Frederick Residents Still Have Time To Answer On Line Survey About A New Police Chief

The deadline is  November 1st.                                                                                                                                                         

 

Frederick, Md (KM) Frederick residents are invited to take a survey about what they want to see in a new police chief. The deadline to respond is Sunday, November 1st. You can take the survey at frederickmd.gov/chiefsearch.

Mayor Michael O’Connor spoke about that recently during an appearance on “Mid-Morning Live” on WFMD.

After the survey is completed, he Mayor says he will go over the recommendations, and   conduct a final round of interviews and select finalists from among three dozen applicants. “There will be some evaluation of the candidates. The search committee is going to try and take that 36 and squeeze it down to a more manageable number to conduct interviews. And then there will be a final selection committee that will involve me and some senior staff at the city to a final evaluation. There will be an opportunity at some point   later in the process for finalist candidates to meet with community stakeholders,” O’Connor says.

During his appearance on the “Morning News Express,” the Mayor was asked if he’s interested only a minority woman to fill the position. “It’s a question that feels a bit of a trap and I know that’s really not really intended,” he responded. “There’s always determining and differentiating factors. There’s no such thing as candidates that are equally weighted and we’ll determine what are the factors that are most important to the community. We’re going to pick an outstanding police chief based on the qualifications and criteria that our community wants. And that could be a person of any race, gender creed, color.”

That person hired will replace Acting Chief Patrick Grossman, whose retiring at the end of October. “He certainly could have applied for the position had he wanted to,” the Mayor commented. “I didn’t have conversations with anyone to encourage them…..Everyone has known that the position was available. Generally, police officers don’t need to be encouraged to apply for positions that they may at some point want.”

 

 

By Kevin McManus