Oakland police chief charming, but she has work to do

Oakland’s new police chief sure does talk differently.

Anne Kirkpatrick, the first woman to lead the department, talked about transforming a force plagued by scandals involving racist texts and a sexually exploited teenager, and a lack of stability at the top. But she spoke with a Southern accent that is as sweet and thick as Tennessee maple syrup.

At her introductory news conference, Kirkpatrick repeatedly said “y’all,” pronouncing it properly as yawl. Kirkpatrick is an outsider who’s definitely not from around these parts, but her charisma and aw-shucks folksiness was downright entertaining.

“I like her humor,” Maxine Jasper-Collins, an Oakland resident, told me afterward.

“I liked the energy,” added Cynthia Adams, who also lives in Oakland. “It’s something different.”

Both Jasper-Collins and Adams hail from Arkansas, so they understood where the plain-spoken Kirkpatrick was coming from. I spent two decades in South Carolina, so I appreciated Kirkpatrick’s self-deprecating approach.

“Y’all are probably thinking, ‘Where did that accent come from?’” she said.

The Memphis-born Kirkpatrick was raised in the Deep South, where children are taught to say “yes, ma’am” and “yes, sir” to their elders. Memphis, a city known for cradling rock, blues, soul and country musicians such as Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Otis Redding and Johnny Cash, is where Kirkpatrick began her exemplary policing career.

A former police chief in Spokane, Wash., Kirkpatrick recently led reform efforts in Chicago. I’m relieved the person who accepted the job wants to live in Oakland even if, like many residents, she can’t quite afford to buy a house.

“Y’all are expensive,” she said, drawing laughter.

There’s nothing funny about the problems Kirkpatrick is being asked to solve in a city where many residents simply don’t trust police officers. While Kirkpatrick has been in charge of smaller police departments, she’s never had the buck stop with her in a high-profile city like Oakland where the slightest misstep can lead to an explosive situation.

And it’s not clear what she accomplished as a bureau chief in Chicago, if anything. Should the fact that she was only there for six months raise questions about her commitment?

If she sticks around, I feel Kirkpatrick’s homey demeanor will positively improve community policing — but only if some of y’all can get over her drawl which can, to unfamiliar ears, sound like a pat-on-the-head scolding. That includes the rank and file.

More than anything else, Oakland needs a chief who talks with people — not at them.

“I absolutely want to reach out and get to know people, sit down with them, and have them ask me anything they want to ask,” Kirkpatrick responded when I questioned how she would connect with young people.

Regina Jackson, president of the East Oakland Youth Development Center, which focuses on building character and confidence in children and young adults, nodded when Kirkpatrick said she would have to earn respect.

“Because a title doesn’t give you carte blanche to how to be received,” Jackson said. “That’s what we teach kids all the time. It’s not what they say; watch their actions.”

Jackson believes Kirkpatrick’s outsider status is an asset, because she doesn’t hold allegiances inside a department that remains under federal court oversight stemming from a 2003 civil rights settlement over alleged beatings, evidence planting and falsified reports.

“She’s able to start from the ground up in terms of demonstrating her authenticity,” Jackson said.

Mya Whitaker, the program director for the Bay Area Urban Debate League, was one of three Oakland residents on the search committee. Even though the search has ended, she said the voices of black and brown residents still need to be included if the fragmented relationship between residents and local police is to be repaired.

Some could argue there isn’t anything to improve, because an appropriate relationship has never existed.

Still, building a rapport will require Kirkpatrick to do more than say things a different way.

“Our communities have a severe distrust of the police,” Whitaker said. “What will she bring? What is she about? You have good things, but how will you implement them?”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr