The longtime spokesman of the Miami Police Department, Maj. Delrish Moss, retired last week to become chief of the troubled Police Department in Ferguson, Missouri. Moss, 51, will take over on Monday, not quite two years after a Ferguson officer killed an unarmed teenager, an episode that set off protests nationwide. In a recent interview, Moss spoke about the challenges he will face in Ferguson, police-community relations and how a run-in with the police as a teenager led him to get a badge of his own. His answers have been edited for clarity and length.

QUESTION:What are some of the challenges you expect to face in Ferguson?

ANSWER: The department needs diversification. The department now has very few females in sworn positions. There’s, I think, a total of 54 police officers, and I think three or four African-Americans.

That could be a couple of things: One could be that the department didn’t have a large turnover, people didn’t leave. That could speak for a great working environment, but it could also be that there are biases in the hiring practice and how they’re selective — or it could be that their recruitment efforts are not up to par in terms of diversification.

Q:How do you diversify in a city that’s facing financial problems?

A:There won’t be a magic pill, when I suddenly go from this amount of African-Americans, this amount of women or this amount of whatever to this. But what I’ll be looking at is how we do things with attrition, and other things that naturally occur, that cause officers not to be in the department anymore. Some may leave because they may not like their new boss. Police officers are inherently resistant to change.

Q:Are you nervous that, internally, there will be a sense of “here’s this new guy from out of town telling us what to do”?

A:Being the new guy from out of town, there’s always going to be some pushback. Even when the guy comes from within, there’s pushback, because there’s resistance to change. I am not nervous about it, I expect it. The challenge will be to figure out how to work around it, or there are some people who will decide the Ferguson Police Department is not where they want to be.

Q:Besides diversification, do you have a list of things you know you want to do when you get there?

A:One of the things is, I want to increase the interaction — police with youth. I am not talking about negative interaction; I am talking positive interaction. I want to start a mentoring program. I want to start a Police Athletic League. I have been talking to the Do the Right Thing director here in Miami about Do the Right Thing (a youth program) coming to Ferguson. We’re going to do stuff like staff walks, so the staff gets out there and knocks on doors and talks to business owners and residents.

Q:Do you think there was a really tense relationship with the police in Ferguson, even before Michael Brown?

A:I noticed that along certain racial lines there were different views of the police. Some people thought the police were great in their neighborhoods, some people thought police weren’t so great. But I don’t think it’s as tense a powder keg as it’s been perceived to be.

I think a lot of what added to the situation there — not that there weren’t problems — but a lot of what added to that was the backdrop of the national narrative, where if something happens in Iowa, it has a bearing on police in Miami.

Q:But it was a powder keg, it was a powder keg that blew.

A:It was a powder keg that blew, but I think that could have happened anywhere.

Q:I would agree, were it not for the Department of Justice report. I interviewed people at the courthouse, and every single person had a crazy story you thought they were making up about a ticket leading to an arrest.

A:I don’t discount anything in the DOJ report. I talked to people who verify some of those things. I am not saying it’s “either/or,” I am saying it’s “and.” The national narrative says one thing, and so you get an incident that reinforces that.

Q:How do you think you would have handled the Michael Brown situation differently?

A:I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback how they handled it. I want to move forward. I don’t really want to re-litigate the Michael Brown situation, but I will be looking at that situation top to bottom to see what lessons can be learned. I am not going to weigh in until I have had a chance to analyze it a lot more closely and listen to varying perspectives.

Q:You became a major without moving up through the ranks, being sergeant and lieutenant. How did that go over in the department?

A:I am sure some people didn’t like it, but it’s almost like — what do they call it — there is a term for it when you are promoted at sea or in the middle of battle. What happened was that I was doing the job long before I got the actual rank.

Q:The city manager in Ferguson was quoted talking about how your media relations and community relations experience made you the strongest candidate. What about crime and police work?

A: Well, what people don’t realize is that the community relations aspect of it is very critical to solving crime. We not only solve crime, we prevent crime because of the relationship. When the relationship is bad, that suffers. Police officers come into a neighborhood 10 hours a day, but it’s the people who live there who know what’s going on. If they don’t want to talk to the police or deal with the police, you’re not going to solve anything, and you’re certainly not going to prevent anything.

Q:You talk a lot about leadership and how that can shape a police department.

A:I took this job for a specific reason. I have said it time and again: I was mistreated by police officers. I saw the way police officers acted in my community. I was determined to be a better service provider than I had gotten.

Q:What crime problems does Ferguson face?

A: Like the rest of the nation, we’re seeing not so much an uptick in crime, but actually an uptick in crimes committed by younger people. The new phenomenon is with regard to social media, you disrespect me on social media, I’ve got to do something dramatic so it can be posted on social media so I can get my street cred back. For a 51-year-old guy, that’s kind of something new for me to wrap my head around. So it’s important for me to keep listening to this generation of police officers who grew up attached to their cellphones and attached to Facebook and Snapchat and Instagram. We’ve got to get their input, because they’re the ones who are going to offer some solutions.

Q:Were there special challenges you faced as a black police officer, particularly starting out?

A: The biggest challenge is that, ingrained in the American fabric there is a disconnect between the African-American community and the police department. A lot of it is for historical reasons, some of it is for things that happen that reinforce those old demons, and so as a police officer early on, both communities had a problem knowing how to look at you and how to perceive you.

Q:You think that’s changed?

A:I don’t think it changed, but the challenges and reasons are different. Some things have happened because we do have police officers who don’t do the job the way it’s supposed to be done. You have police officers who bring their biases to the job. We can move the department ahead 100 steps, and you take one of those incidents — one incident, first of all, that’s very real to the person — but also played to that historical narrative, and it’s a whole lot steps back, more than you have been able to advance. I don’t know how we get past that challenge. I don’t know if that will happen in my lifetime. It is certainly my goal or my mission.

Q:Have you ever faced direct — or indirect — racism as a police officer? The law enforcement forum LeoAffairs.com has some pretty racist people on it, and they don’t criticize you without mentioning in a negative way that you are black.

A: LeoAffairs — I call it where cowards grow. So many things on there are the very thing the community has a problem with. It’s very obvious from those posts there are people who are racist, people who are sexist, who are downright ignorant and they wear the badge. They prove themselves all the time there.

It’s one of the reasons I don’t go on there. In a broader sense, LeoAffairs reinforces all those things that people say, negative about police.

Q:Anything you want to add?

A:Ferguson is going to be an interesting challenge for me for a lot of reasons. One, even with all my experience, I am going into a city I don’t know, with people I don’t know. One of the things I learned a long time ago is, not everyone who comes up to you trying to be your friend, is. As chief, one of the things happens is there are people in your midst that covet the seat you sit in.

It’s more of a challenge for Ferguson. I am leaving Miami, where I still have a home, still have people who love me, and a community that’s really supportive, and a pretty good size pension, so I can always come back. Ferguson can’t come back to the beach in South Florida. It’s incumbent upon the city of Ferguson, the people who really care, to work with me to help me succeed, so that we all succeed, so that three months from now, or a year from now, there is not some other chief sitting there going through the same challenges.

© 2016 The New York Times Company