Los Angeles Police Department Cmdr. Andrew Smith, who heads the media relations section and is often the public face of the department at crime scenes and other public events, will take over as police chief in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he said Tuesday.
Green Bay’s Police and Fire Commission Tuesday instructed the city to make an employment offer to Smith, who has been with the LAPD for 27 years, contingent on his satisfying “certain pre-employment requirements.”
Green Bay is perhaps best known throughout America as home to the NFL’s Green Bay Packers. The city’s freezing winter weather and below-zero temperatures are often featured on nationally televised Packers football games in its always-sold out stadium.
“I am excited to bring Chief Smith in to lead the talented men and women of the Green Bay Police Department,” Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt said.
Smith told City News Service he doesn’t yet know when his service at LAPD will come to an end, but he expects to assume his new position some time in January.
Smith is a native of Wisconsin, although he grew up about 100 miles north of Green Bay in Iron Mountain, Michigan, and attended UC San Diego. After earning his bachelor’s degree, he earned a master’s degree in public administration from USC in 1997.
Before working in the LAPD’s media relations section, he served as commanding officer of the criminal gang homicide group and as an assistant commander in the department’s Central, South and West bureaus.
Smith and his wife, a native of Montana, have two small children.
“I’m looking forward to raising them in Green Bay,” he said of his kids. “I hope the transition … is going to be relatively easy,” he said.
Smith said he’s a Green Bay Packers fan, joking that it was practically a job requirement.
“I wouldn’t ever be able to set foot off the airplane if I wasn’t a Packers fan,” he said.
He must get through formalities, such as a medical exam, before taking the new post, he said.
Asked about going from a major city to a relatively small one, Smith said he doesn’t expect a difficult transition because, as he’s found in travels across the country and the world, police work is largely universal.
“Cops are pretty much the same … (and) crime is the same to a certain extent, it’s just a matter of scale,” he said.
Coming from a small town and living in Redondo Beach will also serve help smooth the transition, Smith said.
He said he enjoyed every assignment, but cited working as captain in the Central Division among his best memories in the department, Smith said.
“As I look back over 27 years, the time in Central, working with the community down there, and doing what we can to help the folks on Skid Row is probably the thing I will look back on as one of the best times,” he said.
His advice to the next person to head up the media relations section is to get to know the reporters and editors who cover crime and the department “and always try to maintain an open line of communication.”
“There are always different sides to a story,” he said. “It’s important that the hard-working men and woman of the LAPD are represented.”
As for the department he is leaving behind, Smith said, “The LAPD machine will keep on moving forward.”
— Wire reports