In his more than 30-year career, Denver's incoming police chief has won respect and praise for building bridges with communities but has also found controversy at every stop along the way.
As far back as the late 1980s, Robert C. White, who once described himself to a reporter as "snow-white pure," has been occasionally involved in questionable incidents or on the fringe of scandals.
The first was in Washington, D.C., when White was nominated for a promotion from lieutenant to captain on the district's police force.
A drug test was required. He submitted a urine sample to the Police and Fire Department Clinic. The test came back positive for marijuana.
Standard operating procedure called for the test to be sent to a lab in North Carolina for confirmation.
"Instead, White was notified of the positive result and brought back to the clinic to submit a second sample," said a document filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.
The next day, a member of the Metropolitan Police Department hand-carried both samples to a lab in North Carolina, a departure from normal procedures. Both tested negative for drugs.
White said he thinks the first sample produced a "false positive" result and that, from there, the D.C. department mishandled his case. It came to light when two employees wrote a letter suggesting White's tests were badly handled.
He later sued the Fraternal Order of Police, claiming the union defamed him by releasing the information. He also sued The Washington Post and a local NBC television affiliate for reporting on it, though they were dismissed from the case. White eventually collected $50,000 from the FOP.
"I never in my life smoked marijuana," White, who has been Louisville, Ky., police chief since 2003, told reporters after his introduction to members of the City Council on Monday.
Former colleagues say he was vindicated.
"R.C. White is a fabulous police official, and I have great respect for him. A better man couldn't have been selected by (Denver)," said Terrence Ryan, general counsel for the D.C department who participated in that investigation.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, who picked White from 61 applicants, said he learned about the incident in the course of vetting White. The Police Executive Research Forum conducted the national search that led to his hiring from the Louisville police department.
Hancock said that PERF "had that. They shared with us what happened. I was satisfied with the resolution."
In 2002, while chief in Greensboro, N.C., White faced scrutiny when his son was stopped after an off-duty officer noticed him driving erratically.
The 21-year-old called his father on a cellphone. The officer didn't give the younger White a Breathalyzer test.
White told his son to put the sergeant on the line. He said he told the sergeant "to treat him like anybody else. Give him a Breathalyzer."
At the same time, White got in his car and drove to the stop where he says he again insisted that his son be administered a breath test. Equipment wasn't available, so White drove away with his son.
"It was obvious to the sergeant that he wasn't under the influence," White said of the incident.
Hancock said he talked with White about that as well and found the chief to be forthcoming.
"He acknowledges that his son has found himself in trouble a couple of times. . . . He is an adult," Hancock said.
Hancock said there wasn't a single candidate who had not weathered questions about something in their past.
"If you work long enough in this profession, there is always something," he said. "Once you have questions about a candidate, the next step is what is the validity of the charge and how was it resolved and how did they handle themselves in the process. We learned very early on that you had to take everything you found and dig deeper."
In Louisville, while White has been praised for his willingness to discipline officers, he has also faced questions about why he failed to take action against some officers with extensive disciplinary histories.
One in particular, Charles Randall Moore, had been suspended from the force seven times, was reprimanded on eight other occasions and was the subject of four criminal investigations, but he was never fired, according to The Courier-Journal in Louisville.
White had said he would take action if Moore had additional transgressions, but as they occurred, no action was taken. He eventually said he was restrained by union rules and blamed the paper for singling out Moore.
"I agree the guy has a long history of being a problem, but I think I took the right actions," White said Monday. "The media didn't agree and made an issue out of it. How about the other 754 I did discipline?"
White's Controversies:
- 1985: He was cleared of a "false positive" marijuana test outside of normal procedure in Washington, D.C., and later won a defamation judgment against the police union.
- 2002: His 21-year-old son was stopped for erratic driving but was not given a Breathalyzer test. White says no equipment was available and that the officer said there wasn't a reason to administer a test.
- 2008: He says union rules prevented him from disciplining an officer with "a long history of being a problem."