City Manager Responds to Concerns re: Police Chief Candidate

I found it pretty interesting that City Manager Rashad Young responded to Doug Clark's concerns on his blog regarding Lisa Womack, one of the candidates for police chief.

But I also found it interesting that one of the main criteria used in the search has been that the candidate be "engaging".

Comments

[Bubba]

"Engaging"is one of those weasel words that never seem to get defined down to the actual meaning intended by the user.

In addition, management "best practice" hiring methodology for any job of importance in necessitates that background checks be performed before the list of candidates is reduced to two finalists.

[Mick]

She seems "toast" to me. But, were background checks done before or not? Are more thorough background checks yet to come? I dont get it. I would think that at this point the only thing left would be to choose between the two candidates. All that matters should be known to all who matter. I have been dismayed that Womack has made it this far w/o knowing the circumstances of her last job. Just seems bassackwards as good ol dad still says!

[jaycee]

Young spews a nice, long diatribe of political double-speak.
However, he does not answer Clark's question: What did Young know and when did he know it?
Either Womack lied by not informing Young of the circumstances surrounding her "resign or be fired" situation, or Young lied to the reporter when he said "she decided" to leave Elgin PD.
Either way, one of them is lying.

[Joe Guarino]

Bubba, if being "engaging" is one of the predetermined attributes a police chief must have in Greensboro, my concern would be that other more important attributes might be overlooked.

Mick and Jaycee, I suspect there were checks beforehand, but perhaps some additional information came out afterward. I cannot rule out the possibility, however, that her making some enemies back in Elgin, IL might be a good sign-- that she was making some unpopular but necessary decisions, and that some people here in Greensboro might recognize that. But the excessive conferences probably reflected a zeal to network outside of her place of employment.

If she was given preference because of gender, it might be for political/symbolic reasons; or it could be because of a perception that the racial cliques within the GPD have been primarily male, and a woman might be better positioned to disrupt that situation. Then, there might be less perceived racial favoritism.

I am not defending her status as one of the top two. I am only offering hypotheses.

[Stormy]

Young's statement that they conducted background checks, but continue to conduct background checks is interesting. He suggests that they are still doing background checks, even though she has been publicly announced as a finalist. This is a most interesting way of hiring a police chief. A professional organization completes all of the background checks before arriving at this point in a hiring process. To announce a candidate as a finalist, then have to reject the candidate based upon a background check is not professional. It suggests to me that they did not do their job of vetting the candidate properly before arriving at this point. As Bubba said, you do not arrive at this point in the process and be still checking background and references. Young is trying to spin someone's sloppy work, or they want a female in the job badly enough to skip over what could be a real red flag. I can tell them overlooking red flags in the hiring process always come back to bite you in the end. What happens if the community panels vote for Womack, then she can't be hired because of a backgound problem? Doh!