The City of Henderson has begun its recruitment process for the next Chief of Police. Ms. Becky Veazey, President of the MAPS Group via the NC League of Municipalities, is serving as consultant and facilitator of the process.
One of the initial steps in the recruitment process is to obtain input from City Council, Police Department personnel, community leaders and the community-at-large through focus group meetings. The meetings have already begun within the City, and the community meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, 10 September at 6:00 p.m., City Council Chambers, City Hall.
Public comment on the following question is welcomed.
“What knowledge, skills, abilities and characteristics does the next police chief need to have?”
The input received from all of the focus groups will be considered and from that the City will develop the several key job dimensions that we will be looking for in the next chief. This information also helps us build supplemental questions on which to focus with the finalists, both prior to and during the assessment center.
Written comments may be submitted via regular USPS mail delivery or e-mail as follows:
Mr. Ray Griffin, City Manager
P. O. Box 1434
Henderson, NC 27536
or via e-mail at: rgriffin@ci.henderson.nc.us
Why are we looking outside the county for a police chief. That doesn’t give the officers anything to work for if you don’t promote within. If you don.t have anyone qualified to step up to that position it tells me you have a very poor training system. It is shame to spend all that money to hire someone to hire a police chief. It also tells me that if the city council and city manager are not qualified to hire a police chief they should not be in the positions they hold.
I agree
And don’t forget the money spent to find a new Superintendent of Vance County Schools–that board ignored applicants and elevated a lame duck waiting to finish out his career–that’s my opinion.
I also agree with catfish–but only time will tell. I was quite impressed with the interim Marcus Barrow.
Tomorrow night is the kick off for the process. Ray said he had sent out 47 invitations and had only 7 or 8 regrets. He did not know how many will attend tomorrows brain storming session. The Council’s concern is that the meeting will be held and no one will attend. Catfish, Elmwood, Prudence the challenge is yours to show up tomorrow night and join in the brain storming session.
Why don’t they get Charles Pulley to be Chief of Police ? Everybody was so impressed with him, even after the newspaper and Rev. Frank burned him up for the Habitat House project.
WRAL is here at tonight’s public meeting regarding the selection process for the new the police chief. 16 members of the public are attending. Still have some empty chairs.
up to 19 attendees
In case anyone is wondering, I was contacted as one of the 47 people regarding input, as chair of the DDC. I did submit to Mr. Griffin a letter indicating downtown businesses and residents, and visitors do need to feel safe from crime, and theft, obviously. I gave some suggestions of visiting downtown businesses to provide them some suggestions on how to handle cash, and what they should do if they have a shoplifter or robbery. I also encouraged more public communication, and praised the public community meetings they have held recently.
The public’s top seven criteria out of the 25 identified at tonight’s public focus group for assessing candidates for the new chief of police are:
1. Community police style or management: willing to be part of community and communicate well with community.
2. Long term commitment to community
3. Cooperate with Vance County Sheriff’s Office
4. Work with economically depressed and low income residence.
5. Strong legal knowledge
6. Open door policy
7a. Leadership and management / management of department well sets good example
7b. Build trust with community
7c. Understands value of faith based organizations
Can somebody tell me why WRAL was at community meeting discussing the process for hiring a new police chief? There was no murder. There was no criminal act beyond time wasting. Thinking of time wasting who was the preacher in the green shirt that was told to shut up? Only Ray Griffin would benefit having WRAL at the meeting. I wonder if Ray thinks he could get his job going through this long assessment process.
I bet the next police chief of Henderson will be black, any takers ??
We need a police chief after the example of Raleigh’s long term Sheriff John Baker. http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1987519/ He commanded respect and listened to the citizens. I slept with my doors unlocked back in those days. The Sheriff’s and Police departments worked together to make Raleigh feel safe in the 22 years I lived there.
Dazed and confused, what difference does that make?
Just who received “invitations” to that meeting? Going to those meetings is fruitless and a waste of time–it’s all cut and dried In my opinion. Griffin will go along to get along in my opinion.
Apparently Prudence wasn’t invited. Just my opinion.
You are correct Mingo–I was not one of the anointed. WRAL has a strange way of interviewing people. Miles was talking about Vance County–so his beef must be with the Sheriff.
What exactly is WRAL’s agenda? The one true thing they did say at the end of the report was that Marcus Barrows received many compliments–too bad that wasn’t on the video–just my opinion.
Au contraire, mon fraire everyone was invited to attend Tuesday night’s public focus group. Everyone included you Mingo, Prudence, Catfish, Elmwood, even Deception and James Bailey. You may not have been who Mr. Griffin determined to be worthy of a personal, engraved, hand delivered invitation like Mr. Hart received, the meeting was announced and open to the public. Notice of the Tuesday meeting was in the City Council’s meeting packet that is posted on HiH. During Monday night’s council meeting Mr. Griffin praised Martin Fisher for the article in the Dispatch last week. In my posting #4 above, which is time stamped 7:29 pm on Monday night while the Council meeting was in progress, I included a challenge to Catfish, Elmwood, and Prudence to show up for Tuesday night’s brain storming session. Regardless of one’s personal opinion of Mr. Griffin or individual council members this approach for selecting a new police chief should result in the hiring of the best available candidate who applied. Although in my view both the council members and the public at large basically listed the characteristics most disliked of the previous chief, this process of selecting a new chief will include those views and what the officers and staff desire in a chief.
Below is the link to the websites referred to by Mr. Griffin or Ms. Veazey where our need for a new police chief will be posted to the World Wide Web.
http://www.theiacp.org
Take a look at the current job posting there under the tab “jobs”.
Only 1221 jobs posted