Black Police Chiefs, Feeling Squeezed, Face Criticism on All Sides

Chief U. Reneé Hall of Dallas said she would leave the force in November after receiving heavy criticism for her officers’ response this summer to protests against racism in policing. And Chief La’Ron D. Singletary of Rochester, N.Y., joined his entire command in stepping down amid intense backlash over his handling of the death of a Black man in police custody in March.

Those resignations came about a month after a Black police chief, Carmen Best, announced she was leaving the Seattle Police Department because of budget cuts and restructuring to her force that she felt the city’s political leadership executed without properly including her.

While Ms. Best received heavy criticism for not reining in her officers’ aggressive response to protesters, some of her supporters said she faced discrimination from city leadership, which can be a roadblock for African-American police leaders. Ms. Best, the first Black woman to serve as the city’s police chief, said she could not say whether her race or gender influenced how the City Council dealt with her.

“I don’t think I’ll ever know fully what was in the hearts and minds of the various council members,” she said. But, she added, the efforts to defund the Police Department “without having a conversation with the police chief, and being highly dismissive — it does bring one to question what the motive was there.”

M. Lorena González, the president of the Seattle City Council, said race played no role in the differences she had with the former chief. Rather, it was Ms. Best’s failure to embrace transformational change, Ms. González said.

“I know that self-proclaimed progressive police chiefs across the country pledge fidelity to reform but few operationalize those pledges or push reform beyond the edges,” she said in a text message. “That is in part because of the systemic oppression that pervades policing and even leaders of color within those systems are not immune from that oppression.”