Career
While Chief of Police for the Houston Police Department, Clarence Bradford held one of the longest tenures as Chief of Police. He also has the distinction of being one of only two police chiefs to be appointed by two Houston mayors. Both Mayor Bob Lanier and Mayor Lee Brown selected him as their Chief of Police. Bradford managed a department with 5,000 officers and 2,000 civilian personnel, an annual budget of $500 million, and a population of 2 million people over 600 square miles (1,600 km2). Bradford, an attorney, served 24 years with the Houston Police Department, including seven years as Police Chief. During his tenure as police chief, Mr Bradford was investigated for his involvement in the problems at the Houston Crime Lab. Because of contamination of evidence at the crime lab, a number of innocent people were jailed and spent years behind bars for crimes they did not commit as reported by the Houston Chronicle. The Houston Police Officers Union later admitted that Chief Bradford was aware of the contamination at the Houston Crime Lab for 5-years and chose not to act. Over 400 cases had to be retested to confirm their accuracy, including at least one death row case.
During his tenure as Police Chief, the citizens' fear of crime and public safety concerns went from a high of 59%, constantly downward, to only 10% when he left office, as documented by Dr. Stephen Kleinberg of Rice University - however, the actual number of violent and nonviolent crimes increased above the city's growth rate of 6% a year during his tenure, as reported by the Houston Chronicle.
Read more about this topic: Clarence Bradford
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (18801964)
“Work-family conflictsthe trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your childwould not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partners job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)