Was Norfolk’s police chief forced out? Depends on whom you ask.

Norfolk City Manager Chip Filer convened a hastily announced news conference outside City Hall last month to announce Police Chief Larry Boone would be retiring.

Local news outlets weren’t alerted until a little more than an hour earlier. It lasted just two minutes; Filer was the only person to speak and refused to answer questions.

Boone, who led the Norfolk Police Department for the last 5 ½ years and was an officer there for more than three decades, didn’t attend.

Filer told reporters Boone announced his retirement during a meeting earlier that day, and that his last day on the job would be two days later.

Photos of Boone, 58, that hung in the city’s two police precincts were gone by the next day.

The chief’s abrupt departure came as a surprise to many — including the mayor, City Council and the more than 500 sworn officers who work for the Norfolk Police Department —. coming as Norfolk grapples with an uptick in gun violence and police staffing shortages.

Since then, rumors have swirled among city leaders and rank-and-file police as to whether Boone chose to retire, or was forced out.

The Virginian-Pilot has asked him for an interview multiple times, but the only response he’s provided so far was in a text saying he’d be willing to talk “in due time.” That’s left others to try to fill in the gaps.

In Filer’s telling, the decision was entirely Boone’s. He said the chief handed him a retirement letter at the end of a regularly scheduled meeting April 6. The chief’s official retirement date would be April 29 and that he’d be using accrued leave time until then.

“I was surprised but at the same time, not,” Filer said in an interview, adding that he knew Boone had been looking at employment opportunities elsewhere since mid-2019.

Filer said he couldn’t explain why the chief wasn’t there for the news conference and couldn’t remember if he’d asked him to attend.

“I had gotten to know the chief quite well” during the nearly two years they worked together, he said. “I enjoyed working with the chief. I thought he had a really good handle on the community.”

Longtime Council member Paul Riddick is among those who believe Boone was ousted by the city manager.

“I don’t know what happened behind closed doors, but I will say the chief was forced out,” said Riddick, who said he hasn’t spoken directly with the chief since his departure. “You don’t go in on Tuesday and say I’m leaving Friday. That’s odd. That just doesn’t happen.”

Riddick said he’s heard from people close to the chief that Filer pushed Boone into retiring because he refused to fire two police supervisors. Two longtime Norfolk police officers, who spoke with The Pilot on the condition of anonymity because of fear of repercussions, said they’d heard the same from people close to Boone.

When asked about the accusation, Filer declined to comment, writing in a text message that he’d already provided numerous statements on Boone’s retirement. “I have nothing further to add,” he wrote.

Council member Tommy Smigiel has also questioned whether it was Boone’s decision to leave.

Smigiel was the only member to vote against a payment of $308,000 to Boone from the city’s Deferred Retirement Option Program that was approved during a recent City Council meeting. The councilman said his “no” vote was due to his disappointment with the way Filer and his office handled Boone’s abrupt departure. He said the payment looked more like “a severance package” given to an ousted employee.

Multiple speakers at the April 26 meeting called on Filer to resign, citing the handling of the chief’s departure and the failure of the city to adequately deal with increased gun violence. Some also spoke out against the hefty payment being made to the chief.

Mayor Kenny Alexander has said he was “very surprised” by Boone’s sudden retirement. He said he learned about it through an email Filer sent to him and the other City Council members shortly before the news conference. In Norfolk, the city manager is the police chief’s supervisor. All hiring and firing decisions for that position are made by the city manager, not the mayor or council.

Alexander said he has no reason to believe Boone was forced out.

“He retired — that’s what I have,” the mayor said. “Dr. Filer and Chief Boone are the only two people who know exactly what happened.”

While the mayor said he wasn’t expecting the news, he was aware that Boone had talked about retiring for years, and had pursued jobs and been recruited for employment elsewhere.

“It was no secret” Boone was looking to move on, the mayor said.

Deputy City Manager Michael Goldsmith, who served as police chief before Boone, will oversee the department until a new chief is chosen.

While leading any police department is challenging, running Norfolk’s had become especially difficult in recent years as the number of sworn officers plummeted and gun violence has increased. In the weeks before the chief’s retirement was announced, there were two high-profile shootings downtown.

The first, on March 19 outside Chicho’s Pizza Backstage on Granby Street, left three people dead and two injured. The second was April 2 in MacArthur Center shop and resulted in one death and two injuries. No arrests have been made in either case, but a suspect has been identified in the second.

Mike Lynch, head of the Norfolk Chapter of the Virginia Police Benevolent Association and a member of the department for the past decade, said officers were caught off guard by Boone’s retirement.

“It was brought on to us suddenly, without notice,” Lynch said. “We all have our own speculation as to what, when and how it happened, but that’s it.”

The main focus for Norfolk police officers right now is on staffing shortages and pay issues, he said, and not on the politics of the office.

As of April 13, there were 237 vacancies out of a department that should have more than 700 sworn officers. Only about 350 officers are assigned to work the streets. Lynch believes the blame for the department’s problems are shared, with about a third of it due to the chief, another third to the city manager and the rest to the City Council.

“We’re just trying to stop the bleeding,” he said. “We have to focus on what we can do to not lose any more officers. … They’re coming and going so quickly, it’s hard to keep up.”

One of the longtime Norfolk police officers who spoke with The Pilot said Boone’s departure has been especially upsetting for minority members of the department. The officer, who is Black, said Boone “leveled the playing field” during his tenure, resulting in promotions and punishments that were seen as more balanced.

“Chief Boone had a reputation of standing up to injustices,” said the officer, who asked not to be named because officers are not allowed to speak to reporters. “He really gave hope to a lot of officers of color that things would change. I guess that’s over now.”

Staff reporters Ali Sullivan and Daniel Berti contributed to this report.

Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com