HARRISBURG — Col. Marcus Brown, Gov. Tom Wolf’s choice to lead the state police, has served as a patrol officer, a SWAT commander and the second-in-command of the Baltimore police.
He has led the Maryland Transportation Authority and the Maryland State Police.
But since his swearing-in on the day of Mr. Wolf’s inauguration, a group of retired troopers has taken exception to his decision to don the gray uniform of the Pennsylvania State Police.
They post on a Facebook page created to protest his wearing of the uniform, and encourage others to contact state senators, who must confirm Col. Brown, 50, as state police commissioner. In interviews, retired troopers said their questions are not limited to the uniform but extend to other issues, such as an association with then-Gov. Martin O’Malley’s push for gun-control measures. (Col. Brown has said he supports the Second Amendment and that there are no firearm proposals on the Pennsylvania agenda.)
“There’s a lot of people both inside the department and outside the department who deeply resent Marcus Brown being appointed for a variety of reasons,” retired trooper Charles Cusanno said.
The uniform is the visible reminder of Col. Brown’s arrival. Several former troopers said in interviews that they took issue with the fact that someone who did not graduate from the state police academy in Hershey — even someone with decades of police experience elsewhere — is wearing their uniform and carrying a gun. They note that the previous police commissioner — Frank Noonan, a former FBI and attorney general’s office investigator — chose to wear a suit.
“It doesn’t have to be some big show,” said Tom Stuckey, a retired trooper who lives in the Harrisburg area. “Just show up Monday morning in a suit and tie. Nobody’s going to expect him to sit there and kowtow to someone. He’s been selected by the governor.”
Col. Brown, who grew up in Cumberland County and earned a business degree from Penn State University, says he believes the commissioner of a uniformed agency should look the part.
“The Pennsylvania State Police has a very strong history and tradition, and the uniform plays an important role in that,” Col. Brown said. “I wear the uniform to honor the troopers that are out fighting crime every single day.
“They wear the uniform, so I think it’s important that the head of their organization wears that uniform. And I’m going to work every day to live up to the reputation and the traditions of the Pennsylvania State Police.”
He noted that he is not the first agency outsider to dress in uniform after being named commissioner. Maria Finn, a state police spokeswoman, pointed to Col. Percy W. Foote in the late 1930s, Col. E. Wilson Purdy in the mid-1960s and Col. Jay Cochran Jr. in the mid-1980s.
Some of the retired troopers objecting to Col. Brown suggest that state law does not allow him to present himself as and carry a firearm as a trooper. Before Mr. Wolf’s inauguration, the chief counsel for the state police wrote a legal opinion stating that once Col. Brown was sworn in as acting commissioner, he became a member of the state police, Ms. Finn said.
Col. Brown said he also spent a day earlier this month doing the book and range work to qualify to carry his firearm, and on another day completed the use-of-force training required of state troopers. On Friday, he attended the graduation of 106 troopers from the academy who had started their training last year.
“It’s great for the state police to continue to get academy classes out there,” he said. “There is some concern in the agency about the number of vacancies we had, so getting a class the size of 106 new cadets will really mean a great deal to the stations all around the state.”
Col. Brown’s interest in increasing the number of troopers helped ease criticism from Rep. Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery, a former municipal police officer. Mr. Vereb’s attention had been drawn to Col. Brown when he learned of a September round-table discussion by Maryland police executives about the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., following the shooting of an unarmed black teenager.
According to a report on the discussion by the Advanced Leadership Consortium, a Maryland-based law enforcement consulting group, the police executives were discussing the militarization of police.
Several of them had questioned the use of military equipment in Ferguson before Col. Brown, then head of the Maryland state police, commented: “There is a place for different pieces of equipment and how personnel should be deployed. The vast majority of civil disobedience in this country is sparked by law enforcement. If there are not restraints in these situations, the actions of law enforcement can further escalate the overall conditions.”
Mr. Vereb was taken aback by the “vast majority” claim, and printed a poster after the nomination with the sentence overlapping a photo of Col. Brown. The acting commissioner then visited Mr. Vereb in his Capitol office.
While Mr. Vereb said he was “a little shocked” that the colonel arrived in a patrol uniform, he said he was reassured when Col. Brown said the number of state troopers would be his priority.
“He told me the governor is committed to addressing the complement issue, and if that’s what he’s going to do, then I’m going to end up being the No. 1 supporter of this commissioner,” Mr. Vereb said.
Although Col. Brown lived for years in Maryland, he has experience with the drive north toward Harrisburg. He and his wife were established in their careers, his in Maryland and hers in Pennsylvania, when they married, he said, and they continued to live in different states.
This caught the attention of a television station in Baltimore, which in 2012 published a report tracking Col. Brown’s take-home car to Camp Hill, near Harrisburg, where his wife, who works in student financial aid for a private company, and his twin sons live.
Mr. O’Malley, the Maryland governor, told the station that Col. Brown’s legal residence was in Maryland. “As long as he keeps driving down violent crime and homicides, he can commute to Canada on weekends for all I care,” Mr. O’Malley said.
“Families do a lot of different things to make their families work,” Col. Brown told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “We lived in different states, and that’s how it worked for us.”
When Mr. Wolf announced his selection for state police commissioner, he emphasized Col. Brown’s lengthy experience in law enforcement and noted that Col. Brown had worked to increase diversity in the Maryland force by recruiting in areas with high minority populations and at historically black colleges.
“There’s always going to be an issue of credibility in the community, and ensuring that we’re very representative of the communities that we serve increases the trust level and increases the credibility of the organization,” Col. Brown said.
Under his leadership in Maryland, Col. Brown said, the classes that went through the state police academy had higher rates of minority cadets than the previous classes.
Troopers were pleased with the job Col. Brown did in Maryland, said M. Kirk Daugherty, president of the Maryland Troopers Association.
“In Maryland, the majority of our troopers, our members, were very happy with him,” Mr. Daugherty said.
“I heard very few complaints. We felt like he represented us well.”
The Pennsylvania State Troopers Association has remained silent on Col. Brown’s nomination since an initial statement welcoming him. A spokesman declined to make a representative of the group available to talk with a reporter.
The Senate has not yet scheduled confirmation hearings on Mr. Wolf’s Cabinet posts. Jennifer Kocher, spokeswoman for Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, said the Senate “is committed to thoroughly reviewing all of the governor’s Cabinet nominees based upon their qualifications.”
First Published: February 23, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
