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Carlton: Tampa gets 'quiet storm' of a police chief in troubled times

 
Eric Ward was named Tampa’s new police chief Thursday by Mayor Bob Buckhorn. Ward will succeed Chief Jane Castor upon her May 8 retirement. Here, Ward flexes his muscles during a Great American Teach-In event with first-grader Emily Warren at Henry Grady Elementary last November.
Eric Ward was named Tampa’s new police chief Thursday by Mayor Bob Buckhorn. Ward will succeed Chief Jane Castor upon her May 8 retirement. Here, Ward flexes his muscles during a Great American Teach-In event with first-grader Emily Warren at Henry Grady Elementary last November.
Published May 1, 2015

Tampa's own Eric Ward, a cop who has done pretty much everything in the Tampa Police Department in his 26 years rising up the ranks, becomes his town's police chief in what you could call interesting times.

It is a moment when everyone in America knows Ferguson, when questions smolder on the streets of Baltimore, when we are confronting issues of police power, poverty and race.

Ward, 48, whose exhaustive resume includes working everything from street crimes to the marine unit to the SWAT team, won't be Tampa's first black police chief, something that happened three mayors ago. But if you doubt an eye toward diversity from the mayor who appointed Ward top cop Thursday, you have only to recall that Mayor Bob Buckhorn's recent inauguration festivities included ministers both Catholic and Baptist, a rabbi, a gospel choir and a gay men's chorale, just for starters.

It should be noted for the record, too, that Ward's likely ascension was Tampa's worst-kept secret even before Ferguson exploded in the headlines.

Make no mistake: Ward has chops (see resume, above). He is liked and respected in the department. He is described as thoughtful and methodical, a person you'd want to have your back.

A "quiet storm" of a man, one of his colleagues told a reporter last year.

Which may be a change from the current (and first female) chief, Jane Castor, who became a rock star in this town, the kind of chief that protestors asked to pose with them for pictures during the Republican National Convention.

Notably, it was Ward, then assistant chief and the highest-ranking black member of the department, who was recently named to coordinate a U.S. Justice Department review requested by the mayor and Chief Castor after a Times report about the high percentage of black residents ticketed for bicycling violations compared to whites.

No question, the new chief knows Tampa's streets and Tampa's troubles, having lived as a child for a time in public housing in east Tampa, where drugs and crime were part of daily life. He has spoken of his strong and loving mother, who kept her children in line. He once told a reporter, "I'm still afraid of her to this day."

A teacher who retired last year, she worked to buy a home and get her family out of public housing.

As a kid, Ward got to know police, with whom his community had a "strained relationship," playing baseball at the Police Athletic League — "kind of like the east side of town's summer camp," he said. Turned out there were cops who actually cared about the kids. Ward would go on to coach at PAL himself.

"Eric," Chief Castor told a packed house at the announcement Thursday, "has a very, very big heart."

(Police chief trivia: Both Ward and still-newish St. Petersburg police Chief Tony Holloway are graduates of Tampa's Hillsborough High, a point of pride for the school.)

So beyond his resume, experience and demeanor is the fact that Tampa has a black police chief.

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Does it matter?

Once I asked a longtime judge why he didn't use his seniority to get out of juvenile court, considered by many judges to be a tough and depressing assignment, given all those children who have been damaged by the world, all those kids charged with crimes before they are old enough to shave.

The judge, who was black, said he wanted black kids to look up and see someone like themselves up on the bench. He wanted them to see what was possible.

Given the state of the world, a quiet storm could be just the thing for the road ahead.