Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has named Carmen Best her nominee for police chief, choosing a local favorite over a pair of outsider candidates.
She made the announcement in a Tuesday news conference at City Hall. Best has been serving as interim chief since the end of last year.
“Everyone knows Chief Best and knows she can deliver results,” Durkan said. “She knows our city and our officers. She has worked in every neighborhood and understands the unique public-safety challenges facing every one of our communities.”
The mayor added, “She has an unparalleled work ethic. You can’t keep up with her.”
The monthslong national search came with several surprise twists, and the decision may be Durkan’s most important since taking office last year.
Pending confirmation by the City Council, the mayor’s pick will oversee a force of more than 1,400 officers and lead a long-troubled police department still working to earn community trust after six years of court-ordered reforms.
“We will move ahead with a culture of continuous improvement and innovation,” Best said. “This is what I expect. It is what our community deserves.”
Best began serving as interim chief when Kathleen O’Toole stepped down from the position, and has been Seattle’s first African-American woman in the role.
She has risen through the ranks during more than 25 years with the department but was not among three candidates initially forwarded to Durkan as finalists for the chief job. The three were chosen by mayoral advisers in May from a list of five semifinalists submitted by a search committee.
At the time, the Durkan advisers saidan outsider would be better able to continue reforming the department. But Best’s exclusion from the group of finalists drew intense criticism from community leaders and from the Seattle Police Officers’ Guild (SPOG).
The mayor put Best back in the running earlier this month, as former Pittsburgh Police Chief Cameron McLay dropped his candidacy and began conversations to work with Durkan as an adviser on police reform.
Tuesday’s news conference grew somewhat tense as reporters repeatedly asked Durkan to explain why Best had been first overlooked, then selected.
In response, the mayor said she accepted input from law-enforcement leaders and community members throughout the selection process, up through last week.
She said Best was the right candidate for the job because she understands how rapid growth is changing Seattle and because she has helped implement reforms.
“She’s helped get us here and make it real,” Durkan said.
Enrique Gonzalez, a co-chair of the Seattle Community Police Commission who assailed the selection process when Best was initially passed over, said Tuesday the commission will be pleased to work with her. But Gonzalez said members of the citizen advisory body still want to sit down with Durkan to “figure out exactly how we got here.”
There are “a lot of questions to be answered as to how it happened,” he said.
In a news release, Councilmember M. Lorena González said she will oversee the council’s confirmation process, starting with a public-safety committee meeting July 25.
The council could vote on Best’s nomination as early as Aug. 13, she said.
The chief selection is happening at a crucial moment for Seattle, which since 2012 has been subject to a federal consent decree requiring the police department to address excessive force and biased policing.
In January, U.S. District Judge James Robart determined the city to be in compliance with the decree, triggering a two-year review period in which the department must show its reforms are locked in.
SPOG has been working without a contract since 2014. But the union sent an email to its members last week that signaled a breakthrough in negotiations.
Ely Reyes, an assistant chief in Austin, Texas, and Eddie Frizell, a precinct inspector in Minneapolis, were the other two finalists to become Seattle’s top cop.
Reyes oversees the sprawling north section of Austin and has built a reputation there as an intelligent law-enforcement leader while enduring personal tragedies.
Frizell heads up a downtown precinct, where his campaigns to reduce violent crime have won acclaim and stirred controversy.
Hired in 1992, Best has completed a variety assignments for the Seattle police, including stints in patrol, school safety, media relations and community outreach.
Best also has worked as a patrol supervisor and operations lieutenant and has held command positions in the narcotics unit and the robbery, gangs and fugitives unit.
She briefly served as South Precinct commander before a promotion to assistant chief of criminal investigations. Shortly after O’Toole was appointed by then-Mayor Ed Murray in 2014, O’Toole named Best her deputy chief.
Known for her warm approach to interacting with community members, Best twice Tuesday sought to lighten the atmosphere inside City Hall.
Taking the podium, she compared the excitement surrounding her nomination to the anticipation of a video of Seattle police officers competing in a lip-sync battle.
Thanking her husband for his support throughout her career, Best joked, “My husband often says he’s the other man in my life because I’m married to the job. Now that I’m chief … I’m really married to the job.” Then she burst out laughing.