District of Columbia Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier on Monday tried to bat back suggestions that she is excluding African-Americans from top jobs in her newly streamlined department.

Lanier said that race was “absolutely not” part of her deliberations as she trimmed her command staff from eight to six, eliminating two positions that had been held by African-Americans.

“This is the team of the future,” she said. “We have the right people.”

Most of the top civilians in her command staff are African-American, but four out of the six top sworn positions are occupied by whites. That has raised some eyebrows.

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“I don’t know what she was thinking,” National Black Police Association President Ron Hampton told The Examiner. “She doesn’t have the luxury of not taking that into consideration in making these moves.”

Hampton, a retired D.C. police officer, said that relations between the department and black Washington are strained after an off-duty officer shot and killed a 14-year-old in Southeast.

“If the community was in step with the police department,” Hampton said, “there wouldn’t be the kind of doubt that’s going on.”

Lanier, 40, who has privately boasted about being on the vanguard of a revolutionary generation of police chiefs dedicated to moving away from the old street-and-gumshoe approach to policing with high-tech analysis by crime professionals, has already struggled to remake the department in her image.

Her earliest moves, including the demotion of Sixth District Cmdr. Robin Hoey, were celebrated by the rank-and-file but were condemned by neighborhood activists.

In March, she pulled the plug on an independent certification that had taken years of preparation and hundreds of thousands of public dollars to prepare for. Last week, she found herself answering tough questions after the shooting in Southeast.

Monday’s shakeup drew the support of police union chair Kristopher K. Baumann, who had a contentious relationship with Ramsey and often accused the former chief of focusing on public relations instead of police work.

“This will give some accountability out there,” Baumann said of the overhaul. “We’ll now know if individual commanders are able to handle their own districts.”

bmyers@dcexaminer.com