Chief Craig when he was fighting for certification in Cincinnati (courtesy cincinnati.com)

“Police Chief James Craig was limited in what action he could have taken against a perceived carjacker because Detroit’s top cop isn’t certified as an officer,” detroitnews.com reports. You hurt your what? “Craig is not certified as a police officer in Michigan, so he doesn’t have arrest powers beyond making a citizen’s arrest . . . As a retired officer, however, he is allowed to carry a concealed weapon in all 50 states, per the 2004 federal Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act. Michigan doesn’t require certification for police chiefs.” So he had a gun but “A department spokesman said the chief drove away from the situation because no actual crime had been committed. Also, Craig is not certified as a police officer in Michigan, so he doesn’t have arrest powers beyond making a citizen’s arrest . . .

Although the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards sent Craig paperwork to become certified when he assumed command of Detroit’s Police Department in July, he hasn’t returned it, said Dave Harvey, the commission’s executive director.

This isn’t Chief Craig’s first non-rodeo . . .

When Craig became Cincinnati’s police chief in August 2011, the Ohio Peace Officer Training Commission waived most of the state’s requirements to become a certified officer, said Dan Tierney, spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which oversees the training commission.

“Craig had applied for a wavier of the training requirements given his extensive experience prior to coming to Cincinnati,” Tierney said.

“He was granted an exemption for a vast majority of the requirements, given his previous experience. The head of the (training association) at the time said to his knowledge, no other officer had ever been granted more waivers than Chief Craig.

“The only things not waived were specifically related to Ohio law,” Tierney said. “Those courses covered things that someone not trained in Ohio wouldn’t be aware of. Craig asked to have the requirement that he take the test be waived, and the commission did not grant him that waiver, so he challenged that in court.”

Craig, the first chief in Cincinnati history to be hired from outside the department, argued the test was unfair to out-of-state chief candidates. He insisted his time in Cincinnati was better spent learning the community and how to deal with its crime problem than cramming for a test given to recruits after 582 hours of training — a position publicly supported by Cincinnati’s mayor and other city officials.

A cop who doesn’t like to take competency tests. Go figure. [h/t Dirk Diggler]

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53 COMMENTS

  1. I wish I could say I’m surprised that a police chief doesn’t want to be bothered learning the laws he is expected to enforce. My police chief stated in a “gun violence” forum that Virginia has a gun registry.

    I just really hope he doesn’t try busting me for not having my guns registered, since, you know, that would be impossible. My attempts to contact the city (Mayor’s office, official police twitter, etc) went unnoticed.

    • Where in VA are you an officer? I just took the Chesterfield test yesterday and the richmond test a month or so ago.

    • Makes me think of pics of Bob Hope on USO tour shows, with about 8-9 stars on each collar. Except Hope was funny, Chief Craig? Not so much.

      • Craig may not be funny, but he sure is comical.

        Then again, everything about Detroit these days is like a joke where the punchline is actually a punch. To the gonads.

  4. Sounds just like chief Ramsey in Philly. Ramsey was in uniform and armed and was not certified in PA, and given that Ramsey was open carrying a firearm in Philly he was committing a crime. He was also committing a crime by wearing the uniform and identifying himself as being a police officer.

    Craig is the same guy who is on the University of Phoneix TV commercials. Then again, what do you expect from a guy that went to a diploma mill for profit school.

  5. Funny thing, Michigan state police motor carrier officers(the so called cops all over the highways in SUV’s) are not certified cops either, except for traffic law and felonies(any MI citizen can do an arrest on a felony btw) they have no authority

  6. That is because “Police Chief” is more a political appointment these days rather one with serious qualifications. It is more management of budgets and doing what the Mayor wants than actually doing any community policing.– that is what they hire consultants for anyway.

    One more reason why government is a joke

    • If Police Chief or Chief of Police is a political appointment ( not arguing the fact), then they should NOT be walking the streets or polluting our video waves with pictures of them in full uniform pretending to be police officers if they are NOT.

      I was in the trucking industry (yes, I am a qualified CDL-A driver) for over ten years. LOTS of owners and managers of trucking companies are NOT drivers. Doesn’t matter if they actually know how to run the company, an awful lot of drivers have no clue how to do that. Point is, the non-driver management never even considers going out and pushing a truck down the road themselves.

      If a guy can run a police department well (seems a valid question these days) then it shouldn’t matter if he is a certified cop or not, so long as he doesn’t pretend that he is until the SHTF.

  7. What’s a cop’s job anyway? To turn up after the damage is done, and spray innocent bystanders with as many stray rounds as possible? Better off staying in the coffee shop scoffing donuts. The drug gangs own the streets anyway.

    • Yeah, makes as much sense as the U.S. Surgeon General dressing up as a Navy Admiral. Go figure. I don’t see any political appointees parading around in Marine Corps General uniforms if they aren’t current or former Marines.

    • A great many of the problems in these cities would be lessened if real cops who came up through the department were selected to lead them, rather than political hacks.

  9. Hey Dirk, if you see this maybe when your home for the holidays we can do some range time, Close Quarters Tactical has a nice range… 23 mile and Hayes…

      • Damn, I will be in a tree waiting for the brown four leggers to walk by, depends on when your in area. Maybe if you’ll be home for a visit another time maybe RF can send you my email.

  11. Oh, yeah. He’s the one that did those TV commercials for the Diploma mill Phoenix University, that has no campus or classrooms.

    • at least they aren’t Berkeley!! live down the road from their phoenix offices and let me tell you how much nicer that is then when I worked just outside of Berkeley I start steaming just thinking about all those dirty communists and occupy hippies

      • Went up there with my college roommate one time, just out of curiosity. I have never hated any place I’ve visited even half as much as I hated Berkeley. The campus and surrounding area are the “utopia” that liberals wish to create nationwide; a listless, limp-wristed excuse for a city with no backbone whatsoever. If that even comes close to happening we are completely f*cked.

  12. Police chiefs of major metro areas are administrators and politicians, they do not go out arresting people or investigating crimes. As such, there is no reason for them to be LEOs–but if they are not they should wear suits and be subject to the same carry rules as any other citizen in the same jurisdiction.

    Gee, that reminds me. The Sheriff of San Francisco County Ross Mirkarimi is not a LEO either, and not authorized to carry a firearm AT ALL under California law unless he qualifies for a CCW/CHL. Which would be pretty hypocritical since he is as rabidly anti-CCW as his predecessor. (He is a former City Supervisor who ran for the job.) [As of the last time the state published statistics in September 2011 there were no CCWs issued for San Francisco, so this may have changed over the last two years.]

    • and he was arrested for domestic violence . . . . but DiFi was remarkably silent after he pimp slapped his old lady a few times.

  13. Does really matter, Detroit isn’t really a city either. More of like a lawless dystopian post-Apocalypto movie set.

    • a famous Detroit-based political consultant named Sam Riddle (who went to jail as part of the bribery of former City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, wife of House Judiciary ranking member John Conyers), said once “Detroit is like Mogadishu, but without the goats.”

        • Detroit is huge geographically but small in population. As a result, entire neighborhoods have been bulldozed and there’s actually quite a bit of urban farming taking place. So farm animals in the city isn’t unusual. It’s actually a good thing, IMO. Detroiters taking the city back one block at a time. There’s a lot of this kind of anarcho-capitalism going on. Government is so inept that the people just ignore it and start up small businesses without permits. Lots of produce stands, small shops, etc. springing up. The locavore movement is big in Detroit. In part because there are very few chain grocery stores (like Kroger) in the city.

          Police and EMS response times are so long (if they show up at all) that more people are taking on the responsibility for themselves. Things like keeping the local parks mowed and in service is being done by neighborhood inhabitants instead of the city. A lot of volunteerism. People watching out for their neighbors. Not all bad stuff going on, although I’d never live in the city due to the existing crime, astronomical tax rates and other problems. Detroit WILL re-invent itself and it will be by the effort of the people, not the government.

  14. So does that mean the Chief has to have a concealed handgun carry license to carry concealed?

    • it is illegal in michigan to carry a concealed weapon on your person in a vehicle without a permit. so, the real question is, did Chief Craig have a heater on his person without a CCW?

      • Not only that, since he isn’t a sworn officer, isn’t wearing a uniform, badge and driving a police car “impersonating” and officer?

  15. The Charlotte, NC top cop had an issue when it was uncertain that he had completed the requirements for the college degree listed on his resume. Seems that these sorts of issues are rather commonplace in the profession.

  18. Yep, he left the job as police chief of Cincinnati because he refused to take the test to be certified in Ohio, which apparently is required.

  22. He’s not trained, he’s not certified, yet he is wearing the uniform.
    If this were any other person they’d be arrested for impersonating an officer.

    Detroit is looking like a typical third-world country- typical tin-pot dictators in drag.

  23. Maybe Detroit should issue the cops chevy volt’s as police cars then, just like their leader they could be all show and no go and a true representative of the community.

  24. Great Halloween costume maybe he is just checking out the look before going out for trick or treat?
    Living in the wild wild west of New Mexico most of the LEO’s I know consider this an insult. The major percentage are honest hard working cops; this is an insult to both their profession and the public which pays their salary. I’d say fire both the chief and the mayor. If you’ve never walked a beat or spent time in a patrol car you’re not qualified too run a department.

  25. I always assumed the only arrest powers were “citizen arrest” but that we gave peace officers great deal of leeway. Am I wrong?

  26. Typical of the black police chief’s circuit. They get affirmative action hiring as chiefs, go from city to city, have no impact on crime, then on the strength of their resume, get hired by the next department, leaving a city with no improvement in public safety, but the local politicians can say they hired an affirmative action police chief.

  27. Wow! Detroit’s top Cop not a real Cop. Why don’t he wanna take his test’s. My Mom had to take hers for Wayne Co. She was a mere Corporal.?. What’s UP with that!

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