From urban Chicago to tribal Idaho – Police chief brings extensive city experience to the reservation

Former Coeur d´Alene City Police Chief Tom Cronin is now overseeing the tiny Coeur d´Alene Tribal Police unit. He said the three weeks after he left his previous job amounted to the longest stretch that he had been unemployed since he was a sophomore in high school.

When Tom Cronin became a cop, he was part of a tight-knit, hard-driving group of rookies who would tell each other over beers: “One day, we´re going to run this department.”

Jesse Tinsley / The Spokesman-Review

http://www.idahostatesman.com/News/story.asp?ID=59422

Over the years, the group of comrades rose through the ranks in Chicago: sergeant, captain, commander. Now one is head of detectives. Another is casting a long shadow toward superintendent of police.

But look at Cronin. His silver hair is set off by a dark blue uniform with a polished badge that says “Chief.”

Oh, if his friends could see him now. Especially right now, in this quiet minute when the hard edge of a long, cold night softens toward dawn and Chief of Police Tom Cronin is standing at a sink.

He´s reverently prepping the Mr. Coffee for that first batch of steaming java that will keep his crew fueled through the day.

On the Coeur d´Alene Indian Reservation, the police chief makes his own coffee. Not that he has much choice when there is nobody else in the metal-sided module that serves as headquarters for the tribal police force.

“My friends all think I´m nuts,” Cronin said cheerily as the coffee pot began to sputter and gurgle. Cronin´s friends are doing their high-climbing in the urban towers at 11th and State, where the Chicago Police Department — second largest in the nation — is headquartered in the southern canyons of Chicago´s downtown Loop.

They are earning six-figure salaries. It is unlikely they make their own coffee.

Cronin, 57, was a part of this big-city police world for more than three decades. He was nearly killed by a hollow-point bullet two months into the job, and rose to become a commander who ran the department´s forensics unit.

Then he took a sudden and sizable side-step out to Coeur d´Alene three years ago.

“I wanted to live out West,” he said.

Cronin beat out 77 applicants and five finalists to become the city of Coeur d´Alene´s police chief in June 2000, saying at the time he was looking forward to ending his career here.

That end came abruptly just after Labor Day last year when Cronin suddenly resigned in a dispute with the City Council when a scandal erupted over reports that a number of officers had not been properly certified by the state during the past couple dozen years.

The lack of certification threw thousands of arrests into question. Cronin refuses to say anything about the steps that led to his surprise resignation.

“I have been taking the high road and I still am,” he said. “I fell in love with that department. I enjoyed my time there. It was difficult to leave.”

In the aftermath, pals back in Chicago offered Cronin another job there — one which paid nearly twice what he made in Coeur d´Alene. But then something else popped up on the radar.

The Coeur d´Alene Tribe was searching for a police chief to run its 14-man department and Cronin was approached about taking the job for about the same $66,000 he was making in Coeur d´Alene. And Cronin was looking for a reason to stay.

Fourteen officers. While waiting for the coffee to brew, Cronin laughed that when he was a sergeant he supervised more officers during a single shift in just one of Chicago´s 40-odd precincts. Chicago has nearly 14,000 police officers.

But there´s a downside to those numbers.

“I would leave headquarters at 4 o´clock and get on I-90 — which is six lanes each way — and it would take me an hour and 20 minutes to go 12 miles,” Cronin said.

“And here was my view: The guy in front of me, the guy behind me, the guy on either side and it´s all 2 miles an hour, stop-and-go.

“What a beautiful ride I have now. Like the drive this morning — those trees, snow, mountains. I feel like I´ve died and gone to heaven,” he said. “Plus I still get to do what I love — be a leader of police.”

And in his dark blue uniform, Cronin is every inch the chief. He is buried sometimes by paperwork and meetings. Coffee mug in hand, he riffles through the in-basket to check for overnight reports. He takes time each day just to walk around and be visible. He notes crime is much the same on the reservation as it is in the big city: “We have marijuana, cocaine, heroin. We have domestic violence.”

And another similarity: “I went to a general membership meeting a couple weeks ago, sat there all day and learned a lot. People don´t trust police. They don´t think we do a good job,” he said.

So he set priorities. He has officers visit schools every day, just to say hi. He hopes to open a substation and increase police presence around Tensed and Desmet. There are plans to start an after-school program for kids in Worley. He´d like to open a women´s shelter.

And then there is the spit-and-polish. In a department where officers could often work in jeans and running shoes, Cronin demands full uniform. People on the reservation know all the tribal officers no matter what they are wearing, Cronin admits.