Modesto Police Department Chief Carroll retiring, leaving legacy of community trust
Modesto Police Chief Galen Carroll announced Thursday that he will retire Christmas Day after nearly eight years of leading a department of roughly 300 men and women.
“It’s been a pleasure serving this community,” Carroll said in a YouTube video announcing his retirement, “and when I came here eight years ago, I found a very warm and welcoming city.
“I also found that the more I put into the city, the more I got out of it. I want to thank the community for all of your support personally and thank you for all the support you have given the Police Department.”
Carroll, 50, has been a police officer for 27 years, the first 20 with the Long Beach Police Department before becoming Modesto’s chief in January 2013.
He said in an interview that it was simply time to retire. Carroll said he will continue to live in Modesto and be part of the community. “At this time, my plans are to be retired and review my options,” he said. “I’ve had a good career. ... We have some strong leaders in the department, and it’s time to let them take charge.”
Embraced police clergy council
Carroll has built a reputation for being open, honest and accessible to the community.
“It’s kind of heart piercing for me, but it’s his life and I’m in full support of him,” said Darius Crosby, senior pastor at Greater Glory Community Church, about Carroll’s announcement.
Crosby, a Black man, had tried with several previous police chiefs to start a police clergy council to improve relationships between law enforcement and the community, including people of color. He said Carroll embraced the idea and started the Modesto Police Clergy Council in August 2013.
Crosby said Carroll understands that police need to build trust and relationship with the community before there are problems. He said that over the years, Carroll and his officers have met regularly with clergy from the council and community members to talk about such issues as the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody in May and the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012 in Sanford, Florida.
Crosby said Carroll talks even about the actions of his own officers and holds them accountable if they make mistakes.
For instance, Crosby said that about two years ago, the clergy council heard complaints about a white officer’s interaction with a Black resident in which the man was offended by one of the officer’s comments. Carroll met with the clergy members and then had his officer meet with the resident.
Crosby said the officer learned how a comment he considered harmless could be perceived as insulting, and the resident learned the officer had not meant to demean him.
Did not cover up mistakes
“The only way to eradicate hostility and mistrust is by building relationships,” Crosby said. “He (Carroll) operated with integrity. We are going to miss his impeccable leadership. He was not a person who covered the mistakes of others.”
Crosby said the clergy council started with seven churches and has grown to about two dozen, predominately Black churches, as well as other organizations, including the Modesto Gospel Mission, the local chapter of the NAACP, Modesto City Schools and the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office.
Community leader Brad Hawn said Carroll leads by example and gives his officers the freedom to take chances.
“He enables his people to shine and do things outside of the norm,” said Hawn, who served on the City Council from 2003-11 and is president of Modesto Neighborhoods Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to improving the community. “A lot of leaders can stifle that because they want to control the outcome, but he lets people take chances.”
Carroll always has been willing to listen to and talk about concerns with this department, including criticism that some of his officers were too aggressive during last spring’s protests in Modesto over George Floyd’s death, and the several lawsuits in recent years that resulted in large settlements against the city.
That includes the roughly $750,000 plus legal costs the city agreed to pay in 2017 to settle a lawsuit in which officers entered an elderly women’s home without her permission over a landlord-tenant dispute. One of the officers pushed the woman aside, she fell and broke her hip.
Modesto also was the first law enforcement agency in Stanislaus County to release records in 2019 under a then new law that made public records that once had been out of the public’s reach.
SB 1421 requires records be released when there has been a sustained finding that a peace officer sexually assaulted a member of the public or was dishonest. The law also makes public investigations of officers firing a firearm at someone or when the use of force results in death or great bodily injury.
The records showed Modesto had fired five officers since 2013 for dishonesty. Carroll said then that his department would not tolerate that behavior. “We are harder on guys that break the rules probably than other careers or other fields,” he said in 2019. “You lie, you die.”
New ideas while respecting tradition
Carroll also drew praise from inside his department and at City Hall.
Modesto Police Officers Association President Tony Arguelles said Carroll brought a new perspective to the department while respecting the department’s traditions.
“He’s been a very good police chief, and it’s going to be hard to see him go,” said Arguelles, who has been MPOA president for 12 years. He said a testament to Carroll is that he has been chief for nearly eight years, while the average tenure for a chief is three to five years.
Arguelles said an example of Carroll’s innovation is the department’s adoption of what is called intelligence-led policing, in which police identify and focus resources on crime hot spots.
City Manager Joe Lopez said in a news release that Modesto is safer and more resilient because of Carroll’s leadership and said he is proud of the relationships Carroll has built throughout the city.
Lopez will name Assistant Police Chief Brandon Gillespie as interim chief upon Carroll’s retirement and will conduct a recruitment for a new chief, according to a city spokesman.
This story was originally published November 20, 2020 at 5:01 AM.
