Sitting in an Atlanta police academy classroom 20 years ago, Lucas Wagaman leaned over to his classmate and said, “One day, we’re going to work for him.”
He was talking about now-Chief Darin Schierbaum. Despite knowing him for only a few weeks, his classmates quickly recognized Schierbaum’s vast potential.
“We knew he was a good person right off the bat,” said Wagaman, now a captain. “He was down to earth. He was very compassionate about what he does, and we could see those traits early on … We’re just glad it’s finally here.”
Schierbaum was officially named Atlanta’s 26th police chief in October, standing in the same room of the department’s Zone 5 precinct in the CNN Center where he first reported for duty. He had already been serving as the interim leader after former Chief Rodney Bryant retired in June, and he was officially sworn into the position early this month.
Even with the interim title, Schierbaum led the department with the confidence of an official chief. There were no training wheels that had to come off, as he put it, when he gained the permanent job.
Department leaders who’ve worked closely with Schierbaum all used the same adjectives to describe him: strategic, analytical, calm, collected.
“He sees everything at different angles and looks for the proper solution,” Wagaman said. “There’s no checkers (with him). It’s chess. It’s always the long game.”
But Schierbaum didn’t always set out to be a police officer. He was studying to be a teacher in Illinois when he took a class that offered to pay his tuition to become an EMT. From there, he got more involved in law enforcement and eventually joined the Johnson County sheriff’s office in his home state.
The 51-year-old lawman picked Atlanta to make his new home because, even in 2002, the city had a non-discrimination policy, and he didn’t want to hide who he was.
“That was a welcome mat, if you will, for me to be here,” said Schierbaum, only the second openly gay person to serve as Atlanta’s police chief; Erika Shields was the first. “There were already out members of the force. The sergeant that did my intake ... was the first LGBTQ liaison for the Atlanta Police Department ... so I was seeing diversity embraced from the day I walked through the door.”
He quickly climbed the ranks, becoming a sergeant in 2007 and a lieutenant two years later. By 2020, he was a deputy chief, and earlier this year he became assistant chief.
Even before moving into the top job, Schierbaum’s top-down approach to leadership was always on display. During a tumultuous period nationwide in the summer of 2020, Zone 2 Maj. Ailen Mitchell remembers Schierbaum stressing to him the importance of “leading from the front” — being in the field, in the thick of the action, with boots on the ground.
At the time, protests over racial injustice had erupted across the country following the murder of George Floyd. The unrest reached a fever pitch in Atlanta after Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed by an Atlanta officer in a Wendy’s parking lot. Shields resigned as chief the day after the shooting, and Bryant came out of retirement to lead the department.
With Schierbaum’s ascension to chief, officers hope it signals a return to stability in department leadership.
“The tone of the leader is reflective of the tone of the troops. If I stay calm under pressure, then my troops will see that, and then they’ll do the same,” Mitchell recalled his boss telling him in 2020. It was advice that stuck with him and has molded his own leadership style.
But it’s more than just Schierbaum’s demeanor that has won him the respect of the department’s rank and file.
Lt. Germain Dearlove, now APD’s homicide commander, recalled that when Schierbaum was a lieutenant he would give his officers a “blueprint” of crime trends and statistics so they would know what areas to target. Later, he used his teaching skills when he began rewarding officers for correctly answering questions about crime patterns, Mitchell said. It was his way of getting his officers to see what he was seeing.
And it’s not just his approach to combating crime that makes Schierbaum stand out to his officers, they said. He also cares about them and is invested in getting to know them and their families.
Wagaman worked under Schierbaum when he was a deputy chief in the strategies and special projects division. When they had meetings, “as everybody walked out of the building, it would take us 20 to 30 minutes because he stopped and talked to every single person,” he said. “He knows everyone, and he knows what is going on in their life. That’s the person you want to lead the department.”
Since becoming chief, Schierbaum has already started changing the culture, making himself more accessible to those in the lower ranks.
One of Mitchell’s classmates was recently promoted to sergeant, he recalled, and Schierbaum asked the officer to meet with him.
“He called me, he’s like, “Man, he gave me my badge,’” Mitchell said. “That blew me away. I’ve been here through multiple chiefs, and I’ve never heard of them calling sergeants and pinning them. I just thought that was phenomenal.”
Despite those early leadership projections, and the great success Schierbaum has experienced throughout his career, he insists he never had any interest or ambition in becoming a chief.
“He’s too humble for that. It just ended up this way,” Wagaman said.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
It wasn’t until Mayor Andre Dickens tapped him to be the department’s interim chief that Schierbaum began to ponder the possibility.
“I gave it great thought, prayer and consideration whether I was going to apply for this (chief) position,” he said.
Ultimately, he accepted the challenge because he believes in the need for “quality, constitutional, ethical and compassionate law enforcement.”
“It requires a group of individuals that are approaching things with a new insight, new eye, doing it smartly with a heart for their community, and then I see the incredible men and women of the Atlanta Police Department that are doing that daily,” he said. “I wanted to be an advocate for them. I wanted to be a cheerleader for them.”
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