Kenton Buckner, Syracuse’s new police chief, struggled to find the right words as he took the podium during his swearing-in ceremony on Monday morning. He began to tear up, and Mayor Ben Walsh patted him on the back.

Buckner thanked Walsh, Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens and the people of Syracuse for giving him the opportunity to serve as chief.

“Law enforcement is the reason why I feel like I’ve always been successful …  because I’m doing what God has designed me to do,” said Buckner, who comes to Syracuse with 25 years of law enforcement experience.

He said he became emotional after seeing the number of people who attended the ceremony. About 100 residents, police officers, city officials and elected representatives crowded into the atrium of the Public Safety Building downtown.

Walsh said Buckner had three qualities that stood out during the candidate interview process: confidence, humility and trust. In his limited time with Buckner, Walsh knew he could trust the chief, he said.

Buckner left the Little Rock Police Department in November with a decrease in overall crime and homicides, a more diverse police force and a 21st century policing model that relies heavily on crime analysts and their predictive models.

Police officers in Little Rock, Arkansas, said Buckner is a progressive chief who was always pushing himself and his officers to learn new skills and get the best training possible.

“Move the needle forward”

Alice Fulk, an assistant chief at the LRPD, said Syracuse can expect Buckner to develop a plan based on SPD’s strengths and weaknesses.

Buckner was “always trying to move the needle forward,” she said. Fulk and other officers teased him about his fast-paced work ethic.

“We laughed at him because he would say ‘pump the brakes,’ and he would never pump the brakes,” she said. “The guy does not take a break. He’ll put 150 percent in.”

Kenton Buckner is sworn into his new position as the city’s top cop by Mayor Ben Walsh. Dan Lyon | Staff Photographer

Increasing the diversity of the Little Rock police force was one of Buckner’s main priorities as chief. The most recent recruit class is 15 percent Hispanic, 41 percent black and 44 percent white, according to a press release from Walsh’s office. People of color have also comprised 40 percent of hires, promotions and transfers during his leadership, per a release from Walsh’s office.

In the Syracuse Police Department, 89 percent of officers are white and most don’t live in the city, according to Syracuse.com.

“It’s important to be reflective of the community that you serve,” Buckner said in an interview. “When you lack diversity, particularly in a diverse community … it breeds mistrust. I think people are more likely to feel comfortable with police when they can see people who look like them.”

At a “Meet the Chief” forum on Nov. 3, the day after Walsh announced his pick for police chief, Buckner said he doesn’t support residency requirements for newly hired officers because it limits the quality of interested candidates.

In an interview, Buckner said he supports making recruitment the full-time job of several people. One of Buckner’s plans for increasing diversity in the SPD is to provide “mock situations” where people can complete practice tests to reduce testing anxiety and familiarize themselves with the department. He added police departments across the country have had problems with policing minority communities.

“Decision making is stronger when you have a diverse group of people at the table,” he said.

Buckner promoted Fulk to Little Rock’s assistant chief in 2015, making her the first woman to hold that position in the department, according to the LRPD’s website. When asked if Buckner could be credited with increasing the diversity of the force, Fulk said, “diversity doesn’t happen by accident.”

Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens, who led the search for the new police chief, said after speaking to officers and city leaders in Little Rock, the search committee was intrigued by Buckner’s 21st century approach to policing.

Buckner said he would use an intelligence-led policing model in Syracuse to help reduce violent crime. This allows the police department to ensure it is delivering its energy and resources to the right locations and to the right people, he said.

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Under Buckner’s leadership, the LRPD overhauled its use of COMPSTAT, comparative statistics reports used by police departments to identify crime patterns and deploy resources in response to shifting needs.

Buckner worked with federal law enforcement partners to learn what its crime analysts were doing and how he could adapt that to Little Rock, Fulk said. He placed a stronger emphasis on COMPSTAT, and crime analysts became more involved within the department, Fulk said.

In 2017, violent crime spiked in Little Rock. The police department was about 60 officers short, but Buckner committed to curbing the violence, Little Rock Assistant Chief Hayward Finks said. Buckner created mandatory 12-hour overtime shifts and used crime models to determine where officers were needed most. The city eventually saw a decrease in criminal activity, Finks said.

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Violent crime has dropped 13 percent from January to November 2018, compared to the same period in 2017, according to figures available on the LRPD’s website. Overall crime has decreased 10 percent during the same period and has dropped to levels lower than the year before Buckner became chief.

Always learning

Buckner was born in Tompkinsville, Kentucky, a town of less than 3,000 near the state’s border with Tennessee. He described it as a “blue-collar, working class community.” His father was also a police officer. Buckner had limited interaction with him, but his father provided inspiration during his childhood.

“I remember telling my second-grade teacher that I wanted to be a police officer, so it’s always what I’ve wanted to do and what I majored in during college,” he said. “I never changed my major, I never wavered in what I wanted to do.”

Buckner earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in policing fields during his 21-year career at the Louisville Metro Police Department, Kentucky’s largest police force. He worked his way up the ranks from patrolman in 1993 to assistant chief of police in 2011.

“(The LMPD) built my professional foundation in law enforcement, and I wouldn’t be in Syracuse without the things I was fortunate enough to experience in Louisville,” he said.

Fink said Buckner is a “student of the law profession” who took the time to learn all areas of policing and brought that knowledge with him to Little Rock in 2014.

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“He’s very open to anything new,” Fulk said. “Sometimes you find people in this profession who get into a rut and aren’t open to change. That’s not him.”

Buckner has participated in several law enforcement training programs and seminars, including at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the National Executive Institute, which is sponsored by the FBI, according to the press release from Walsh’s office.

The chief said in an interview he’s always completing “critical self-assessment” to learn how he can improve.

“He is a confident man, but at the same time he is humble,” Walsh said on Monday. “He understands his limitations. He understands what he doesn’t know.”

“Mixed bag”

During the search process for a new SPD chief, Owens held public forums throughout the city, where residents said what they wanted in the next police chief. The city also conducted community surveys and interviewed police officers, residents, elected officials and other stakeholders, Owens said in an interview.

Owens reviewed Buckner’s background and interviewed him twice with community leaders. She came to the conclusion that he is “a lifetime learner” whose training on the state and national level could give Syracuse a new perspective on policing, she said.

Surveys conducted by the city showed that residents wanted a chief who held his officers to a high standard and was committed to community policing, according to Syracuse.com.

“I see him as a centered man who understands the value of community, who understands that both community and law enforcement working together is the only way we’re going to have a strong police force,” Owens said.

Buckner said he doesn’t plan to do anything alone and that effective partnerships within the community are the only way a police department can succeed.

Dana Dossett, director of Little Rock’s Department of Community Programs, said in an email that Buckner had an open door policy with the community. If someone called Buckner’s office to make an appointment, he talked to them himself instead of turning people away to lower staff, she said.

Dossett said she most appreciated the chief’s help with the Re-Entry Program, which is a program to help felons get jobs. At their first lunch meeting, Buckner said he wouldn’t hire a felon, until Dossett argued that the police department should set an example for other employers.

He agreed with her, and the police department hired a felon. At the November forum in Syracuse, Buckner mentioned the program and said he agrees with giving second chances.

“Things happen in life,” he said. “We have to be a society that gives people the opportunity to turn around.”

The LRPD has some of its own outreach programs, including the Our Kids Program, an intervention program for young black males, and Girls Empowered by Mentoring Sisterhood, a similar program for black girls. The Our Kids Program existed prior to Buckner’s start in Little Rock. Buckner wanted to create GEMS after the department noticed the city was having issues with some young black girls getting involved in crime, he said.

City directors in Little Rock said Buckner was straightforward and honest, but that honesty sometimes led to tension with community members who didn’t appreciate the way he spoke to them.

Ken Richardson, city director for Little Rock’s Ward 2, said Buckner offended many of his constituents at a forum in July 2017 by suggesting that parents and their kids were the causes of crime.

One woman at the forum had brought her son to meet the chief because he wanted to become a police officer. She told Buckner that she wasn’t going to let him blame her son and his friends for the city’s crime, then got up and left the meeting, Richardson said.

“He came in with preconceived notions, came in with some of the standard causes of crime you may look at,” Richardson said. “I don’t think he spent enough time learning and engaging those people before passing judgment or making suggestions.”

Every year, Buckner held meetings in each of Little Rock’s seven wards to understand what the community’s needs and wants were. Lance Hines, city director for Ward 5, said Buckner’s biggest issue with some parts of the community was that they didn’t like his answers to their questions.

But Hines said he appreciated Buckner’s straight-forward manner, and Buckner delivered the “tough stance on crime” that the residents of his ward wanted to see.

“As a legislator, I look for candor and somebody’s who’s gonna shoot me straight. I don’t need a rosy picture,” Hines said. “I need the truth so I can deal with whatever the consequences of that truth is, and for some in our community, they wanted a different answer from what he was willing to give them.”

John Gilchrist, president of Little Rock’s Fraternal Order of Police, the police union, said he and Buckner “worked very well together” and called the chief a great leader.

“What really stood out to me is that he welcomed the difficult questions,” he said. “He welcomed the challenges that the job entails.”

Gilchrist works as an in-service instructor at the LRPD. Buckner gave a speech to every in-service class, then opened up the floor to questions or comments from officers, which was “unheard of” for a chief, Gilchrist said.

He said Buckner’s schedule was always packed with meetings and forums in the community, and he could rarely be found at police headquarters.

“He had some difficulty with parts of our community because he would hold the community responsible to the solution for what they were asking for him,” Gilchrist said.

When asked about tensions with residents in Little Rock at a press conference on Monday, Buckner said he never intended to be abrupt with anyone and that he had a good relationship with the community overall.

In a previous interview, Buckner said he’s comfortable with the decisions he has made in Little Rock, but he recognizes that he has opportunities for improvement.

Buckner’s time in Little Rock began with controversy. In summer 2014, as the candidates for police chief spoke at community forums, Buckner made a statement about the divisions between the city’s two police officer associations: the Fraternal Order of Police and the Little Rock Black Police Officers Association.

The FOP, which operates similarly to the Syracuse Police Benevolent Association, has exclusive rights to bargain with the city and the police department. The LRBPOA was created in 1978 to address concerns about discrimination toward black officers within the department, according to its website.

Richardson said some people who were present at the forum in 2014 thought Buckner said he hoped to eliminate the LRBPOA. In a 2017 memo responding to allegations from the association, Buckner said he only meant the department should be unified, and black officers shouldn’t feel that their complaints aren’t treated as equally as those of white officers.

“You have to be sensitive to the climate of the community that you’re working in, and I don’t think he was sensitive in that sense,” said Richardson, who has served as city director since 2007. “He started out on the wrong foot in respect to the Black Police Officers Association.”

Richardson said Buckner’s statement created the perception that he was taking sides without taking the time to learn why the existence of the LRBPOA was necessary.

“The appearance was he didn’t really respect who we were, and we felt that way,” said Sgt. Willie Davis, who was a vice president in the association at the time Buckner began as chief.

During the background process, Buckner’s tension with the LRBPOA was initially a concern, but Owens said the search committee found the tensions with the association occurred early in Buckner’s time as chief.

In July 2017, the LRBPOA sent a letter to the City Board of Directors requesting an independent investigation into various allegations, including discrimination against black officers, favoritism in promotions and transfers and unequal enforcement of disciplinary rules. The Board of Directors never investigated the allegations.

Jeff Piedmonte, president of the Syracuse Police Benevolent Association, told Syracuse.com that many of the allegations were “pretty outlandish” and that he wasn’t worried about them.

Rodney Lewis, a member of the association who became LRBPOA president in 2018, wrote a personal letter of recommendation for Buckner when he applied for the Syracuse job. The letter “spoke volumes” for those on the search committee, Owens said.

Lewis did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this article.

The LRBPOA’s relationship with Buckner improved after Lewis was elected president, said Hines, the city director for Ward 5.

“When you have 580 sworn officers and 100 civilian (personnel) you’re always going to have a mixed bag,” Fulk said. “Some people are going to like you and some people aren’t.”

Buckner said there are “three pillars” that any chief has to maintain relationships with: the community, the police department and the appointing authority. He added he hopes to work with the NAACP, local nonprofits and neighborhood watch organizations. At Monday’s forum, Walsh said he will soon begin introducing Buckner to community leaders.

“We will not always agree, but I assure you that I will stay at the table,” Buckner said. “I will remain committed to improving our police department.”

Published on December 5, 2018 at 12:29 am

Contact Casey: casey@dailyorange.com | @caseydarnell_