Eight years ago, the Howard County Police Department was in turmoil.

The state NAACP gave the county a dubious "Dirty Harry" award, judging the police force to be one of the five worst in the state when it came to brutality complaints.

The chief, Frederick W. Chaney, suffered criticism as a poor leader from within the ranks and from a minority community that also complained about the lack of high-ranking minority officers. Chaney resigned at the request of County Executive Charles I. Ecker, less than four years after the previous chief, Paul Rappaport, resigned amid similar complaints.

Things looked so bad that when the new chief, James N. Robey, took over in early 1991, Chaney offered these words of encouragement: "I wish him luck in that job. It can get to be quite thankless at times."

Indee, Robey would find out how thankless the job can be, though by the time he stepped down in January to run as a Democrat for county executive, the police force was no longer in turmoil.

In his seven years as chief, his department again faced accusations of racism, police brutality and a failure to promote minority officers, though mostly early in his tenure.

He suffered intense criticism for defending the use of a lie-detector test on a rape victim, and to this day he stands by a massage parlor sting that even some of his supporters believe was an embarrassment to the county.

Budget reductions

Robey also had to make painful budget cuts during his first year as chief, and he couldn't fill vacancies. Early in his tenure, Robey faced some of the same complaints from the union that dogged his predecessors, that he didn't fight hard enough for the rank and file.

Yet Robey left on his terms. Union officials weren't calling for his head (though their enthusiasm for Robey might be rooted in self-interest, because Robey wants to improve officer salaries and benefits if elected executive). He still enjoyed the unwavering support of Ecker. And community leaders -- even ones backing his Republican opponent, Dennis R. Schrader -- say he worked well with them.

"You can see the difference" between the Rappaport-Chaney era and Robey's tenure, said the Rev. John L. Wright, a Schrader supporter who was president of the local and state NAACP in the mid-1980s. "Things sort of quieted down."

It's hard to measure Robey's successes in statistics. Violent crimes remained relatively uncommon, but that is to be expected in a wealthy suburb: There were five homicides in the year before Robey took over, seven murders during his second year as chief, then only one in his seventh and final year; robberies went up, but aggravated assaults went down; and the number of reported rapes remained fairly constant at slightly more than 30 a year.

Community leaders and politicians say Robey's greatest achievements were his initiatives to forge better relationships with communities: establishing community policing, setting up satellite offices in several neighborhoods, putting two officers in high schools, starting an after-school program at one school where officers mentor youths.

He earned the trust of minority leaders, who say he listened to complaints about police misconduct and acted on long-standing concerns about recruitment and promotion of minority officers.

He gained credibility with his efforts to recruit minority officers and with the first promotion of an African-American to captain in the history of the department.

But Robey's shortcomings, at least as some saw them, also didn't show up in crime statistics.

Some current and former officers, as well as some people outside the department, say he was a cautious, politically calculating leader who was at times hesitant to take risks or try others' ideas. One official with whom he had a poor relationship was Republican State's Attorney Marna McLendon, who criticized the Democrat's "insular" style of leadership.

"I was very disappointed that we could not work better together, because he really seemed to resist that," McLendon said. "It really just went downhill over the years."

McLendon and Robey clashed most over her plan for "community prosecution," in which prosecutors would have worked closely with communities, encouraging citizens to talk with them about problems. Robey felt it was a duplication of his community policing program and would lead to confusion about whom citizens should contact. McLendon and Robey met with Ecker last year to try working out their differences but failed.

'Passing him by'

"The way of the future is criminal justice agencies working together and with communities. This is passing him by," said McLendon, who is running for re-election against a friend of Robey's, Tim McCrone. "It's just passing him by and he doesn't understand the concept."

Robey points out that he started several new policies as chief, including community policing. And he has a good relationship with schools Superintendent Michael E. Hickey, who asked him to launch the high school liaison program -- though Robey waited years to do so, until concerns about violence in schools increased.

The Rev. Bowyer Freeman, a Schrader supporter, has high praise for Robey's leadership, including his willingness to listen. But he is disappointed that Robey rejected calls for a civilian review board that would monitor police misconduct cases.

"I'm still not clear as to why" Robey wouldn't do it, Freeman said. "Perhaps it's the feeling of somehow or other having your power neutralized."

Robey said that, in part, it was a question of power.

He wanted his standards for conduct to apply to officers, and he worried that a civilian board's judgments would be inconsistent and perhaps less harsh than necessary at times. He also said such boards have a history of taking an unusually long time to handle cases.

"I can assure you that police are tougher on ourselves than any citizen review board would ever be," he said. "I think I was very tough. [Officers] will tell you I was very tough."

Current and former officers say Robey became a stricter disciplinarian in his later years as chief, punishing officers at times for offenses they believed were minor. But, if anything, Robey has suffered his worst criticism for standing by his officers in a case in which many felt he should have admitted a mistake.

In 1992, one of Robey's officers asked a 19-year-old rape victim to take a polygraph test, then tried to persuade her to admit she was lying after she apparently failed on a couple of questions.

Months later, a suspect confessed to abducting and sexually assaulting the woman after being arrested in another rape.

'PrimeTime' coverage

ABC's "PrimeTime Live" featured the story three years later, interviewing experts who said rape victims shouldn't be subjected to polygraph tests. The woman's family accused the police of being insensitive and dragging their feet on the investigation.

On the show, Robey defended the use of the polygraph, saying that he wouldn't change anything his officers did. When asked if he would apologize, he said, "I can't apologize to anyone for doing the job that we're required to do." When asked whom he would believe -- his polygraph examiner or a rape victim -- he said, "I believe my examiner."

Robey has since said that he felt bad for the rape victim, that his most sympathetic comments were edited out by ABC, and that the few comments quoted from a long interview were taken out of context. But, for years, he refused to admit his officers made any mistakes.

Now, he offers another defense of his officers when asked about the case.

"They want me to say, you want me to say, that our investigators are bad, that our polygraph examiners are flawed, and for me to say that would attack the credibility of every hard-working, good, qualified officer who does their job or goes into court to testify," said Robey, 57. "If it costs me the election, I cannot apologize -- no, I can apologize, but I can't say we did something wrong in that case."

Policy tightened

But a minute later, Robey acknowledged that after he was interviewed by ABC in late 1994, he tightened department policy so that a rape victim can be given polygraph tests only when there is a suspect who has an alibi. Since the 1992 case, Robey said, the department has not given a polygraph test to a rape victim.

"Mistakes in any investigation can occur, and they obviously did in this case," he said, explaining the change in policy.

The 1995 ABC show was followed that year by a police investigation of massage parlors, in which officers repeatedly paid for sex acts.

The sting, which cost more than $4,000 and 90 man-hours, led to fines and brief license suspensions for parlor owners and the arrests of 13 women. But the prospect of embarrassing courtroom testimony prompted Robey and prosecutors to drop all but two of the cases.

"The massage parlor [sting] was definitely a mistake," said William Vaughan, a retired Montgomery County firefighter who lives in North Laurel and follows local public safety issues. Vaughan says that in other jurisdictions officers wouldn't be allowed to pay for sex as part of an investigation. "Here they allowed it," Vaughan said. "Major mistake."

Stands by decisions

Robey says he wouldn't have done anything differently. He says he knew there would be scrutiny of the department's methods, but he felt using officers in an extended investigation was the only way to make a case against the parlor owners.

"This was business," Robey said. "This wasn't sex for money for us, and I commend the two officers who did it."

Vaughan's response: "Stupid."

Yet Vaughan, a self-described "die-hard Republican," is supporting Robey for county executive. He says that Schrader doesn't care about his concerns that public safety is slipping in Howard County, but that Robey wants to do something about it.

Vaughan's reasoning is a clue to what might have been Robey's most brilliant political success as chief: He turned the rank and file's complaints about pay and benefits, and community concerns about gaps in patrols because of a lack of staffing, against the Republican majority on the County Council, who last year shot down pension improvements backed by Robey and Ecker. The Republican who chaired the council at the time was Schrader, who has been attacked by Robey and unions as being out of touch with public safety staffing and pay problems.

Anti-Schrader campaign

The unions' campaign against Schrader is multifaceted and intense. Robey said public safety unions have given him $8,000 of the roughly $80,000 he has raised. In Thursday's Howard County Times, the police union ran a full-page advertisement blasting Schrader, an open letter titled "To Right a Wrong." Officers have contacted local newspapers, including The Sun, to say that other officers are leaving for better-paying jobs and that they, too, will quit the force if Schrader defeats Robey Nov. 3.

Schrader has responded that Robey is "captive" to the unions, that the former chief has fabricated a crisis of officers leaving the department. He said any problems in the force are the fault of Robey's poor leadership.

"Jim Robey's time as police chief has probably got mixed results," Schrader said.

But, for the police, the compensation issue eclipses any problems Robey might have had as chief. Though Robey was clearly better liked by the rank and file than the previous two chiefs, any officers who had problems with Robey are reluctant to criticize him publicly; they want him to be elected executive and raise their salaries, as he has said he will do.

"There are so many people that are so unhappy about the prospect of things getting worse, that's what people talk about all the time, how we hope Dennis Schrader doesn't get elected," said James Marshall, an officer in the K-9 section who is not critical of Robey's job as chief.

Robey says he recognizes that anti-Schrader sentiment will in some cases win him support from officers who otherwise might ZTC not be happy with him.

"Given the alternative, they're scared to death," Robey said.

Sun staff writers Alice Lukens, Jill Hudson Neal, Erika Niedowski and Del Quentin Wilber contributed to this article.

Crime statistics during James Robey's tenure as Howard County Police Chief.

Crime............ .1990.. .....1992...... .1994.......1997

Homicide........... .5.... ......7........ ..4..........1

Rape.............. .34.... .....37..... ....31.........33

Robbery........... .90... .....131..... ...147........222

Agg. Assault..... .408... .....386..... ...395........289

Theft........... 4,834... ...5,498.... ..5,823......6,449

Auto Theft....... .970... .....929.... ..1,155........748

Source: Howard County Police

Pub Date: 10/18/98