By Eileen Buckley
Buffalo, NY – Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has tapped a 35-year local law enforcement veteran to become the city's top cop. H. McCarthy Gipson has been appointed as the first African-American Buffalo police commissioner.
Gipson is a former police captain in the department. He retired from the force in 1998 and then moved on to Erie County law enforcement. Gipson most recently served as the superintendent of the County Holding Center.
Gipson said school violence and community policing are at the top of his agenda.
"Community policing is about being creative and doing the job of a police officer," Gipson said. "Our society, as it is is much more mobile, can't expect a police officer to be any less mobile then the criminals they are trying to catch up with, so you can't always chase them them down. So we are going to have to be more agile, mobile and slightly hostile in trying to get the job of policing down in the City of Buffalo."
But Gipson would return to a different city police department, with one-officer patrol cars and a downsized force due to the fiscal crisis. Still, Gipson says he hopes to revisit manpower issues in the future. He will also head a department where morale remains low due to a battle over the police union contract with the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority and a wage freeze. But he plans to reach out to the police union. He calls the PBA the "heart and soul" of the department.
PBA president Robert Meegan says Gipson is an excellent choice.
"I think that because of his background and his police ability," Meegan said. "He has always worked in the tougher neighborhoods. He has a reputation of being a rough and tumble cop, but also a fair individual and that is what is needed in the City of Buffalo."
Meegan was very pleased to learn Gipson is interested in manpower levels.
"Obviously, those numbers that were negotiated into the contract were tentative. There was no way of knowing, at that point, if they could actually go down to those manpower levels and still provide adequate service to the citizens," Meegan said. "Obviously, as the past couple of years have indicated, even at the numbers we are at now, you have a lag in response time of 200 minutes for some calls. That is unheard of."
Gipson's appointment still needs final Common Council approval. But so far, all of Brown's appointments have sailed through without controversy.