By Lornet Turnbull
Special to The Medium
Growing up in Tacoma in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Carmen Best held none of the typical childhood fantasies about becoming a police officer.
“I wasn’t one of those kids…” she said, laughing. “At some point I thought maybe I’d teach or do something in medicine.”
By the early 1990s, as a young adult, Best had completed a stint in the U.S. Army and was on a completely different career trajectory when, on a whim, she responded to a Seattle Police Department recruitment ad.
Twenty-six years later, having risen rapidly through the ranks, Deputy Chief Best is set to become the SPD’s interim police chief effective Jan. 1. As the first African-American woman to serve as the department’s second in command, she will also be the first one to lead it, replacing Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole, who is leaving at the end of the year.
Mayor Jenny Durkan will launch a nationwide search for a replacement to permanently lead the 1,370-officer department, a position Best intends to seek.
“For 25 years, Deputy Chief Best has been on the front lines of keeping our city safe and has an unrelenting resolve to serve the people,” the mayor said in tapping Best.
Well-liked both within and outside the SPD, the 52-year-old has enjoyed a broad range of assignments in a fast-moving career. About police work, she said “it’s a great calling to get involved and feel like you are part of something that’s really bigger than yourself and provide an important service to people even with all the controversy around what we do.”
Law enforcement, Best said, isn’t about the car chases and gun fights people see on television. It’s most fundamental aspect is public service.
“We see people in some of their most vulnerable states and our interpersonal skills, our ability to empathize and relate and meet people on the human level is much more characteristic of what we do in law enforcement than anything else,” she said.
The appointment, though interim, comes at a time of great disquiet in policing across the country overall, as well as here in Seattle, where the SPD could be moving toward compliance of a 2012 consent-decree negotiated with the U.S. Department of Justice. The department found Seattle police routinely used unconstitutional levels of force and may have engaged in biased policing.
“I don’t think there’s any secret policing is at a real crossroads across the country for a whole host of issues,” Best said. “I’m hyper aware of these issues and so is the department.”
Best was assistant chief of criminal investigations when O’Toole, in one of her early moves as police chief, tapped her for the No. 2 position.
She considers O’Toole a mentor and said from the beginning the two have worked closely to not only ensure the department reflected the community it serves but also that there is the “training, education and policies in place to ensure we have equity and justice when we are out doing our work.”
And while there have been concrete steps the department has had to take as part of the consent decree, “we want to go way beyond that, to make sure we have a process where we are continuously looking at ways to improve our relationships with all communities, but particularly with communities of color.”
Community leaders across Seattle praised her appointment, including Rev. Harriett Walden, founder of Mothers for Police Accountability.
Walden said Mothers and others in the community have following Best’s career and fully support her. And while she recognizes there’ll be a broad search to replace the chief, she believes, “They won’t find a more qualified candidate.
“The community is behind her; the rank and file are behind her. The timing is right and Carmen is prepared,” Walden said. “She’s been doing the work already.”
Best, who is married and has two grown daughters, graduated from Lincoln High School in Tacoma in 1983 and enrolled at Eastern Washington University. She left college before finishing to join the Army, where she spent three years, including a stint overseas in South Korea.
After the military, she took a job in accounting at Aetna insurance and one day spotted that SPD television ad for recruits that would change the course of her career.
Hired in 1992, she has had assignments in patrol, school safety and served as media-relations supervisor, according to her official department bio. She has also been watch commander, operations lieutenant, patrol supervisor and held command positions in community outreach, as well as narcotics commander and robbery/gangs/fugitive commander. She was outreach commander for the South Precinct.
Best earned a bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University three years ago and is completing a Master’s in criminal-justice leadership from Northeastern University. She has completed several police training courses and this summer was a finalist for police chief in Dallas.
“As you learn more and grow more within the organization you begin to see places where you can fit in and fill gaps and be of better service,” she said of her rise within the department.
And in much the same way that recruitment ad inspired her to apply for a position with the SPD 26 years ago, Best hopes it will inspire other young people to consider careers in law enforcement.
It is why she believes it’s important to build relationships within communities. Her outreach work is legendary.
“We want to get a police department that reflects the community we serve,” Best said. “In doing that, we talk to and engage people, letting them know this job could be a job for them as well.
“That’s a mantra for us. We always pass that message along. And when they can see people in these positions who look like them, it lets them know there’s a place for them here as well.”
Walden said Mothers for Police Accountability has worked closely with Best and other African-American female officers in Seattle as part of an alliance doing community outreach. Together, they’ve taken young girls who’ve never been outside the city to see the tulips in Mt. Vernon and to the Pompeii exhibit at the Pacific Science Museum two years ago, she said.
Best said she’s received an outpouring of support and helpful feedback from throughout the community since the announcement. People have also been “unrestrained in letting me know what they think about what we need to do and where we need to go,” she said. She has listened to it all, she said, and will be open to opportunities to use it to make improvements within the department.
