NEXT CHIEF HAS MUCH HARDER JOB

Welcome to paradise, Chief Tom Sanchez.

Aloha!

It's not quite the journey you had planned last week, we know, but the
idea is the same - lots of time for golf, plenty of time with the
wife, no alarm clocks to jolt you out of a deep sleep.

Nice plan, but really bad timing.

Don't feel too bad, though, because in just a couple of weeks you can
stretch that one-week, taxpayer-paid vacation into a full-time,
taxpayer-paid lifestyle.

You've got to agree that aside from the momentary embarrassment, it's
not too bad a punishment for what's happened the last year or so.

There was that riot in Downtown last year after the Broncos' second
Super Bowl victory, when your troops stood by while drunken hooligans
trashed the streets of LoDo, waiting until the crowd was so
uncontrollable that only billy clubs and tear gas could disburse the
unruly celebrants - along with thousands of innocent revelers.

Since then, there has been the policerecruiting scandal, the favored
treatment of politically connected drunken driver Sam Riddle, the
unrestrained assault on fans at the CU-CSU football game, the
televised beating of two men surrendering after a brief chase, the
fatal shooting of an innocent man sleeping at home as a black-hooded
SWAT team swarmed in by mistake.

Not bad for a year's work.

What it all adds up to is a police department that has lost its
discipline - and the public's confidence.

Now the challenge for Mayor Wellington Webb is to restore public trust
in the city's police department by selecting a new chief whose record
is unblemished, whose integrity is unquestioned and whose leadership
must be bold and firm.

Unfortunately, that isn't a comforting thought.

The mayor has, with a single exception, rubber-stamped all of
Sanchez's controversial decisions. His judgment, based on that record,
isn't notably better than the judgment of the chief he just sacked.

The mayor's search for a replacement for Sanchez, then, will be
particularly interesting. He apparently has limited his field of
candidates to the ranks of officers already working in the department,
and no one in the upper command has distinguished himself (or herself)
as a pillar of virtue by bucking Sanchez's priorities.

Indeed, three of Sanchez's top assistants accompanied him on his
ill-advised trip to Hawaii, virtually eliminating themselves as
beacons of high integrity and good judgment.

And so, since he apparently is determined not to hire a chief from
outside the department, Webb needs to reach into the middle ranks,
choosing an unblemished officer who has no loyalties and no
obligations to the executive staff now in place.

It won't be an easy search, but it probably will be the single most
important decision Webb will make in his final term in office.

At stake is the trust of citizens who now look at every passing patrol
car with suspicion - a skepticism that the many fine men and women in
Denver's blue uniform don't deserve.