New Bellevue Police Chief Steve Mylett said Monday he expects his first 90 days leading the department to be a lot of listening to his staff and the community, adding he is excited about the law enforcement agency’s future.
“My greatest challenge is not going too fast, because I want to be a year ahead of where we are now,” said Mylett during a media conference ahead of a swearing-in ceremony at city hall.
Mylett, 49, spent the past four years as chief of police in Southlake, Texas, and another 23 years previously with the Corpus Christi Police Department, also in Texas.
Forbes.com named Southlake the most affluent neighborhood in the United States in 2008, the median household income currently at $172,951, compared to $90,333 in Bellevue. Southlake is also 88 percent white, compared to 59 percent in Bellevue, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Bellevue is also seeing rapid growth in its Asian population – at 28 percent in 2010 – while Southlake is a little more than 6 percent.
While Mylett commanded 64 sworn officers in Southlake – Bellevue having 170 – he said he spent most of his career in Corpus Christi, with 460 sworn officers.
“Southlake, it was different, it was smaller,” said Mylett, “but if Corpus Christi taught me how to be an operations chief, Southlake taught me how to be a police executive.”
The new police chief said more than 50 percent – about 70 percent, according to the BPD’s Twitter feed – of the department’s recent hires have been non-caucasian males; he did not immediately know how many have been women.
Addressing internal incidents within the department over the past several years – most recently the resignation of a police lieutenant under investigation for allegedly defaming and lying about another officer – Mylett said he felt the BPD dealt with the case swiftly and justly, and that is how such events should be handled.
When asked if he would remove and replace the current command staff – new Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole did so in March – Mylett said the Seattle chief has more flexibility in her staffing than he does, but he has asked each member of his command staff to send him their resume. Bellevue’s police staff are not at-will like in Seattle, meaning just cause must be found to terminate or demote them.
