MANKATO — One of four finalists to replace retiring Public Safety Director Jerry Huettl was forced to leave his previous police chief position in Terrell, Texas, more than a year ago.

Todd Miller said in an interview with The Free Press that it was his decision to leave due to his commitment to a law enforcement method known as “community policing.” There had been a change in Terrell city leadership in 2008 and the philosophy of having police officers focus on building community partnerships and solving problems proactively, rather than reactively, was no longer a priority, he said.

“There was an election and we had gotten a new City Council and mayor, and the city administrator and council who had hired me were gone,” Miller said. “They said they wanted to move in a different direction than community policing, which is what I was hired to do.”

An article that ran in the Terrell Tribune, the city’s newspaper, shortly before Miller’s resignation was more harsh. It said Miller was given the option of resigning or being terminated due to his inability to lead effectively.

Either way, Mankato City Manager Pat Hentges, who said he was aware of the circumstances of Miller leaving Terrell, said he is confident Miller belongs in the pool of top candidates to lead Mankato’s police officers and firefighters. All of the candidates bring different strengths and weaknesses to the job, he said.

“We were impressed with him from the standpoint of his maturity,” Hentges said. “We’re also impressed with his leadership. He’s been in some very difficult circumstances.”

Miller has faced challenging situations. And he has caught nationwide attention more than once during his long law enforcement career, which includes 32 years as a police chief.

A story published in the New York Times in 1988, which is when Miller was serving as the police chief in Willmar, made reference to his decision to participate in a regional program that taught Spanish to his police officers.

The growing Hispanic population there was making it difficult for his officers to take complaints, interview witnesses and make arrests. When asked if, before the program, he had any bilingual officers, Miller said: “I think I’ve got a couple guys who know Norwegian,” the newspaper reported.

‘Dateline” disaster

More recently, Miller’s Terrell Police Department was included in an Esquire magazine story that had a far more serious tone. That story, published in September 2007, focused on a prosecutor who had shot himself in his Terrell home less than a year earlier.

The circumstances that led to the suicide resulted in a $105 million lawsuit against NBC, which was settled. They also resulted in criticism against Miller’s department, including from another prosecutor, Ed Walton, who called Terrell’s police officers an “incompetent bunch of buffoons,” according to the Esquire story.

What happened was NBC’s “Dateline” show “To Catch a Predator” had set up one of its stings in Murphy, Texas. Murphy and Terrell are both small suburbs on opposite sides of Dallas.

The show used Internet chat rooms set up by an organization called Perverted Justice to lure potential child molesters to a house in Murphy. Adults pretended to be a 13-year-old boy to start conversations, then a hired actor would call the suspects and invite them to the house.

One of the suspects caught in the trap set with the help of an organization was Bill Conradt, the prosecutor who lived in Terrell. Murphy’s police chief at the time, Bill Myrick, requested assistance from Miller’s department after Conradt didn’t respond to several invitations to visit the sting house.

The plan was to wait for Conradt to leave his house, have a “Dateline” reporter confront him, then have Murphy and Terrell officers arrest him after an interview. Conradt didn’t leave his house, though, and the Terrell SWAT team was called to go in and get him. He committed suicide seconds after officers found him in a room in the house.

Control questions

Conradt’s family, as well as leaders from both cities, questioned whether the police departments were in charge of what was going on or if the people from Perverted Justice and “Dateline” were in charge of the day’s events. The 21 other people caught during the Murphy sting were never prosecuted because a district attorney in that county, who was a former judge, decided the police departments were not in charge of the investigation. He referred to the officers involved as props for the television show.

Television news programs from competing networks did their own investigations into the incident. Comedy shows on several national networks created spoofs, including an especially gruesome “Dateline” bit on Comedy Central’s cartoon “South Park.”

Walton, who was the top prosecutor in the county where Terrell was located, questioned whether Miller cooperated and allowed the SWAT team to go in to make up for another controversial situation. In the Esquire story, Walton made reference to a Pizza Hut robbery where two people were murdered. The suspects who had been arrested were later released. Walton and Miller disagreed over what led to the charges being dismissed.

Two years after the robbery and murders, in September 2008, the Dallas Morning News published a story about the families of the victims. The story in the Terrell newspaper that said Miller would resign or be terminated was published on Oct. 28, 2008. Murphy’s Police Chief Myrick had been fired in May 2008, but Murphy city officials said the termination had nothing to do with the “Dateline” incident.

No surprises

Hentges said city staff were aware of the controversies in Terrell before suggesting Miller as a finalist to the citizen-run Joint Civil Services Committee, which helped narrow a list of 12 down to four.

Miller also has been a finalist for chief positions in at least four other cities, including Dothan, Ala.; Eugene, Ore.; Columbia, Mo.; and Dubuque, Iowa.

“We’re very comfortable with the circumstances based on that background work,” Hentges said. “Mr. Miller has had two chief of police jobs before going to Texas, and I know the circumstances of why he left Texas.

“Some parts of Texas are hard to work in. I think it seems to be racially charged.”

About 45 percent of Terrell’s 20,000 residents are white, about 35 percent are black and about 25 percent are Hispanic. About 80 percent of Terrell’s elected officials were minorities when Miller was hired, Miller said. There was a shift to about 40 percent minorities on the council before he resigned.

Miller said the “Dateline” controversy was a “very unfortunate situation” but added that he was only assisting the Murphy Police Department. He had no choice but to help because there was an arrest warrant.

“We told them, if you have cameras in, we don’t want to be involved,” Miller said. “But we couldn’t tell the cameras to get off the street.

“When you are presented with a felony arrest warrant, you help serve the warrant because it’s a valid warrant and you are commanded to take that person into custody.”

Miller also said the crime rate in Terrell dropped dramatically while he was working there. And a document used to track the employment of all Texas police officers will show he left Terrell to pursue other interests, Miller said, adding that he received a “substantial” severance package from the city.

While serving as police chief in White Bear Lake, Miller helped start what is now the Upper Midwest Community Policing Institute. He said he is committed to community policing.

“I believe that’s the only way to do policing, especially when financing is tight, to reduce crime,” he said. “There will never be enough police officers.

“The style of policing I brought into Terrell was the style they wanted when I was hired.”

Hentges said the city can’t legally do an in-depth background check on candidates until a job offer is made. Once an offer is made, he said, the city will do a far more extensive background check, including sending personnel to where the candidate works or worked to do inteviews.