Godzillian complex BY AL DIAMON

If Mike Chitwood had been your average police chief, he’d have been fired years ago. Too much grandstanding on TV. Too little attention paid to running the state’s largest municipal law-enforcement operation. Then there were the lawsuits. The feuds. And that enormous ego.

On July 18, Chitwood resigned as Portland’s top cop, after 17 years of more-or-less constant controversy, to become the police superintendent in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. An unbiased observer might conclude the guy held onto his job so long because he had a collection of videos featuring city councilors engaged in activities covered less by Robert’s Rules of Order than by scented body oil.

As tempting as that theory is, it ignores Chitwood’s skills as a behind-the-scenes politician and media manipulator. He owned both city managers who were supposed to be his bosses.

In March 1990, Chitwood admitted he and other police officials had fixed parking tickets issued to cops. The chief promised to abandon the practice. Then-Manager Bob Ganley said exactly nothing.

In May 2002, Chitwood parked his car in a restricted area at the Portland Jetport. A security worker asked him to move. Chitwood refused, launching into an obscenity-laced tirade. Word of his behavior was leaked to the press and city officials, apparently by a disgruntled cop. The incident occurred at a time when the police department was already dealing with a flood of negative publicity due to several allegations of brutality. The strongest rebuke Manager Joe Gray dared express in public was a suggestion the chief lower his profile, thereby denying Chitwood the spotlight for a couple of weeks.

The chief’s occasional critics on the Portland City Council found their demands for reform watered-down or washed away. In 1999, then-Councilor Tom Kane tried to institute a citizen review board to examine allegations of police misconduct. The chief first diverted public attention by naming his own citizen advisory board, then got his council allies to dilute Kane’s proposal, leaving the review panel with no authority to discipline errant cops or even consider public complaints.

Today, the board is virtually powerless. When a former member complained to the City Council that inquiries from the panel were met by police with "a level of defensiveness coupled with an authoritarian posture," councilors let Chitwood do the responding by dismissing the criticism as coming from someone who was "rude and condescending." End of discussion.

The chief isn’t nicknamed "Media Mike" for nothing. When President Bill Clinton made a fundraising visit to Portland in 1994, Chitwood upstaged him by demanding the Democratic Party pay $15,000 for police overtime. Only after covering that story did TV newscasters get around to what Clinton had to say.

As one ex-journalist put it in 2000, "He just turns reporters into mush."

Somehow, stories that worked to Chitwood’s benefit found their way into newspapers with astonishing frequency, but without mention of their source.

The news media, mindful of where the juicy stories were coming from, avoided criticizing Chitwood, allowing him to engage freely in hypocrisy. In 1998, he generated headlines by refusing to hire a Camden officer who’d once been convicted of drunk driving. "I’m not going to hire anybody who shows this kind of irresponsibility," he told the Portland Press Herald. "We arrest people like this."

Four years later, when a lieutenant who headed Chitwood’s criminal investigation division was involved in a car accident, officers at the scene didn’t even check to see if he was loaded, let alone arrest him. But a hospital test showed a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit. Chitwood suspended the officer, but didn’t fire him, dismissing the incident as a "lack of common sense."

The media ignored the inconsistency.

Chitwood’s feuds with powerful legislators over gun control resulted in Portland losing clout in Augusta. His disputes with district attorneys made it tougher to prosecute cases. His propensity for getting himself sued (he sparked one court case by calling an Old Port bar owner "a liar" and provoked another by referring to Joe Ricci, the late owner of Scarborough Downs, as "an idiot") cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, not to mention the $800,000 paid out to settle police brutality cases.

When it came to dealing with opposition, Chitwood was the guy in the rubber monster suit, loosed on a set of cardboard buildings and toy tanks, trampling anything in his way. You don’t get rid of a creature like that by threatening to fire him. You just hope he wanders off to wreak havoc on somebody else.

Then you start worrying about what sort of beast is going to fill the power void he left behind.

Don’t cop out. Email me at ishmaelia@gwi.net