisa Davis, Assistant Chief, Cincinnati PD: Davis is one of the few women to apply for the job. She’s a top leader at an agency that employs a little over 1,000 officers in a city of 309,000 people. One potential vulnerability in her résumé: She’s applied for (and lost) three different chief jobs in as many years.

Kevin Hall, Assistant Chief, Tucson PD: Tucson is a fairly large city (547,000 people) but its police force is comparatively small (about 900 officers). Earlier this year Hall lost out on the Oakland PD chief job and two years ago he lost out on the Seattle PD job. Of the most serious contenders for the Austin job, Hall is also the only white man – that matters in a city where a majority of the community is non-white.

Joel Fitzgerald, Chief, Regional Transportation District (Denver, Colo.): Fitzgerald is the other transit cop who applied for the job. He’s also the former chief in Fort Worth – a city comparable in size to Austin, which would normally be a plus for any candidate, except that Fitzgerald was forced out of that job under embarrassing circumstances (he got into a heated argument with a representative from the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas at a national police conference, where the mayor of Fort Worth was also in attendance).

The Big-City Cops

Several people with middle-management experience at big-city police departments also applied. While they lack executive-level experience, they likely have managed hundreds of officers due to the sheer size of these departments (Philadelphia PD and NYPD employ 6,000 and 34,000 officers, respectively).

Standouts include DeShawn Beaufort, a Philly PD inspector (rank equivalent to captain) who openly criticized police misconduct on his way to becoming the department’s Internal Affairs chief in 2021. He was later demoted from that post following a road rage incident. Nicholas Fiore and Amanjeet Sandhu are both NYPD veterans (Sandhu became that department’s first Sikh captain in 2019), though public reporting on both is thin.

The Yikes Candidates

Some of the applicants in this batch look like pretty strong candidates. Until you Google their names.

Case in point: Adrian Diaz, perhaps the best on-paper fit for the job. He worked his way up the chain to become chief of police in Seattle, a city of 749,000 people that employs around 1,000 officers. But he is currently embroiled in a sexual harassment/discrimination lawsuit (allegations he denied in a recent interview) that would likely be ongoing were he to land the Austin job.

Three other candidates also have problematic work histories, two of whom resigned while under investigation for alleged workplace misconduct.

APD is a big department, employing roughly 1,500 sworn officers (photo by John Anderson / Design by Zeke barbaro)

Not Quite Ready Yet

Some of the applicants are individuals we’d characterize as decent enough but lacking in the experience necessary to run a police department of Austin’s size. Applicants in this list include a patrol officer in Buda, the chief of a Georgia town with less than 10,000 residents, a sheriff’s deputy in El Paso County, and a few sergeants from San Antonio, Houston, and Austin. We respect their self-confidence but don’t think they have the chops for this job.

Longest Long Shots

Finally, two candidates who we can confidently say will not land the job – but their applications do bring up some memories.

One is a familiar name to Chronicle readers: Jason Dusterhoft, the disgraced former APD assistant chief who was fired by former Chief Brian Manley following an Internal Affairs investigation that revealed tawdry details of Dusterhoft’s sex life (including alleged assault that he characterized as rough sex). Shortly after that revelation, Dusterhoft turned whistleblower – seeding news tips that uncovered one of the biggest scandals in APD history, which in turn propelled City Council to push for a series of reforms in 2019.

The other guy is Steve Friend, a former special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who also turned whistleblower – to crusade against perceived FBI persecution of Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Since departing the FBI, he has worked at the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank founded by a Donald Trump cabinet appointee. Friend is listed as an expert on policy issues “Woke and Weaponized” and “Legal.”

The Full List of Candidates

Adrian Z. Diaz, Former Chief, Seattle PD

Amanjeet Sandhu, Captain, NYPD

Andy Harvey Jr., Former Chief, Pharr PD

Anson B. Evans, Former Chief, Fort Valley Police Department

Anthony Schembri, Former County Administrator and Director of Public Safety, Citrus County

Blake Bennett, Patrol Officer, Buda PD

Brian A. Reyes, Commander, San Antonio PD

Darryl J. Albert, Former Chief, Montgomery PD

DeShawn Beaufort, Inspector, Philadelphia PD

Ernest Morales III, Chief, Minneapolis Metro Transit PD

Gabriel Dobkin, Sergeant, Austin PD

Geneane Orndorff, Sergeant Detective, Kemah PD

Hector L. Villarreal, Patrol Officer, Kingsville PD

Jason Dusterhoft, Former Assistant Chief, Austin PD

Jeffrey Norman, Chief, Milwaukee PD

Joel F. Fitzgerald, Chief, Denver Regional Transportation District

Joseph W. Costa, Chief, DeSoto PD

Joshua Wallace, Commander, Chicago PD

Kawanski Nichols, Sergeant, Houston PD

Kevin Hall, Assistant Chief, Tucson PD

Lindsey Alli, Sergeant, Columbus PD

Lisa Davis, Assistant Chief, Cincinnati PD

Lynn Alan Fear Jr., Commander of Police Operations, Sterling PD

Mark Grube, Assistant Chief, Clark County Sheriff’s Office

Nicholas A. Fiore, Inspector Adjutant, NYPD

Nicholas Augustine, Assistant Chief, Montgomery County PD

Paco Balderrama, Former Chief, Fresno PD

Prurince Dice, Captain, DeLand PD

Ryan Urrutia, Assistant Chief Deputy, El Paso County Sheriff’s Office

Steve Friend, Former Special Agent, FBI

Steven Jay Huron, Instructor at Texas A&M University and former Sergeant, San Antonio PD

Teresa J. Ewins, Former Chief, Lincoln PD