CHARLES MOOSE sat at the front of the class dressed, as usual, in a sharp suit. In 1982, Moose was taking a public sector management class at Portland State, as he considered pursuing a master’s degree.
His eyebrows rose, however, when a classmate strolled in late with a cheeseburger in hand, having already missed a week of classes. Sandy Cook took a seat in the back of the room. “It piqued his curiosity, like, ‘Who’s this chick?’” she recalls with a laugh. During a break, Moose approached her, beginning a friendship that later blossomed into a marriage.
It wouldn’t be the first time PSU played an important role in shaping the life of the former Portland police chief, who died Nov. 25 at his home in Florida while watching a Thanksgiving football game. He was 68.
Nationally, Moose is best known for leading the investigation into the 2002 “D.C. Sniper” attacks as chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland Police Department. But before that, he earned his master’s in public health (1984) and Ph.D. in criminology (1993) at PSU while working for the Portland Police Bureau. The same year he earned his doctorate, Moose became Portland’s first Black police chief and its youngest.
Annette Jolin, criminology faculty emerita, first met Moose in the early 1980s. She describes him as “a forward-looking, humble, considerate and yet purposeful advocate of a new form of policing.” During his six years as chief, Moose promoted the concept of community policing, which, as he noted in his dissertation, emphasizes police officers’ relationships with community members as key to their success as law enforcers.
At the time, the idea was as novel as the hiring of a Black police chief with a Ph.D.
Charles Moose hands out job and education information at an Iris Court open house in the early 1990s. Moose wrote his doctoral dissertation about the North Portland public housing complex, dedicating it to “the tenants who taught me to see them as people who deserve a safe place to live.” (Photo: The Skanner)ORIGINALLY FROM North Carolina, Moose moved to Portland in 1975 to join the almost completely white Portland Police Bureau after earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Moose’s father had received a master’s degree from Columbia University and intended to earn a doctorate as well, but didn’t finish his dissertation. Sandy Moose MPA ’83 says her husband, for his part, was “determined to dot that ‘I’ and cross that ‘T.’”
Charles Moose’s studies allowed him to refine his theories about policing, says Doug Kenck-Crispin MA ’16, a local historian who wrote his master’s thesis about Moose.
“I think what PSU was able to provide was almost a think tank of these theories that were being kicked around in the late ’80s and early ’90s about policing,” Kenck-Crispin says. “He actually got real-life, real-world experience with those academic programs.”
He was a big believer in the complexity of decision-making in policing and that it was easy to make mistakes.
Moose believed higher education could help officers be better police. As Portland Police chief, he implemented a policy requiring new recruits to hold a four-year degree. Highly unpopular with members of the Portland Police Association, the policy was quickly reversed after Moose left the bureau in 1999. But 22 years later, the issue remains topical, reemerging recently in legislation proposed in California. Today, only four states have bachelor’s degree requirements for police.
“He was a big believer in the complexity of decision-making in policing and that it was easy to make mistakes,” Jolin says.
While not the city’s first chief to adopt a community-policing approach, Moose implemented a number of groundbreaking, professionally risky policies, underscoring a common theme in his tenure as police chief.
“A lot of his initiatives were implemented,” Kenck-Crispin says. “They just didn’t last.”
WHILE MOOSE was Portland’s top cop, he and Jolin published a paper evaluating the bureau’s response to domestic violence-related calls. It noted a key issue. Despite general enthusiasm for community policing, the community “neither fully understood nor fully accepted” the process of problem-solving and evaluation the approach required.
Plus, buy-in from law enforcement officials and other powerful people in the city was tenuous. “Giving up policing power was something most people in positions of power were unwilling or unable to do,” Jolin says. “Trust me, that was a very unusual step.”
Still, Moose was committed to getting community input. He held monthly meetings with community stakeholders, featuring wide-ranging and free-flowing conversations.
“He wasn’t doing lip service, that’s for sure, and he was very approachable,” Chiquita Rollins says. During her 16 years as Multnomah County’s domestic violence coordinator, Moose was the only chief to attend the county’s Family Violence Coordinating Council meetings. “He really took seriously that if the community said ‘No,’ he would do it another way. I don’t think that ever happened again to that extent.”
When the Mooses purchased a home in a high-crime area of Portland in 1993, The New York Times called Charles a “24-hour role model.” The next year, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and Mayor Vera Katz toured his neighborhood. (Photo: The Skanner)THE MOOSES made national headlines shortly after Charles was sworn in as chief in 1993 when they bought a house in Northeast Portland’s King neighborhood. Part of the historically Black Albina District, at the time it had one of the city’s highest crime rates. The move represented Moose’s personal commitment to the concept of community policing. If connections were key to effective policing, he for one, would live where he worked.
There were a lot of people that were saying he’s walking his talk. But I think that there were a lot of people who felt that this was a publicity stunt.
“At the local level, I think it was viewed as revolutionary. That’s good and that’s bad,” Kenck-Crispin says. “There were a lot of people that were saying he’s walking his talk. But I think that there were a lot of people who felt that this was a publicity stunt.”
Moose established a loan-financing incentive to encourage other officers to live in high crime neighborhoods across Portland, though few took advantage of it.
Rather, the move may have helped ease white Portland citizens’ concerns about moving into the neighborhood, Kenck-Crispin says, adding to the growing gentrification of the area.
Looking back, Sandy Moose recalls an interaction with a young boy overcome with excitement about the multitude of birds that visited her feeders. But there were bad memories, too, like when her husband arrived home just in time to arrest a man burglarizing a construction trailer outside their home who came close to assaulting her and the neighbors.
As for the societal meaning of their presence there, Sandy Moose says that the move was made with good intentions.
“The gentrification part is offensive and unfortunate,” she says. “At the time, [his approach] was a viable solution, and it was the only solution to get things stopped.”
ONE OF THE officers patrolling Portland in the 1990s was Portland State’s current chief of Campus Public Safety, Willie Halliburton, then an early career officer.
“I was disrespected, called every name in the book,” Halliburton says. “I was looked upon as a sellout, a traitor.”
He approached Moose, his lieutenant at the time, with a request to transfer to another precinct. Moose laughed.
‘It’s about earning people’s trust. Once they know you, you’ll get the respect you need.’
“He said, ‘Willie, I came from North Carolina to Portland. I got the same treatment,’” Halliburton says. “‘It’s about earning people’s trust. Once they know you, you’ll get the respect you need.’”
Within six months, Halliburton could see that trust building, he says. “That saved my career in Portland.”
Moose made a priority of touching base with the small group of African American officers, says Campus Public Safety Lt. Kevin Modica, who also was an officer with the bureau. “It’s nice to have somebody looking out,” he says.
Modica lauded Moose’s efforts to introduce new elements of policing, including asking officers to review and incorporate data into their patrols.
“People didn’t necessarily agree with all of his policies, but they respected him,” Halliburton says. “He was a man of his word, a man of integrity.”
COLLEAGUES and family have described Moose as firm, fair and direct, with a dry sense of humor. He loved the Baltimore Ravens, New York Yankees and motorcycles.
Moose was also known to have a temper, with several disciplinary measures taken against him during his time with the bureau for volatile interactions with city employees and store clerks. Moose later commented that he was ashamed of his behavior while adding that he believed the incidents and the disciplinary actions that followed were racially motivated.
His career also included controversial decisions, such as the introduction of AR-15 rifles to the bureau.
Amid backlash over his outbursts, Moose left Portland in 1999 to head the Montgomery County Police Department. Officers there had recently shot two unarmed Black men, and the Maryland department was seeking someone who could ease racial relations.
Kenck-Crispin questions whether Portland was ready for Moose. “He had successfully expanded community policing, but Portlanders were never able to get past his outbursts and his race, and thus lost an opportunity,” he wrote in his thesis. “Obviously, the Montgomery County Hiring Committee was aware of Portland’s public perception of the candidate Moose. But here he was being hired for attributes and ideas that drew so much fire in Portland, Oregon.”
After a month of terror came to an end with the capture of the "D.C. Sniper," a message of thanks hung on an overpass in Silver Spring, Maryland. As Montgomery County police chief, Moose gained national attention in 2002 as the leader of a massive investigation to apprehend the shooters. (Photo: Tom Mihalek via Getty Images)MOOSE’S LATER work leading the high-profile “D.C. Sniper” investigation into the random gunning down of 10 people and critical injury of another three encapsulated his national legacy, even though he spent most of his career, 24 years, in Portland.
Halliburton says Moose informed his own approach to community policing. When he got the PSU job in 2020—less than a month after George Floyd’s murder triggered nationwide protests against police brutality— Halliburton immediately called Moose, tears streaming down his face.
“He said, ‘Congratulations, you deserve this and it’s your time,’” Halliburton says. “Th at was important for me to hear.”
Moose’s impact on Portland endures, if not through the policies he championed, then in the careers of the officers he mentored and in the path-breaking example he set as the first Black person to reach high ranks in the bureau.
“I’m not saying that everything was perfect,” Modica says. But, he notes, “If he were engaged today, he would be all over police reform.”
Moose did, in fact, keep an eye on Portland long after he left. After retiring to Florida, he reapplied for the Portland police chief job in 2017, but the bureau tapped Danielle Outlaw instead.
As he said in a tearful speech when he resigned as chief: “I hope that behind my name for the rest of my life, it will say, ‘comma, former Portland police officer.’ If it says that, then I’ll know that they know who I am.”