Chris Magnus

Chris Magnus (born 10-26-1960) is the police chief of Tucson, Arizona, United States. He was previously chief of police in Fargo, North Dakota, and in Richmond, California, where a photograph of him holding a Black Lives Matter sign was widely circulated. He is an advocate of community policing.

Magnus was born in Lansing, Michigan, where his father was a faculty member at Michigan State University and his mother a piano teacher. He is a graduate of the police academy at Lansing Community College and has a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and a master's degree in labor relations from Michigan State.

Lansing, Michigan

Magnus began his police career as a dispatcher in the Lansing Police Department, and was also a paramedic. After graduation from the police academy, he became a deputy sheriff in the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department and in 1989 a police officer in the Lansing department, where he was promoted to captain.

Fargo, North Dakota

From 1999 to 2006 Magnus headed the police department in Fargo, North Dakota. While there he helped create the first regional dispatch center covering parts of two states, a refugee liaison program, and a forensic interview center for children, and cooperated widely with other organizations and agencies.

Richmond, California

Magnus became chief of the Richmond, California, Police Department in 2006. He emphasized community policing, which the search committee had wanted, hired more women and underrepresented minorities and changed procedures and incentives to have police officers build relationships with neighborhood residents, including listing beat officers' schedules and cellphone numbers, created an Office of Professional Accountability outside the department to oversee its internal affairs, made greater use of social media to communicate with the public, and introduced a gunshot location system. There were 38 homicides in the city in his first year, 47 in 2007, when by crimes per resident it was the ninth most dangerous city in the country, and also in 2009, but only 11 in 2014, the lowest number since 1971. The reduction in crime and improvement in relations between the police department and the community in Richmond during Magnus' time there, including a substantial reduction in instances of police firing their guns, led the Department of Justice to have him investigate the problems in policing in both Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore. (The homicide rate rose again in Magnus' last year in Richmond, and his arrival coincided with initial planning for the Office of Neighborhood Safety, a controversial city-funded program run by DeVone Boggan that seeks to reduce homicides by providing grants to those identified as being most likely to shoot someone or to be shot in the next year.)

In late 2006, Magnus, who is white, was sued for racial discrimination by seven high-ranking black members of the department. A three-month trial in 2012 ended with the jury rejecting all claims. In April 2015 an Asian American former police officer sued the city of Richmond for wrongful dismissal, partly on grounds of claimed racial prejudice by Magnus and initially also claiming that Marcus, who is gay, had sexually harassed him. A judge issued a summary judgement in the city's favor on some of the remaining claims in summer 2016, and the rest were dismissed by agreement in February 2017.

In December 2014, Magnus was photographed holding a Black Lives Matter sign at a protest. He described the photograph, which was widely circulated and was disapproved of by many in the department, as happening spontaneously after a participant asked to take a selfie with him when he and his command staff were at the protest talking to people, and had sent out for pizza to feed the crowd.

Tucson, Arizona

Magnus became chief of the Tucson Police Department in January 2016, succeeding Roberto Villaseñor, who was retiring. He has since been quoted in opposition to Arizona's tough 2010 laws against illegal immigration as complicating policing in the state. In December 2017 he published a New York Times op-ed arguing that President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions's policy of firm opposition to local sanctuary city policies would be damaging to policing; in March his department had declined to assist Border Patrol agents pursuing an escaped detainee.

In 2014 Magnus married his partner of many years, Terrance Cheung, then chief of staff to Tom Butt, the mayor of Richmond; this is thought to be the first time an openly gay police chief in the United States has married.