Hail to the Chief?

Well, last night’s Metro Council meeting was something of a bust. The top item on the agenda was discussing whether the Chief of Police of the City of Baton Rouge should be an elected position instead of a Mayoral-appointed position. Only four or so people from the public showed up to provide input. Due to lack of participation from the public, the Council moved to defer the issue until a later meeting believing miscommunication may have interfered with public knowledge of the discussion. I hate to be the one to point out the obvious but this is the same Council that, just two weeks before, tried to waive the rules in order to discuss the same topic without any honest public notification that the topic was going to be discussed. I don’t see the logical progression there, but that’s not really surprising.

So what do we do about the Chief of Police situation? There seem to be a number of different options on the table, some more plausible than the others, so I figure I’ll lay out a few here.

1) Public Election of the Chief of Police: It sounds good, but there are a number of potential problems that really need to be considered. First, this will take a long time; requiring both approval of the Council and a public vote of the people to change the Plan of Government (and then another vote of the people to elect the Chief of Police). Second, it’s not really going to do anything to reduce political influence in the position. All that’s really going to happen is replacing Mayoral influence with political donor influence. Additionally, the Police Union has a not inconsiderable amount of political power, which can be problematic if their boss is directly elected. Third, the City of Baton Rouge’s crime problem definitely impacts the rest of the Parish. Under this option, only the residents of the City of Baton Rouge would be able to vote in the election (as the position wouldn’t be conjoined like the Mayor-President’s is), even though the end result would impact the remainder of the Parish.

2) Consolidating the City Police and Sheriff’s Department: While this would neatly solve the situation with the Baton Rouge Chief of Police likely becoming a position appointed by the elected Sheriff of East Baton Rouge Parish or some other appointing authority, there are a ton of hurdles to overcome in the short and long term before this can be considered a viable possibility. This is also going to require a significant amount of time to hammer out details and negotiate some very difficult compromises. Needless to say, this isn’t the answer for the short term problem, but could certainly be an answer for the long term.

3) Go With What We’ve Got: Under this option, the Mayor appoints a new Chief of Police. It is quick and simple, requiring no changes to the Plan of Government. While this seems like the same old situation, it doesn’t have to be. When Chief White was hired, the initial applicant pool was around 40 candidates. After exam and qualification screening, that pool was reduced and the remaining applicants were vetted by an Advisory Committee. The Committee then presented Mayor Holden with a list of five candidates. According to news reports, this was similar to the method used to select former Police Chief Jeff LeDuff and almost all of it was done outside of the public eye. While there are certainly good reasons to keep some of the vetting outside of public scrutiny, it probably wouldn’t hurt to open it up a bit more to the public. One of Mayor Holden’s charges against Chief White was that he was a “Master of Deception.” Having had something of a professional relationship with deception, I know that one of the greatest truisms of all time, attributed to both P.T. Barnum and Abraham Lincoln, is “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.” So let’s get all of the people involved all the time if we go with this option.

Addendum: Good luck to Scott Wilson and Barry Ivey. They’re running for the vacant 65th District State House of Representatives seat that covers Central and the northeaster portion of EBR Parish. Obviously, the more interesting outcome for this blog would be Wilson winning, as it would open up a seat on the Metro Council. Regardless, if you’re a voter in that neck of the woods, vote this Saturday!