What Daniel Derenda, Mayor Byron W. Brown's choice as police commissioner, lacks in

credentials he more than makes up for in connections.

He's a rarity, a big city police chief with just a high school diploma, who took his last

training course nine years ago, according to his resume.

While he earned a reputation as an accomplished, aggressive street cop, his lack of

educational credentials today would disqualify him from consideration for getting hired as a

rookie patrol officer on the city force.

For the past six years, however, Derenda has cultivated a relationship with Brown and Deputy

Mayor Steve Casey.

Derenda volunteered for Brown's mayoral campaign in 2005, helping to write some of Brown's

position paper on crime and serving in a pool of police officers who volunteered to drive

Brown to and from campaign events and provide security. A company owned by Derenda's wife and

mother-in-law, First Impressions Apparel, sold Brown's campaign $1,199 in materials, primarily

signs.

Brown subsequently named Derenda one of two deputy police commissioners, raising eyebrows

in the process because neither Derenda nor Byron Lockwood, the other deputy commissioner, had

risen above the rank of detective sergeant, the lowest rung of the department's command

structure.

During the mayor's first term, Derenda and Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson maintained a

tenuous relationship that was stressed, according to several sources, in part by the back

channel Derenda maintained with Brown and Casey.

Once appointed deputy commissioner, Derenda started to make donations to Brown's campaign

committees and First Impressions Apparel significantly increased the amount of business it did

with the mayor's campaign committees. The company also did business with the Police Athletic

League.

After Brown won re-election last year, he dismissed Gipson and named Derenda acting

commissioner while pledging a national job search for a permanent replacement. No national

search was conducted, however, and Brown submitted Derenda's name to the Common Council at the

end of June.

Derenda's appointment has generated a lot of grousing among the police rank and file and

some Council members, who question the recruitment process and Derenda's qualifications and

political connections to the Brown camp.

Niagara Council Member David Rivera called the administration's job search "an

embarrassment," and said Derenda "doesn't even have the minimum qualifications to become an

entry-level police officer."

"I've never seen morale worse," said one department veteran, who expressed mixed feelings

about Derenda. The manner in which Derenda was selected has undermined his appointment, this

veteran said.

"They never canvassed us. We have a lot of smart people who could have been phenomenal

candidates who were never looked at. Unfortunately, qualifications don't matter."

Derenda, 51, declined to comment for this story, and the Brown administration refused to

answer questions regarding the Derenda appointment, including whether anyone else was

interviewed for the position.

Derenda has held a series of private, one-on-one meetings with Council members over the

past week and will be the subject of a confirmation hearing Tuesday. The Council is expected

to vote on his nomination July 20.

Derenda at a glance

Age: 51

Residence: Buffalo

Education: 1977 graduate of Hutchinson-Central Technical High School

Experience:

24 years on the force

Highest rank earned: Detective sergeant

Appointed deputy police commissioner in 2006

Appointed acting police commissioner in 2009

Politics:

Volunteered for Byron W. Brown's 2005 mayoral campaign

Switched affiliation from Republican to Democrat in 2009

Donated $2,200 to Brown's campaign from 2006 to '09

Derenda's qualifications

The rancor over the qualifications of prospective police commissioners is hardly new. One

only has to look back to 1994, when then-Mayor Anthony Masiello appointed Rocco Diina as

deputy police commissioner, even though Diina had never risen above the rank of patrol officer

before leaving the department to operate a private security firm. Concerns were raised again

when Masiello subsequently appointed Diina to the top job in 1998.

While the City Charter sets minimum standards for the job, including a college degree, it

also includes a loophole:

"The commissioner of police shall have either (a) a degree from an accredited college or

university and at least five years' experience in law enforcement; or (b) an equivalent of

training and experience sufficient to indicate ability to perform the duties of this

position."

The city holds applicants for an entry-level officer's job to a higher standard, requiring

completion of at least 60 credit hours of college course work — equivalent to an

associate degree — or six years of continuous military service.

Local suburban governments have minimum standards for chief, which is also a civil service

position. Depending on the town, job candidates for the top job must hold the rank of at least

captain or lieutenant, and the chief is selected from among the three highest-scoring

candidates on the civil service test. A canvass of departments in Amherst, Cheektowaga and the

Town of Tonawanda, the largest suburban departments, found that all three police chiefs hold

college degrees.

That's true of most big-city departments, as well, and a prime example can be found down

the Thruway in Rochester, where Police Commissioner David Moore holds both undergraduate and

graduate degrees.

Derenda, on the other hand, is a 1977 graduate of Hutchinson-Central Technical High School

who did not attend college. His resume lists his participation in three training programs, the

last a course in supervision conducted by the Erie County Department of Central Police

Services in 2001. Derenda was a detective sergeant at the time.

"The jump from a detective sergeant to running a big city department is huge," said one

officer familiar with operations at Police Headquarters who did not want to be quoted by name.

Experienced street cop

Derenda's defenders contend that his years of police work and knowledge of the city

qualifies him for the position.

He's a 24-year veteran of the department, and prior to his appointment as deputy

commissioner in 2006, he worked as a patrol officer, member of the SWAT team, precinct

detective and detective sergeant and finally detective sergeant in the narcotics and homicide

bureaus.

Brown, in announcing his intention to recommend Derenda, decribed him as "extremely

creative, very hard-driving and very passionate about policing."

Those who like Derenda said he made more than his share of arrests as an officer and

detective and is a no-nonsense individual.

Derenda has his share of detractors within the department, however, many of whom consider

him impatient, bellicose and not up to speed with modern policing practices. Several officers

also questioned whether his job performance suffered prior to his appointment as deputy

commissioner at the expense of growing his wife's apparel business.

The business was formed in 2003 and operates on Delaware Avenue near Chippewa Street.

Derenda's involvement includes design work, and one records search conducted by The News

listed Derenda as director of sales at the company.

The company does much of its business with police and fire departments and their employees

and in recent years has done work for a number of local candidates, many aligned with Brown,

including State Sen. Antoine Thompson, City Court Judge Craig Hannah and Assembly candidate

Barbra Kavanaugh, who two years ago challenged incumbent Sam Hoyt.

Residency an issue

The question of where Derenda lives has been the subject of rumors for several years and

has been raised as an issue by at least one Council member. Public records show that Derenda

over the past 20 years has purchased three properties, vacant land in Clarence Center and on

the city-West Seneca line, and a house in the city's Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood, not far

from the Central Terminal.

Derenda sold the land in Clarence Center to a developer three or four years ago. The

property on the city line involved two parcels, one purchased from a private owner in 2008,

the other a paper street owned by the city in January of this year. Most, but not all of the

property is located within the city.

Voter registration records show Derenda and his wife living at the house in

Broadway-Fillmore, along with his mother. The News last week interviewed two longtime

neighborhood residents and both said Derenda and his family do live at the house. The side

yard of the house includes a swing set that would be appropriate for the ages of Derenda's

children.

Moreover, in the middle of the interviews, shortly after working hours, Derenda pulled up

in front of the house listed with the Board of Elections as his residence. A few minutes

later, his wife arrived with one of their children in another vehicle.

Political involvement

Derenda was not involved in city politics before Brown ran for mayor in 2005. In fact, he

was a registered Republican until 2009, when he reaffiliated as a Democrat.

Reports filed with the Board of Elections show Derenda did not contribute to Brown's

campaign during his first race for mayor, but that changed after Brown won office and

appointed Derenda.

Derenda donated $2,200 from 2006 to 2009 and First Impressions Apparel gave an additional

$696 in 2009, when the mayor ran for re-election.

Board of Elections records show the Brown campaign paid First Impressions $13,231 for goods

and services in 2009, including $8,839 for literature, possibly signs, $2,795 for T-shirts and

$1,597 for fundraising-related activities.

First Impressions also has done business with the city, according to public records. In

2006 and 2008, it sold at least $4,792 of goods to the Police Athletic League used for the

mayor's summer reading program.

Several current and former City Hall insiders said Derenda fashioned a close working

relationship with Brown and Casey once he was appointed deputy commissioner, and according to

one source, it became a bone of contention with Gipson. One former high-ranking official said

Derenda was a frequent visitor to Casey's office, often on a daily basis. "He's Casey's boy.

He's definitely Casey's boy," said another former city official.

Derenda is associated with what many police officers consider a growing politicization of

the department.

One is the role he played in one of the most controversial episodes of Brown's first term.

The News has previously reported that police in early 2007 had stopped Leonard Stokes, a

former basketball star who was developing plans for his now infamous One Sunset restaurant, on

suspicion of possession of handicapped parking permits stolen from City Hall.

Police were prepared to charge Stokes, but he pleaded with officers to allow him to place a

call to the mayor's cell phone. The officers turned to Derenda for guidance, The News

reported, and he first told them to ignore the request but later instructed them to take

Stokes to the mayor's office, where he met with Brown and was released without being charged.

Earlier this year, after Derenda was appointed acting commissioner, the department demoted

two highly regarded chiefs, the ranking commanders of the city's five districts. One was

considered on the political outs with Brown, and one of the new chiefs appointed was the

mayor's driver, who had no command experience.

"The biggest problem isn't Dan Derenda," one police veteran said, "it's the mayor's hand in

the Police Department."

Job search

The manner in which the city conducted its job search for commissioner also has fueled

skepticism about Derenda's selection.

Brown pledged a national job search to recruit a permanent successor to Gipson. But, as The

News reported last month, no such search was conducted.

As of May, only 10 candidates had applied for the job. Only after a story about the

scarcity of applicants and criticism from the Council did the Brown administration step up its

recruitment efforts. Even then, it mostly involved the posting of a "want ad" on free Internet

job boards and gave applicants only two weeks to apply for a position that had been vacant for

more than four months.

The Brown administration's efforts fell far short of what big-city police departments

usually do when conducting national searches. One expert said cities usually retain the

services of one of several national police organizations, such as the International

Association of Chiefs of Police, to recruit candidates and advertise in trade journals.

A short list is then subjected to vigorous screening and pared down to a half-dozen or so

finalists who are often interviewed by elected officials, union officials and members of the

community.

The Brown administration took none of these steps. In fact, aside from answering questions

under intense grilling from Council members in May, officials have been unwilling to provide

details about their recruitment and screening process.

Peter Cutler, the mayor's press secretary, did not return telephone calls or e-mails from a

News reporter. Karla Thomas, the city's human resources commissioner, refused to answer

questions posed by a News reporter and instead referred him to Michael DeGeorge, the police

department's spokesman. DeGeorge, in turn, declined to provide details or answer one very

specific question posed in an e-mail: Was anyone other than Derenda interviewed for the job?

The News, in an e-mail to DeGeorge, protested his failure to provide details and concluded:

"The refusal to answer questions raises a question as to whether anyone other than

Derenda was interviewed for the position."

DeGeorge did not reply.