Delaware police chief Robert Tracy to become top cop in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS — Robert Tracy will become St. Louis’ next police chief, the culmination of two searches spanning over the past year which produced dozens of applicants for the position.

Tracy, the police chief in Wilmington, Delaware, was nationally recognized for reducing gun violence there, but was also criticized by city council members for racial tensions and a lack of diversity in the department.

Tracy will inherit a department with a large number of officer vacancies, in a city where the homicide rate is among the highest in the country.

“I know I’m not from here,” Tracy said last week during a town hall forum, “but I have come into other places and established relationships with all the stakeholders and made sure they had a voice and that I listened.”

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, at a press conference Wednesday morning announcing Tracy’s appointment, called him detail-oriented, organized, data-driven and dedicated to building community trust.

“Chief Tracy has a proven track record of reducing violent crime and has done so in multiple cities and I believe he can do it here,” Jones said. 

“I know Chief Tracy will bring the lessons he’s learned in Wilmington to our city,” she continued.

She said Tracy is the first police chief from outside of the department.

Tracy called police work his “calling,” when introduced at the press conference. “It’s what I love to do,” he said. “I’m honored that I’ve been asked to lead this department.”

Tracy, 58, was born in the Bronx, is married and has five children. He has worked in law enforcement for almost 40 years and became chief in Wilmington in 2017, amid a surge in gun violence. Two years later, he was recognized at former President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address for a drop in shootings there, according to news outlets: Wilmington saw a 60% drop in the number of people shot in 2018 compared with the previous year, which hit a historic high of 194 shooting victims.

“He came here completely unknown, from Chicago,” Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki told the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday. “He changed the department. He changed the culture entirely. He’s been a great chief. You can take the number of detractors he has and put it in a thimble, and he’s got an enormous number of supporters because he worked really hard, and he’s reduced crime dramatically.”

But in January of this year, the Wilmington council narrowly passed a resolution declaring “no confidence” in Tracy.

Council President Ernest “Trippi” Congo sponsored the resolution, citing a lack of diversity in the police force and saying Tracy’s explanation that there were not enough minority applicants was insufficient. The council passed the resolution with a 6-4 vote.

Wilmington Councilwoman Zanthia Oliver told the Post-Dispatch that Tracy “had to take the hit” because he was the head of the department. She said the concerns were not about Tracy personally but more about morale and tension in the department. She described the struggles as persistent institutional issues plaguing other police departments, such as recruitment of diverse candidates.

But Tracy faced criticism from Wilmington Councilwoman Shané Darby who said Tracy did not do enough to improve racial tensions among staff, to address the department’s relationship with the city’s minority communities or to provide detailed information about officer-involved shootings.

Darby recalled a 2019 incident in which a trophy engraved with the phrase “Whitest Black Guy in the Office Award” was found on a detective’s desk. The issue came up at a February council meeting, and Tracy said it was the first time he had heard of it. The chief launched an internal investigation, but the outcome of that investigation has not been publicized.

Delaware’s NAACP branch had previously called for Tracy’s resignation after an officer was recorded slamming a suspect’s head into a plexiglass wall during an arrest.

Wilmington has about 71,000 residents, 60% of whom are minority. The police department has about 300 officers, 35% of whom are non-white.

Tracy announced a day before the St. Louis town hall that he was leaving his post in Wilmington, regardless of what happened in St. Louis.

He did not immediately return a call for comment Tuesday evening.

Tracy was one of four finalists for the job. The other candidates were: Larry Boone, a former police chief in Norfolk, Virginia; Melron Kelly, a deputy chief from Columbia, South Carolina; and the interim police in St. Louis, Lt. Col. Michael Sack.

But South Carolina news outlets reported over the weekend that Kelly talked with his family, “realized that there is much work still to be done in Columbia,” and pulled himself out of the race.

Then, Tuesday, Sack told the police department here in an agency-wide email that he had not been selected.

Sack said in the email that the department has been “going through a lot of growing pains” and encouraged employees to continue to adapt to an “ever-changing environment.”

“Together we will continue to work hard to make a difference in our community,” Sack concluded.

Former police Chief John Hayden announced his retirement in early September 2021. He was set to retire Feb. 23 but agreed to stay on longer when conflict between the city’s personnel department and the mayor’s office delayed the national search for his replacement.

Hayden made $153,000 as police chief in 2021, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch public pay database.

Hayden retired in mid June and Sack took over as interim police chief.

The conflict began in the city’s first search last year when the personnel department was tasked with narrowing the pool of candidates to six finalists. St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones’ public safety director, Dan Isom, was then supposed to pick from those six.

In late November though, former personnel director Richard Frank sent rejection letters to most of about 30 applicants for the job and gave a written test to Sack and Lt. Col. Lawrence O’Toole. Both are white men with long careers in the department.

Frank announced his retirement in mid November and in January Jones told the Post-Dispatch she was dissatisfied with having just two internal finalists for the job and scratched the city’s first search.

Jones appointed former Laclede Gas senior vice president John Moten Jr. as interim personnel director in early February. Then, in October, she hired Sonya Jenkins-Gray, who was most recently chief human resources officer at CareSTL Health, a nonprofit health care provider.

The city hired executive search firm The Boulware Group to help with the second national search for a chief. The Regional Business Council agreed to pay Boulware up to $60,000, according to Nick Dunne, a Jones administration spokesman.

The Center for Policing Equity, a police organization dedicated to police reform, was also an unpaid partner in the search, he said.

Spokespeople for all three St. Louis police unions maintain the selection process for the next chief was opaque, leaving residents and officers for far too long in the dark about who was being considered. 

“It’s unfortunate that the citizens won’t be able to address the candidates directly because someone else is going to get to pick the questions,” Sgt. Mickey Owens, president of the St. Louis Police Leadership Organization, said of the town hall earlier this month.

SLPLO represents the interests of supervisors and commanders in the department.

Another criticism police leaders expressed was the lack of internal candidates, Sack being the only one of the final four.

“It’s going to take a while for a new chief to figure out the regional dynamic — because, you know, St. Louis really is a regional police department,” Jay Schroeder, St. Louis Police Officer’s Association president, said.

Three city police majors applied for the position and were passed over, said Sgt. Donnell Walters, president of the Ethical Society of Police. All three are members of ESOP, which advocates for racial equality in policing.

Walters said that once the finalists’ names were released he’d received multiple calls and emails from residents asking him how external candidates were chosen over the internal applicants.

“Citizens are questioning the process because the process has not been made public,” he said. 

Schroeder agreed that the process hasn’t been open like the city said it would be.

“I think that’s the most unusual part about the whole thing — nobody really knows,” he said earlier this month. “We would want a little time to look at the candidates and who they are and where they come from and what their credentials are. When Hayden was picked, we had a pretty good idea who would be there at the town hall.”

The city held a similar town hall in 2017, involving six finalists, before hiring Hayden.