Stainbrook To Retire After Fractured Tenure At BHPD

Beverly Hills Police Chief Mark Stainbrook will retire from the Beverly Hills Police Department effective June 26, ending a tenure that City Hall praised as innovative but that was also marked by open conflict with the rank-and-file officers he led.

The City of Beverly Hills announced Stainbrook’s retirement on May 8, noting that he joined BHPD in November 2021 after serving as chief at the Port of San Diego. The city also credited him with helping expand the department’s Real Time Watch Center, which it said includes 3,500 cameras, 120 automated license plate readers and multiple drones. City officials said crime in Beverly Hills has dropped 34% and arrests have increased 22% since the center’s launch.

“On behalf of the City Council and Beverly Hills community, I’d like to thank Chief Stainbrook for his leadership in moving the department forward,” City Manager Nancy Hunt-Coffey said in the city’s announcement. “During the Chief’s tenure, the department became a national model for use of advanced police technologies and has successfully reduced crime in several key categories. We recognize Chief Stainbrook for his three decades of dedicated public service.”

But Stainbrook’s departure also comes after a public rupture with the Beverly Hills Police Officers Association, which issued a vote of no confidence against him in 2025. The vote represented an extraordinary rebuke from the officers inside the department and placed Stainbrook’s leadership under public scrutiny.

According to documents and statements connected to the labor dispute, officers raised serious concerns about Stainbrook’s leadership, including the reassignment of sergeants from specialty assignments, concerns about downsizing, overreliance on the Real Time Watch Center, command staff decisions and the department’s staffing representations to City Hall.

The conflict escalated further when the police union sent Stainbrook a cease and desist letter accusing him of spreading false and damaging statements about BHPOA President Christian Bond after the no-confidence vote. The union also alleged that Stainbrook retaliated against Bond, deepening the public divide between department leadership and the officers’ association.

That conflict complicates the official version of Stainbrook’s tenure. City Hall described him as a leader who turned BHPD into a global model for police technology, with more than 500 local, state, federal and international agencies visiting the Real Time Watch Center. In 2025, the California Police Chiefs Association awarded him the Joe Malloy Award, which the city described as the association’s highest annual award for a police chief.

Still, the most important measure of a police chief is not technology alone. It is whether the department’s officers trust the person leading them. By that measure, Stainbrook leaves Beverly Hills with a deeply mixed record: praised by management, celebrated by outside law enforcement groups, but publicly rejected by a large share of the union representing his own officers.

“The opportunity to lead the Beverly Hills Police Department has been the highlight of my professional career,” Stainbrook said in the city’s announcement. “I am grateful to the men and women of the department and members of the community as we all worked together to ensure Beverly Hills remains one of the safest cities in the nation.”

Hunt-Coffey is expected to name an interim police chief in the coming weeks. Whoever takes over will inherit not only the city’s high-profile public safety operation, but also the task of rebuilding trust inside a department that spent the final year of Stainbrook’s tenure in visible internal conflict.