Daniel Isom takes office as St. Louis’ 33rd chief of police confronting many vexing problems:

The department is in the middle of a scandal and a federal investigation into a towing contractor that may have given officers free use of impounded vehicles. The scam abused a lot of innocent people, cost the department hundreds of thousands of dollars and led to the forced resignation of Chief Joe Mokwa, Mr. Isom’s predecessor.

And while most crimes are down citywide, the city is experiencing a surge of homicides and gun violence in some troubled neighborhoods. In an era of shrinking city resources, the department is down to 1,342 officers. With the nation apparently headed into a deep recession, budgets could get even tighter.

For all of that, Mr. Isom, appointed Monday by the Board of Police Commissioners, appears undaunted by the challenges. In an interview with Post-Dispatch reporters and editors Thursday, he outlined four ways he wants the department to demonstrate its “public value”:

• Continue and enhance the initiatives that have reduced most crimes to their lowest point in 30 years. This includes expanding the decentralization of command authority, giving district commanders more autonomy in deploying resources and manpower.
• Renew the focus on so called “quality of life” and “nuisance” crimes — vandalism, peace disturbances and the like — that often set the table for worse crimes.
• Establish new management systems, including strict accountability and oversight, that would stop internal problems such as the towing scandal.
• Restore lost confidence in the department in the wake of the towing scandal. “I’m not sure how much damage has been done to the public trust,” he said.

It could be argued that cleaning up the towing scandal is Job One. Mr. Isom said he will await the results of ongoing investigations by the FBI and U.S. attorney before taking disciplinary action, but he promised that it would be forthcoming.

While it is true that the failure of management systems may have played a part in the scandal — nobody at the department seems to have noticed that a well-connected towing company was fudging the numbers of impounded cars it allegedly returned to their owners — the larger worry is a cultural one: How many people in the department, from patrol officers to command staff, knew what was going on and never reported it?

Mr. Isom and Chris Goodson, the president of the Police Board, promised that the full results of the federal investigation, as well as disciplinary measures, would be made public. Anything less than full disclosure would be disastrous for the department.

At 41, Mr. Isom is the youngest chief in living memory and the third African-American to be the city’s top cop. His assignments during 20 years with the department render him unusually well prepared to take the job. He did the everyday work of an officer on patrol, running from call to call. He supervised patrol officers in police districts. He saw heartbreak and hope in the Juvenile Division. He dealt with tough issues of police misconduct when assigned to Internal Affairs. He learned about the department’s business operations as part of the internal audit team and helped lead professional training at the police academy.

All the while, he was pursuing a Ph.D. in criminology and criminal justice, making him — with a temperament described as cool and reserved — an unlikely mix of practical cop and learned professional.

Since this spring, he’s been the department’s lead commander in a major initiative to reduce gun violence in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood, a part of the city where citizens are held captive to poverty, drugs and violent crime. That has brought him into contact not only with police department commanders, but also with neighborhood and city leaders as well as outside agencies such as state probation and parole offices, prosecutors and federal law enforcement agencies.

The political ability to forge these kinds of partnerships, day in and day out, is a chief’s biggest challenge. If he can do that, he’ll be successful. And if he succeeds, the city will as well.