New chief, new year, new start

Top cop's agenda goes beyond killings to overall quality of life

Stacy Finz, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

It's been 20 days since there's been a homicide in Richmond, but new Police Chief Chris Magnus is not taking the lull for granted.

He was less than five hours into his first day on the job Tuesday when he got a scare -- a fatal shooting. The victim, Jose Segura, 30, was killed in North Richmond, just blocks away from the city limits, in the Contra Costa County sheriff's jurisdiction.

Although 2006 has been homicide-free in Richmond proper, Magnus' rank and file know that may change any day, and they want their new chief to be prepared.

Magnus was hired in November from Fargo, N.D., to run the department, an understaffed agency struggling to bring down the city's overwhelming crime numbers.

Richmond had 40 killings last year, one of the highest per-capita rates of any city in California. So the community is putting its hope in the 45-year-old Magnus' reputation for community policing and his finesse at bringing city agencies together under a common cause.

"We see an opportunity with Chief Magnus to do things differently from what's been done in the past," said the Rev. Andre Shumake, president of the Richmond Improvement Association and a resident of the Iron Triangle, one of the city's roughest neighborhoods. "He has a real commitment to community policing as well as working with the clergy and other groups in the city to end the violence.

"But he's not just gung-ho about locking people up," Shumake said. "He wants to create opportunities for young people so they can make the right decisions."

Last month Magnus traveled from Fargo, where he was still working, to Richmond to attend a community meeting in the Iron Triangle, an impoverished 4-square-mile area framed on three sides by train tracks. There, he saw firsthand that as the city's new police chief, he would have to deal with more than just drugs, guns and violence.

"It's an entire quality-of-life issue," Magnus said Tuesday while sitting in his office among freshly unpacked belongings. "I'm obviously going to focus on violent crime, but we're also going to look at how we can work on traffic and noise problems as well as blight.

"One of my biggest priorities is to learn as much as I can about the community and this department," he said. "I will be going to a lot of neighborhood meetings and really listening to what people have to say."

Magnus said he was committed to filling some of the 51 vacancies in the department and recruiting new officers from Richmond itself.

"I'd really like to look at young people from here," he said. "I need the community's leaders to identify some of these young people so we can start getting them interested in the department."

Magnus believes police officers who live in the city will have a better rapport with residents, who have a long history in Richmond of distrusting the police. He's also hoping that by assigning permanent beat cops to specific neighborhoods, the department can build its stature in the community.

He plans to adopt a method he used in Fargo, using weekly crime data to pinpoint problem areas and to deploy more resources there. The system, known as COMSTAT, has been successfully used by police departments in New York and New Orleans.

"Let's not sugarcoat it," Magnus said. "A city that has experienced as much crime as Richmond is a city in crisis. What I've been real pleased to see is how many people are interested in working together to improve the problems and are open to change. But a turnaround is going to take time and a lot of hard work."

In the meantime, Magnus said he's not making any promises about Richmond's future. "The citizens of this community have probably heard too many promises."

E-mail Stacy Finz at sfinz@sfchronicle.com.