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When he became Lawrence's police chief, Ron Olin didn't plan to stay around that long.

"I can't imagine myself being in this position 10, 15, 20 years from now. ... I have seen my colleagues stay too long, and I'm not going to do that," he said at the time.

Nearly 16 years later, Olin is singing a different tune.

He remains in command at the Police Department -- presiding over a force that has roughly doubled in size since he took over in December 1987 -- and says he intends to stay in the job "several" more years.

"Oh, I've got lots of time," he said with a smile.

Asked what happened to change his mind, Olin offered an indirect response that included allusions to two of his passions: terrorism and the FBI. He said he gets recruited fairly often but stays in Lawrence because there's still work to do and opportunities here are as good as most other places.

"We have an expanding city. We have a challenge in the area of national security. I work closely and have had wonderful relations with federal agencies and just generally have been able to do the kinds of things and make the kinds of contributions from here that make me feel good," he said.

Roots in unrest

Olin, 53, grew up in Lawrence, graduated from Lawrence High School and financed his undergraduate degree at Kansas University working the night shift as a patrolman.

Lawrence Police Chief Ron Olin, center, isn't an administrator who spends all of his time behind the desk. In this July file photo, Olin, nearing his 16th anniversary as chief, is pictured in front of a line of protesters across the street from the Lawrence Holidome, where a gala honoring former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole was taking place.

He said he decided to become a police officer because of what he called "incredible social unrest" in the early 1970s, a time of violent civil-rights and anti-war protests including the shooting deaths of at least two people during street battles with police.

Olin said he was a "neutral observing party" during the period, and realized he could make a difference as a policeman.

"I kind of doubt that he was neutral," said Clark Coan, who lived in Lawrence then and has chronicled the era on the Web site larryville.com. "Not too many people were."

Olin went on to write a master's thesis on the proper police response to terrorism, and later earned a doctorate in developmental psychology. As assistant chief in the early-1980s, Olin said, his study of terrorism sparked an opportunity to attend an FBI seminar on the subject. He later attended the FBI academy and training throughout Europe, including a six-week national police college in Germany.

Today, he's known as a terrorism expert.

• 6News video: Police chief takes part in arresting protesters at Dole Institute (7-22-03) • Dole gala protesters cite police brutality (7-23-03) • Police chief defends department's timing for release of information (7-25-02) • Police chief studies biological threats (10-29-01) • City police chief pressed to produce crime records (9-13-01) • Police chief a well-rounded man (4-14-00)

"I think he's quite a man, and I always said if I was about a third as intelligent as he was, I could have gone someplace," said Steve Coon, a recently retired patrolman.

Making changes

On a typical work day, Olin puts about 60 miles on his city car.

A major reason was the opening in 2001 of the west-side Investigations and Training Center, 4820 W. 15th St., where he now has his office and spends much of his time.

His weekly schedule includes a meeting with Sheriff Rick Trapp and Dist. Atty. Christine Kenney, as well as two meetings with his six lieutenants -- once on Monday morning and again Thursday afternoon.

On a recent morning, the chief was being shadowed by a new patrol officer who just joined the department. Items arrayed around Olin's office included a copy of The Wall Street Journal, a collection of European police hats and a Tibetan prayer wheel, a spinning, top-like device that he joked he spins 138 times each day -- once for each officer on the force.

Olin's concern when he took over for chief Richard Stanwix in 1987 was that an agency with the same leader for too many years can get set in its ways. Today, he says he's been able to stay fresh -- though some in the community argue the chief isn't progressive enough.

"We're always looking for ways to improve the department," he said. "Every single change we have tried to institute ... is a change that I have to live with."

Olin cited his recent move west as an example. The move brought detectives along but separated the chief from his patrol officers, who still have their division downtown at the Judicial & Law Enforcement Center, 111 E. 11th St.

Coon said he saw Olin about once a month after the west-side building opened, compared with almost daily when the chief's office was downtown. Olin said he hoped to open a west-side patrol station by 2005 or 2006.

Don "Red Dog" Gardner, a former patrolman, said Olin needed to stay involved with the people under him.

"I'm not saying he isn't," Gardner said. "I just hope he is."

Officers' view

One of the biggest changes Olin made came shortly into his tenure, when he did away with the job of assistant chief, causing lieutenants to report directly to him. The goal was to reduce the number of times a message was repeated -- and possibly diluted -- from the time it left his desk until it reached his officers, Olin said.

Only recently, though, has he become comfortable letting the lieutenants shoulder more authority during major incidents, such as the tornado that hit Lawrence in May, said Lt. David Cobb. During his early years as chief, Olin almost always took command of those situations, the lieutenant said.

"He was always called at night, always coming out to the scene, always wanting to make the major decisions," Cobb said.

That changed about three years ago, when Olin designated three lieutenants to take turns serving as "operations commander" during big events. Cobb said he welcomed the change as a sign Olin had grown more comfortable with his job and his lieutenants.

Lawrence Police Chief Ron Olin, center, is briefed by two of his detectives, Lance Flachsbarth, left, and John Hanson, during a meeting in the Investigations Division at the Lawrence Police Department offices at 4820 W. 15th Street. Olin, nearing his 16th anniversary as chief, meets twice a week with his detectives.

But the chief made some enemies in the early 1980s, retired officer Don Dalquest said, by shaking up the promotion system to make it more competitive. Previously, officers would progress formally through the ranks -- from sergeant to lieutenant and so on. Now, anyone with seven years' experience in the department can compete for the rank of lieutenant, and anyone with five years' service can apply for sergeant.

"That was hugely controversial," Olin said.

While officers haven't always agreed with Olin's changes, they seem almost universally to respect his intellect.

"I thought I wanted to be chief of police," said Cobb, who joined the department in 1975. "Now I'm glad that I was able to have the mentorship I was able to have under Chief Olin. He does it better than I would have."

Higher standards?

When Olin joined the department, it was seeing major change. A police union was being started, a new sales tax financed a near doubling of the force in a year, and a massive turnover in 1975 saw about one-third of the department's officers depart.

More officers were entering the field with college degrees, and many people saw Olin as the embodiment of a new, more professional era of policing, said Robin Devine, a longtime Lawrence resident and activist involved in police matters.

"The police officers themselves, they wanted to become this respected, professional, courteous agency," she said.

One thing Olin learned while studying overseas was that European agencies required more training of their officers than U.S. departments. "It gave me the drive to try to professionalize Lawrence," he said.

Olin now requires officers to take six weeks of additional training after they finish the state's required program. And the department pays partial college tuition for officers studying in a field that will help the department. It pays more to officers who have college degrees.

Olin also drafted five "guiding principles" for the department. They include "We believe in the personal touch" and "We represent civility and order in a changing world."

Devine, the activist, said she had seen situations where those efforts paid off in officers' dealings with the public. One recent example: The department shone last spring after KU's loss in the NCAA basketball championship game, when officers succeeded in something police in many other cities failed to do: keep traffic moving and keep fans from rioting.

"I have seen them at times act with exactly the kind of behavior that is reflective of those hopes and desires that began back in the mid-'70s," she said. "Ron Olin should get kudos for having done that."

But Devine said she thought the department didn't extend its professionalism to all in the community.

Critics want more change

Now head of a local police-community relations committee of the American Civil Liberties Union, Devine claimed racial minorities and people without much money receive unfair treatment from some officers. She declined to cite specific instances, but said such events are reported to her committee regularly. It's a charge Olin adamantly denies.

But Devine said it appeared some officers have the attitude, "We know who the scumbags are, and we keep them cowed." She said Olin needed to do more to teach officers that all citizens are equal before the law.

Some activists and members of Lawrence's American Indian community are still angry about the 1991 shooting death of 22-year-old Gregory Sevier, whom police shot after his mother called 911 to report her son had locked himself in his bedroom and had a knife.

Some considered the killing to be a racist murder, and at least one person at a public forum after the shooting called for Olin's job.

A coroner's inquest later found the shooting was justifiable, but in 1995 the city reached an out-of-court settlement in a wrongful death suit filed by the family.

Since then, Olin said he's made efforts to reach out to the city's American Indian community, notably by teaching classes at Haskell Indian Nations University for the past six years.

Addressing critics

"One of the issues that we really don't acknowledge is that there are so many students who come to Lawrence -- both at the University of Kansas and at Haskell -- with stereotypes about police," he said. "Those stereotypes are based upon their personal experiences where they come from. Sometimes it takes a while to sort out whether or not the Lawrence Police Department is the same as the tribal police or the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) police or the New York City police."

Those stereotypes are unfounded in Lawrence, he said, "in many, many cases."

Olin engages his critics, but doesn't budge easily.

For example, ACLU members requested last year that Olin forbid officers from conducting warrantless searches -- say, of a car during a traffic stop -- without first getting the subject's signed consent. They argued such a policy would protect citizens from illegal searches and eliminate controversy in court about whether the person actually gave consent.

Olin dismissed the request, saying the practice his department uses was legal. He also wrote that officers were highly trained in ethics and couldn't afford to lie in court because it would jeopardize a prosecution and the officer's career. Those words came back to haunt him a few months later when a judge ruled an officer, Mike Peck, had lied to get a search warrant in a drug case.

Dist. Atty. Christine Kenney dismissed at least 28 of the officer's cases, and Olin fired Peck.

Zeal for policing

Larry Welch, who heads the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and is a Lawrence resident, isn't much of a worrier. But if he were, he said, he'd feel safer knowing the chief of his city's police department knows so much about terrorism.

"The most articulate, eloquent, clear presentation I ever heard on the Middle East situation after Sept. 11, including Osama bin Laden, came from Ron Olin of Lawrence, Kansas," Welch said. "There were FBI people in that audience."

But Olin's terrorism expertise at times draws criticism from those who view the chief as overzealous.

When a group of anarchists protested this summer outside a Dole Institute of Politics dedication event at the Lawrence Holidome, Olin was the officer who stood closest to the protesters. Guests arriving at the Holidome included several VIPs protected by federal agents.

"There are times when a leader needs to lead," Olin said. "My assessment of that particular event guided me to the point."

When the protesters tried to cross the street toward the hotel, they collided with Olin in a scuffle that led to arrests. Protester Vanessa Hays said afterward she thought the chief viewed the group members as terrorists.

Coan, the Lawrence resident who chronicled 1970s protests, said that might be the case.

"I always wonder what he considers a terrorist organization -- like Greenpeace or what?" he asked. Coan also wondered aloud whether Olin had ever ordered surveillance of local activist groups.

Olin said it's not his style to do anything that would run "counter to the good spirit of Lawrence."

"If I have an intensity about being a very good police chief, then I would say I have an overzealousness about being the very best police chief I can be for the city of Lawrence," he said.