Terri Moses, police chief finalist: proved herself with resilience

This is the third time Terri Moses has applied to be Wichita’s police chief.

Moses said she applied in 1989 because mentors encouraged her to use it as a learning experience. It took courage because at the time, she was a lieutenant, a rank below where most people are seen as chief material. She came closer in 2000 when – as the city’s first female deputy police chief – she was one of three finalists. Now, she has only one other finalist – Allentown Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald – in her way to becoming the first woman to be Wichita’s top cop.

Part of her character, she said, is resilience. “You have to be able to have a very short memory and have a very thick skin.” And more than that, she had to prove her worth.

Every time the Police Department promoted her, she said, someone told her it was because she was a woman.

“And my standard response always was, ‘Don’t judge (based on the idea that a woman can’t do it), and you give me three months and come in and tell me I didn’t do the job.’

“Nobody came back in three months,” she said.

Moses, 56, retired from the Police Department after 32 years, rising from rookie to deputy chief in 14 years and working in or overseeing every division. Since 2013, she has been executive director of safety services for the Wichita school district.

Mike Watson, Wichita police chief from 1995 to 2000, promoted Moses to deputy chief. “I can’t think of anybody who did a better job than she did,” Watson said.

Moses said she thinks that, for some people, women still have to prove they can be police officers. “There’s biases out there. We know we’re not going to remove those.”

The farm kid in her

The woman who is now a finalist to lead the largest police department in Kansas, with 836 employees and an $82 million budget, was a full-fledged farm kid.

She grew up in Riley County, 8 miles from the nearest town on a 1,000–acre farm that raised cattle and hogs and grew alfalfa, corn, milo and wheat. She wore jeans and sleeveless shirts and built barbed-wire and electric fences, cut thistle from pastures and hoisted hay bales. By a bale’s heft, she could tell if it was straw or clover.

It still bothers her to drive by a pasture that could be good for grazing and see it smothered by invasive cedar trees. It makes her want to get out there and start clearing.

She got her idea to be a police officer at age 14 or 15 from a magazine article in the library at her tiny 1A Blue Valley High School in the town of Randolph. Her graduating class had 32 kids. She got further inspiration when she met a Riley County officer who seemed so enthusiastic about police work.

The farm kid came to Wichita in 1978. She knew that Wichita State University had a strong criminal justice program and that the Wichita Police Department had a good reputation. Three of her WSU instructors were Wichita police officers.

She worked her way as a walk-on with the women’s basketball team, where she played guard, and with the softball team, where she played mostly outfield. As a senior, she was a co-captain on the basketball team, even though she wasn’t a starter. Her main role, she said, was as a leader off the court – to help keep fellow players on task.

Meeting the challenge

She became a Wichita police officer in 1981. Watson, who joined the Wichita department several years before her, said, “It would have been tough” for a female police officer in the early 1980s. “It was still a male-dominated profession.”

Years later, after he promoted her to deputy chief, “I probably got more questioning from people when I put her in the patrol position,” he said.

Moses had done her share of patrol work and knew how crazy that work could be. Watson put her in charge of all the officers on the street who respond to emergencies. But to some people, patrol was for tough guys. The doubters wondered if a woman could lead them, he said, “and in my mind she absolutely could.”

After she began her patrol assignment, he didn’t hear criticism. It told him that Moses had been accepted.

He counted on her input, he said. “She had plenty of suggestions on things that we could do. She was always coming up with other ways of doing things.”

“You’ve got to have change,” Moses said. “The key is doing the change the right way.”

The people she appreciates the most are those who challenge the status quo, she said. “That’s the only way we’re going to be any better. I like people who have the wherewithal to come into your office and just talk.”

In 2007, Moses received positive feedback from the community after she called for a “collaborative approach” to dealing with racial-profiling concerns and after she said that the Police Department took profiling allegations seriously.

Walt Chappell, a member of the city’s racial-profiling board who has been critical of police over the years, said he found Moses to be a “solid person” who is “willing to think about some of the key issues.”

Although Chappell said he was disappointed that the department didn’t take more action on his concerns, he found Moses to be “always professional, always under control” in discussions about police use of force and alleged profiling.

In her current job as school district safety director, Moses has been part of a team that has worked to improve security at schools, partly by controlling access to school entrances and training staff on how to handle crises.

How to say ‘Thank you’

One idea she has embraced as a manager, Moses said, is that the best way to motivate people is a “sincere thank you.”

Part of her job as deputy chief was reading job performance appraisals and when she saw a person who got outstanding marks, she would send the officer a handwritten note acknowledging something specific about the person’s work, along with “Thank you.” Eventually, she decided that everyone deserved to have something positive acknowledged from their evaluation. So she began a practice of writing a thank-you card to everyone about something in their appraisal.

She wrote and mailed thank-you notes for 10 years – thousands of cards – using her own stamps and stationery with her name embossed across the top. “Maxine’s on East Central (where she bought the cards) was very unhappy when I retired,” she joked.

Maxine’s owner Jody Lonergan knew of Moses’ handwritten gestures and was impressed. Writing thank-you notes is a lost art, Lonergan said.

She remembers thinking about Moses’ cards: “That takes a lot of time out of busy person’s job to make that personal contact.

“She went above and beyond … and that’s what people remember.”

This story was originally published August 29, 2015 at 5:05 PM with the headline "Terri Moses, police chief finalist: proved herself with resilience."