Salinas PD welcomes the return of a former chief to help align leadership.

The city of Salinas has brought back the most popular police chief it’s ever had as an assistant to the new chief, Adele Fresé, who is still trying to find her footing with an understaffed department while navigating relationships with her command staff that some insiders have compared to the Red Wedding on Game of Thrones – with all the tension and hard feelings (but lacking the nasty bloodshed).

Forty-three-year law enforcement veteran Dan Ortega, who was Salinas’ chief from 1999 – 2009, and prior to that, an officer, commander and deputy chief in San Jose for 38 years, was sworn in Aug. 8 as interim assistant chief in a ceremony at City Hall.

A standing-room-only crowd gathered to watch, and Pastor Mark Simmons from Salinas Valley Community Church kicked it off: “Father, I pray… that you teach him to be humble and to be that number-two person.” When Ortega stepped to the podium, he teared up.

Ortega will make $92.23 an hour, with a tentative start date of July 31 – which is five days before the city even announced the hire.

Clearly Ortega’s not doing it for the money. His accumulated pensions, between Salinas and San Jose, are just a hair over $230,000 a year. And the California Public Employee Retirement System, or CalPERS, caps the number of hours he can work at 960 a year, so he’s also not in it for the long haul – thus the interim status.

So why is he in it at all? Maybe to calm everyone down as Fresé, an outsider who’s been on the job for about seven months and is the first woman chief of one of the most entrenched good-old-boy operations in town, looks for a full-time assistant chief who will truly be her number two: found by her, hired by her and, as an at-will employee (the first time for that as well), ultimately fireable by her too.

The department hasn’t had an assistant chief since 1993.

“Dan was really good at hiring people. Whether he’s coming in as a peace builder or a mentor or to get a feel for the organization to help her make the selection, he has a solid relationship with Adele,” says Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter, a retired SPD detective who was still on the job when Ortega became chief. “He’s a keen observer of talent and it’s always good to have a couple of people looking at candidates.”

The “solid relationship” goes back to Greenfield, where Ortega was interim chief and on the panel that interviewed Fresé for the chief position there in 2014.

The “peace builder” concept, though, is more complicated, and it goes beyond Fresé being the first woman to hold the chief’s job. During the last round of contract negotiations, it was agreed the assistant chief gig would be an at-will job. In my opinion, that agreement effectively hamstrings promotion possibilities for deputy chiefs, commanders and others rising through the ranks (and thus is part of the contentious relationship sources say Fresé is currently enjoying with her management team).

But that view, says retired Chief Kelly McMillin, is short-sighted. “Every one of those commanders is free to apply for it. If they say it’s taking away upward mobility, it’s not,” he says. “You’re rolling your dice a little bit and it’s at will, but you have every bit as much upward mobility as before.”

As Ortega’s remarks came to a close, he looked directly at the command staff – six of the eight of whom are set to retire within 17 months – and said, “I don’t know about you all, but I’m going to work hard for this chief – and I’m going to have fun doing it.”

There’s a joke that roughly goes, “How do you know a cop is breathing? They’re complaining.” There’s been plenty of complaining about how Fresé has handled dealing with her new team, from memos that order an immediate cleanup of drug trafficking in Chinatown to hiring an assistant chief.

Fresé’s been on something of a honeymoon in terms of media coverage since joining SPD. The murder rate’s about the same as it’s been for a few years, but the department has made good arrests in lingering cases. (See story, p. 14.)

Maybe Ortega’s presence will help quell the inner-department storms and help Fresé become a cops’ chief as well. At the least, she should be given the opportunity to try.

MARY DUAN writes The Local Spin for the Weekly. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com