Ohio: Top Cop

Seated behind his 8-ft. desk, Stanley Russell Schrotel looks like a corporation executive and talks like a university professor. But Stan Schrotel (rhymes with motel) is, in fact, a cop, a man who makes his living as Cincinnati’s chief of police. And at a time when the rising wave of crime has become a major national problem, Police Chief Schrotel, 47, has earned the reputation of being just about the best cop in the U.S.

Like most big U.S. cities, Cincinnati has crime-breeding slums and shifting, often antagonistic population groups. Since Schrotel took office in 1951, U.S. crime has increased nearly 100%, but Cincinnati’s has risen only 21.8%. On a per capita basis, Cincinnati last year had 46.2% less larceny and 61.4% less robbery than the average of major U.S. cities; this year’s figures, still being compiled, run much the same. Juvenile delinquency last year climbed 9% in the asphalt jungles across the U.S., but Cincinnati’s rate actually decreased by 1.4%. With impressive unanimity, the citizens of Cincinnati credit this record to Chief Schrotel.

Romance & Adventure. Schrotel came up the hard way. Son of a railroad car inspector, he was on his way to get a job as a dishwasher in the lean year of 1934 when his eye was caught by an announcement of exams for new police recruits. Schrotel passed easily, soon was assigned to night patrol duty in a scout car, and fell in love with his job. He still talks unabashedly of his “genuine thrill at the romance and adventure the position offered.”

Fighting to get ahead, Schrotel read every police book in sight, won a law degree at night from the Salmon P. Chase College at the local Y.M.C.A. He was a captain in 1948 when the Cincinnati civil service commission made a ruling which allowed him and 16 other young captains to take the competitive exams that would pick the successor to retiring Chief Eugene T. Weatherly, an old-style cop who used to sharpen his shooting eye by blazing away at the rats in his dingy office. Schrotel passed the exams with the record score of 99.33% and became Cincinnati’s top cop at 37.

Tough Realism. Chief Schrotel set about remaking Cincinnati’s white-hatted police force with an approach that was—and still is—tough and realistic. “The reins,” he says, “are real tight.” Overweight cops are suspended by Schrotel, himself a trim handballer. Men who show up in sloppy uniforms risk being sent home—and docked a day’s pay. Schrotel lost his fight in the city council against moonlighting by his men, but did get approval of his strict code for outside work, including the requirement that the pay be at least $3 an hour.

Schrotel has won the backing of solid Cincinnati for his force of 979 with a shrewd public relations campaign. Every person who makes a complaint gets a visit from an officer and a letter from Schrotel. Anyone who is arrested may be interviewed by the inspection bureau and invited to sound off about the treatment he received from the police and in court. Cincinnati cops are forbidden to argue with citizens. Says Schrotel: “I don’t care if a cop wins the argument. He’s lost our battle.”

The Decision Maker. In ten years, Schrotel has all but eliminated the cigar-chewing, profane, dumb flatfoot who once weighed down Cincinnati’s police force, as he still does the forces of many other cities. But Schrotel continues to campaign for better men. After an interview with an applicant, he will worriedly ask the other officers in the room: “Does he look like a junior executive?” New recruits must take a four-year course that includes classes in sociology and constitutional law as well as in police administration. Any man who wants to go to college can get his work schedule conveniently arranged. Schrotel has started a “police cadet” program with age limits of 17 to 21, insists each cadet attend college on the side.

“We want more than a high school kid with a stick,” says Chief Schrotel. “The man must be trained not only in first aid and the handling of a gun, but he must be transformed into a responsible decision maker. The responsibility is frightening.” In Cincinnati, Chief Stanley Schrotel is doing pretty well by that responsibility.