Richard Gil Kerlikowske (born November 23, 1949) is a former Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He assumed office on March 6, 2014 and retired January 20, 2017. He also served as the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy between 2009 and 2014.
Kerlikowske graduated from the University of South Florida in Tampa and the Executive Institute at the Federal Bureau of Investigation Academy. He has served as Chief of Police in four cities and worked in the United States Justice Department. His longest term as a Chief of Police was between July 2001 and March 2009 in Seattle, Washington. He faced scrutiny in Seattle for the department's tactics during civil unrest. In 2017, he was an IOP Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is currently a distinguished visiting fellow and professor of the Practice in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University.
Early life and education
Kerlikowske was raised in Florida by his mother and stepfather.
Kerlikowske graduated from Fort Myers High School in 1968. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in criminal justice from the University of South Florida in Tampa. The school also gave him an honorary doctorate. He is a graduate of the National Executive Institute at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
Career
Kerlikowske was drafted into the United States Army served from 1970 to 1972 in the military police, and was stationed in Washington, D.C. Part of his responsibility was saluting then-President Richard Nixon as he boarded the presidential helicopter and he was awarded the Presidential Service Badge. He began his law enforcement career in 1972 as a police officer for the St. Petersburg Police in Florida. He served as Chief of Police in Fort Pierce, Florida and Port St. Lucie, Florida. He later served as police commissioner for Buffalo, New York for about a year and a half.
He served as a member of the United States Justice Department, where he oversaw community policing grants. His work in Washington D.C. earned praise from then-Attorney General Janet Reno and then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.
Seattle Police Department
Kerlikowske joined the Seattle Police Department in 2000. Mayor Paul Schell chose him as Seattle's new police chief in July 2001.
Kerlikowske oversaw the demonstrations marking the second anniversary of the controversial WTO conference in Seattle which had caused his predecessor, Norm Stamper, to resign. Although the event was peaceful throughout the day, 140 were arrested after police issued orders to disperse in the evening. Some of those arrested were prominent labor leaders attempting to move the event to the Labor Temple and others who were caught in the arrest zone while leaving work. Some charges were later dismissed. The police department was later criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union for the handling of protests against the Iraq War and previous demonstrations in a 2003 letter to the mayor and Kerlikowske.
Kerlikowske faced criticism over the department's slow response to the 2001 Seattle Mardi Gras Riots that left one man dead and 70 people with injuries. During the incident, he ordered the police at the scene not to intervene, instead maintaining a perimeter around the violence. The City of Seattle acknowledged police strategy presented a public safety threat, and settled with the murder victim's family for just under $2 million. The next month, The Seattle Police Officers' Guild voted no confidence in the chief, citing both the Mardi Gras riot and his public reprimand of an officer for being rude to a group of alleged jaywalkers.
In 2003, a ballot measure passed in Seattle that directs the police department to consider marijuana possession (for adult personal use) the City's lowest law enforcement priority. Kerlikowske opposed the ballot initiative, but said such arrests were already a low priority.
2003 was the first time in 15 years that Seattle did not have any shooting deaths involving officers. Kerlikowske said Tasers and other less-lethal tools were partly responsible. In September 2004, the local NAACP president asked to be Tased to better understand the complaints his organization had received. Kerlikowske joined him in a public demonstration in which they were both shocked at the same time.
In 2005, Kerlikowske faced embarrassment after having his duty handgun stolen from his locked car, which was parked on a public street.