Alumni Life REMEMBERING CHARLES MOOSE The man who set out to change Portland policing CHARLES MOOSE sat at the front of the class dressed, as usual, in a sharp suit. In 1982, Moose was taking a public sector management class at Portland State, as he considered pursuing a master’s degree. His eyebrows rose, however, when a classmate strolled in late with a cheeseburger in hand, having already missed a week of classes. Sandy Cook took a seat in the back of the room. “It piqued his curiosity, like, ‘Who’s this chick?’” she recalls with a laugh. During a break, Moose approached her, beginning a friendship that later blossomed into a marriage. It wouldn’t be the first time PSU played an important role in shaping the life of the former Portland police chief, who died Nov. 25 at his home in Florida while watching a Thanksgiving football game. He was 68. Nationally, Moose is best known for leading the investigation into the 2002 “D.C. Sniper” attacks as chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland Police Department. But before that, he earned his master’s in public health (1984) and Ph.D. in criminology (1993) at PSU while working for the Portland Police Bureau.The same year he earned his doctorate, Moose became Portland’s first Black police chief and its youngest. Annette Jolin, criminology faculty emerita, first met Moose in the early 1980s. She describes him as “a forward-looking, humble, considerate and yet purposeful advocate of a new form of policing.” During his six years as chief, Moose promoted the concept of community policing, which, as he noted in his dissertation, emphasizes police officers’ relationships with community members as key to their success as law enforcers. At the time, the idea was as novel as the hiring of a Black police chief with a Ph.D. ORIGINALLY FROM North Carolina, Moose moved to Portland in 1975 to join the almost completely white Portland Police Bureau after earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Moose’s father had received a master’s degree from Columbia University and intended to earn a doctorate as well, but didn’t finish his dissertation. Sandy Moose MPA ’83 says her husband, for his part, was “determined to dot that ‘I’ and cross that ‘T.’” Charles Moose’s studies allowed him to refine his theories about policing, says Doug Kenck-Crispin MA ’16, a local historian who wrote his master’s thesis about Moose. “I think what PSU was able to provide was almost a think tank of these theories that were being kicked around in the late ’80s and early ’90s about policing,” Kenck-Crispin says. “He actually got real-life, real-world experience with those academic programs.” Moose believed higher education could help officers be better police. As Portland Police chief, he implemented a policy requiring new recruits to hold a four-year degree. Highly unpopular with members of the Portland Police Association, the policy was quickly reversed after Moose left the bureau in 1999. But 22 years later, the issue remains topical, reemerging recently in legislation proposed in California. Today, only four states have bachelor’s degree requirements for police. “He was a big believer in the complexity of decision-making in policing and that it was easy to make mistakes,” Jolin says. While not the city’s first chief to adopt a community-policing approach, Moose implemented a number of groundbreaking, professionally risky policies, underscoring a common theme in his tenure as police chief. STEVE LA , COURTESY WILLAMETTE WEEK 34 // PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE
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