By Jorge Casuso

August 25, 2025 -- Police Chief Ramon Batista's abrupt resignation Friday not only shocked his officers -- who learned the news from an open letter to the community -- but it raised questions about the reasons for his exit.

For nearly four years, Batista had been the face of a Department that grew in both its ranks and diversity, overhauled its technology and expanded community outreach, including a monthly blog detailing efforts to fight crime ("EXTRA -- Letter from Police Chief Ramon Batista to the Residents of Santa Monica).

In the more than 1,000-word public letter that detailed the department's accomplishments under his watch, Batista offered no explanation for his departure, noting only that the "surprise" announcement "comes after careful thought."

There was also no explanation in the four-page letter of resignation submitted to newly-hired City Manager Oliver Chi hours before the public announcement -- except for a hint near the end of the letter.

"As I step aside," Batista wrote, "I do recognize that my nearly 40 years of experience in public safety and policing, my deeply held sense of justice, and following not only the spirit, but the letter of the law, appear to be at odds from demands set by the new administration."

The letter -- which comes one month after Chi assumed the City's top post on July 24 -- makes no mention of what "demands" the new administration had made ("Council Hires Oliver Chi as New City Manager," May 29, 2025).

Batista, who became Santa Monica's first Latino Police Chief in October 2021, was hired by former City Manager David White two years after the Chief resigned from the post in Mesa, Arizona ("Santa Monica Hires Former Mesa Police Chief Who Championed Reform," October 14, 2021).

As chief of the Mesa Police Department, Batista had come under fire from the two local police unions for implementing changes to training and use-of-force polices after a high profile excessive force complaint in 2018, according to press reports.

Santa Monica's police union hailed the hiring of Batista, whose book "Do No Harm" laid out five steps "to align police actions with community values."

Under a strong City Manager form of government, such as the one in Santa Monica, it is the City Manager who hires and fires a Police Chief.

"It's typical for a Council to want to have its own folks," said former mayor Sue Himmelrich, "and it's typical for the City Manager to want to have his own team."

Chi, who served as City Manager in four cities, including the Orange County cities of Irvine and Huntington Beach, expressed his views on public safety in an opinion piece written by former Santa Monica City Manager Rick Cole that ran in the OC Register in September 2021.

"Chi thought the best response to the George Floyd protests was not to 'defund the police, but to do the exact opposite' -- take armed police out of non-violent situations where their very presence can sometimes escalate into violence -- and free police to focus on actual crime," Cole wrote.

In his column, Cole called Chi "a visionary" who two months earlier had launched a pilot program based on one in Eugene, Oregon that dispatched "professional crisis response teams of medics and mental health workers" to handle calls involving the homeless in Huntington Beach.

The program, which Cole said "could transform public safety in Southern California" would be implemented in Santa Monica two and a half years later, in January 2024 ("Mental Health Crisis Team Hits Streets," January 8, 2024).

In his opinion piece, Cole provides several quotes from Chi explaining why he implemented the program.

“If you ask cops, they’ll tell you they hate going on calls involving mental health problems, substance abuse or family issues. There’s not much they can do, and it diverts them from the things they do best -- fighting crime and community policing."

Chi added, “We asked ourselves, especially given the rising level of homelessness in our community: why haven’t we added any new tools? The answer was: it was politically challenging, administratively complicated and required funding. Nobody wanted to battle the inertia of the status quo.”

Chi has not publicly expressed his current views about public safety, but he has privately expressed his concerns, according to several sources that have spoken to him since assuming the post.

As is the case with most City Managers, Chi is expected to hire a Police Chief who shares his vision for tackling two of the community's top priorities, homelessness and crime.

Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts, Jr., who served as Santa Monica's Police Chief from 1991 to 2006, notes that while the City Manager or Council members can provide input, public safety decisions are ultimately made by the Chief.

As mayor, Butts said, he "can collaborate with the chief, but the chief is the chief. In the end, the chief is responsible for public safety.

"He is ultimately responsible for the decisions being made," Butts said. "It won't be healthy otherwise. It's unhealthy for (police officers) to be confused with the chain of command."