When Paula Hicks-Hudson ascended to Toledo's top leadership position in the aftermath of the unexpected death of Mayor D. Michael Collins, she found that one of her go-to people was Police Chief George Kral.
"You should ask him how many times I called him," recalled Ms. Hicks-Hudson, mayor from 2015-18, and now a state senator.
With Chief Kral set to retire in January, the search for a replacement is set to get started.
In the wake of City Council agreeing to spend $50,000 to hire a national search firm to help look for police chief candidates, the staff of Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz did not make him available for an interview on the effort. But Toledo's four former mayors — Sen. Hicks-Hudson, Mike Bell, Donna Owens, and Carty Finkbeiner — were reached for their insights. Three of them, Ms. Owens, Mr. Finkbeiner, and Sen. Hicks-Hudson, also served on Toledo City Council and bring that perspective. For Mr. Finkbeiner and Ms. Owens, that council service dates back to the 1970s.
Collectively, they bring about 25 years of experience in the mayor's office alone, dating back to late 1983. In all, nine men have served as Toledo police chief during their various administrations. All but one was promoted from within to chief during that nearly 39-year-period.
Of Toledo's four living former mayors, Ms. Owens is the only one who specifically favors identifying an outside candidate for the city’s new police chief. "Because I think that we're too inbred right now," she said. "We've got to look and see. And I am not saying that we shouldn't consider an inside one.
"But I would like to reach out because you don't always want to reinvent the wheel," she said. "There's somebody out there somewhere in this country who has had significant progress in reducing the crime in their community, and I think that we should search for that...I want us to thoroughly look elsewhere."
Ms. Owens, Toledo mayor from 1983-1989, also addressed the pace of the search. Chief Kral announced in August that he would be retiring in January. As of Thanksgiving week, the Toledo police chief's job still had not been posted.
"If I were them, I would have already reached out across the country looking for communities that have had a real crime problem," Ms. Owens said. "Particularly the shootings and see the ones that had significant improvement and how they did it, what they did, and entertain a meeting with the police chief. And getting a police chief from outside of the community who has had significant progress in the reduction of all the shootings."
As for Mr. Finkbeiner, he said that whether the next police chief comes from "Toledo, Detroit, or Atlanta, Georgia" that person's location is not the leading priority for a potential hire.
"At the top of the list is hiring a chief of police who believes No. 1 that policemen and women must be on the streets and in the neighborhoods of the city, not driving through it," said Mr. Finkbeiner, a Democrat and Toledo’s mayor from 1994-2002 and from 2006-2010.
"We need boots on the ground, policemen out of their cars, off their motorcycles, off their bikes, and walking...talking to the shop owners, meeting with the citizens in area-wide watch-programs settings."
Former mayors team up
The search for a new Toledo police chief comes as Ms. Owens is joining with Mr. Finkbeiner, Sen. Hicks-Hudson, and Mr. Bell as part of the Coalition for Peaceful Toledo Neighborhoods. Group members, who include local activists, community leaders, and church officials, are working to end what they consider to be senseless and excessive gun violence in the city of Toledo.
"The four mayors have been working on this for a little while," Ms. Owens said, noting good turnout for an initial meeting, crediting Mr. Finkbeiner for calling an October community meeting and Sen. Hicks-Hudson for initially bringing the group together.
“We are very concerned,” she said of crime in Toledo. “It is something that we all believe in [addressing] and want to work to have a safer community.”
Though some of the former mayors were longtime political rivals and had run against one another in previous elections, that is all in the past when it comes to this effort.
Ms. Owens, who won a third term by defeating Mr. Finkbeiner in a high-profile 1987 mayoral election, chuckled when asked about any old rivalries. The four mayors, who include two Democrats, a Republican, and an independent, are working in unison.
"Politics is a strange, strange thing," said Ms. Owens, Toledo’s last Republican mayor. "With the four mayors, you’ve got two women, you’ve got two men, you've got Black and white. You've got it all together. With the four of us, we have a lot of experience.”
“We have seen a lot and have done a lot, and we continue to care,” Ms. Owens added. “We want to make the best community that we possibly can so people can feel safe and comfortable raising their families and going to the store, driving in your car.”
The unity among the former mayors comes as the current mayor/administration and city council are at a standoff as part of an unrelated dispute over the city auditor. And while the coalition group that includes the former mayors is holding anti-crime gatherings around Toledo, City Council has been unable to reach an agreement on scheduling a public safety meeting of its own to address growing violence. Toledo set annual homicide records for the city in both 2020 (61) and 2021 (71). The number of homicides this year stands at 59. As recently as 2007, 13 homicides had occurred in Toledo.
While not speaking specifically about the dispute between the Kapszukiewicz administration and city council, Mr. Finkbeiner spoke of unified support as the next police chief begins work.
“We have to be an energized police department, but energy that feels very comfortable that the mayor and the city council and the citizens of Toledo, Ohio appreciate the men and women in blue uniforms who have the toughest job of all public officials,” Mr. Finkbeiner said.
Planning for success
Former Mayor Bell describes setting goals and expectations as key for the "extremely important" job of Toledo police chief.
"If I was coming in as a chief, I'd want to know,' what do you want me to do? What are the goals that you're going to be basically grading me or judging me by? And do I have the resources in place to be able to meet those goals,’” said Mr. Bell, also a former Toledo fire chief.
"The chief that I brought on board after Chief Mike Navarre, who was doing an excellent job, was Chief [Derrick] Diggs," Mr. Bell said. "He met and went beyond the expectations that we had set."
Mr. Bell recalled that as Toledo fire chief, a goal was set to reach zero fire deaths in the city, which occurred well into a second year through public education, distribution of smoke detectors, "and just giving people general knowledge."
As the search for a police chief starts, he described a similar approach.
"From a standpoint of what we're working on now, we need to figure out, 'OK we got an extremely high death rate right now inside our city. We need to figure out 'What does it take to get that number to half of that, or one-third of that', so that at least the person knows what number we're looking at."
Then, the city needs to find out what resources are necessary to do it.
"How would you do that?" Mr. Bell asked. "You find cities somewhere in the United States that are doing it successfully, and you don't have to create the wheel. You can just reproduce whatever they're doing and localize it here inside the city of Toledo. I would look for people that can think outside the box so it's not the standard thinking."
As for whether the next police chief comes from within the Toledo department or from the outside, "it doesn't make a difference" as long as the person is able "to meet the standard that you're going to set as a mayor," said Mr. Bell, mayor from 2010-2014 who was elected as an independent.
"If you're trying to do major changes, it may be easier for an outsider than an insider to do because an insider's too close maybe to the issue to be able to see a different way of doing it," Mr. Bell said. "But if you've got an insider that has a very broad mindset, then they deserve as much of an opportunity to be able to initiate whatever program they would be able to do.”
"But they’ve got to have a pretty wide mind as to policing and trends and things like that and figuring out how you can make it work in Toledo," he added. "Because if you keep doing it the same way as it is now, you're going to get the same results."
City Hall connection
On the city of Toledo’s website, the police chief is listed as a member of the mayor’s cabinet.
As with the other former Toledo mayors, Ms. Owens noted her close working relationships with the police chief when she served as mayor. She was the second to last Toledo mayor to serve during the council-city manager form of government that was in place from 1936 through 1993.
"Constant interaction with the police chief, with the safety director," Ms. Owens recalled. "All the people that headed a department, I had constant communication with them. But the city manager would follow up and do work in that area while I was out in the community, telling people what was going on and what we were going to do."
Sen. Hicks-Hudson said the new police chief should be the best candidate. "It could be someone from Maumee or Oregon, as well as someone from Timbuktu," she said. "I think we need to look from the city of Toledo. I'm a transplant, and I hope that I've been of help and a contribution."
She grew up in Hamilton, Ohio near Cincinnati and came to Toledo from Iowa City after graduating from the University of Iowa.
"I would encourage including all aspects of the community in the evaluation process and also thinking about policing in this current environment and the future," Sen. Hicks-Hudson said of the current Toledo police chief search. "We are living in different times. We need someone who is very forward-thinking and also not afraid to get out and really engage with the citizens of Toledo."
That engagement is taking shape at the community level with the former mayors' involvement with the Coalition for Peaceful Toledo Neighborhoods.
The former mayors were “very encouraged” by the number of people who attended a recent meeting at Epworth United Methodist Church, as well as the interest shown, Ms. Owens said.
"We had people write their ideas down and submit it to us,” Ms. Owens said. “We just looked those over a few days ago and are going to have some follow-up meetings. We've got some good suggestions."
"As mayor, we all have a lot of experience, but yet you can also get a wealth of information by listening to the employees and the community," she added.
Mr. Finkbeiner offered similar sentiments.
"We have touched a chord within the citizens of the city of Toledo with our Coalition for Peaceful Toledo Neighborhoods," he said. "More and more ministers, more and more and citizens who have had jobs and responsibilities in either state government or local government are calling us and asking us, 'How can we help.'"
First Published November 26, 2022, 7:00 p.m.
