Tonight, the community spoke out on what the selection criteria should be for the next St Police Chief. In the audience taking notes were at least four of the candidates: Todd Axtell, Colleen Luna, Bill Martinez and Thomas Smith, The press were taking notes. Truly, it is a process of a social contract being worked out between the community and the next police chief.
Tonight, I spoke out even when my voice shook. I prepared so much for my testimony at the community meeting, that I became nervous. Yep, me!
The highlights of what I was asking for is here:
Internal Candidate
Command Leadership
Courageous, Calm and Compassionate in times of Adversity
Willingness to give credit to others, to admit mistakes and to look from the viewpoint of an opposing perspective
Ability and Willingness to be the St Paul Police Public Advocate
Long Standing Community Relationships
Innovation and Leadership in Working with the Community to Solve Problems
My complete speech is below the fold.
Retired Chief Finney also spoke, with both cheers and applause. Chief Finney spoke of the need for integrity most of all. The new chief also has to form a partnership with the police union, keep informed of policing best practices and trends, form state and national connections, and continue grant work and collaborations.
Dave Titus is the president of the St Paul Police Federation, a police union. Today the board of St Paul Police Federation will screen candidates for police chief and sheriff. The board's recommendation will then have to be approved by the membership. The Federation is critical in police politics because of endorsements. It is influential in setting internal police policy and influencing police culture. The Federation is a police union, yet it cannot strike because policing is an essential service; therefore, differences between the police union and police management are resolved by mediation and arbitration or by going through a court process. The Federation also has Dave Titus sitting on the 21 member citizens' group that will make recommendations about who Mayor Chris Coleman should pick for police chief, with the approval of the city council.
In listening to Dave Titus, it is obvious that both the Federation and the St Paul police leadership share similar views. While Dave Titus does not favor the term "community policing", he simply calls it "good faith" and good policing. And just from being with Dave Titus, I can assure you that Dave has that same elegant professional courtesy that so typifies the St Paul police. Both Dave Titus and police leadership agree that St Paul has a good reputation and few problems, compared to other departments. Both agree that extreme problems do have to be disciplined. Yet obviously discipline is one of the issues that Federation and police leadership do oppose each other on on a frequent basis.
Tom Smith is a candidate for the next St Paul Police Chief. The current St Paul Police Chief Harrington is retiring. St Paul police have a positive relationship with the St Paul community because of their community-policing style. Matt Bostrom, a current St Paul Assistant Chief, now running for Ramsey County Sheriff, taught me about community policing. Indeed the community relationships are so important to the St Paul Police that they call it the Bank of Trust. As an internal candidate from this same great community policing culture, Tom Smith also displays these really great values and characteristics.
Tom Smith believes that great police officers come from integrity, moral character and compassion. Tom believes in volunteerism and giving back. I especially liked Tom's description that the primary role of police was to be peace keepers. What sets Tom Smith apart is his comfort in a public role, for both traveling and speaking. Tom Smith places emphasis on transparency, on keeping the public informed through the media. And indeed, it is obvious that Tom has a gift of story telling.
From a long interview, I have created two videos. The first describes the heroes, the background and the experiences of Tom Smith. The second interview gets into the tougher questions of being police chief such as "How does one balance loyalty and accountability?"
Every night, 2-15 women in Saint Paul call the police to report that they have been a victim of abuse in their home. When the police arrive, the offenders involved are frequently gone. These cases used to be handled in chronological order. Sometimes it took weeks to press charges. And now when funds are being constantly cut, that time situation is getting worse.
John Choi was a leader in a multi-department change of processing of domestic calls to an order based on an assessed threat level. It is a simple change that makes a big difference. Really it is a case of preventing murder. The local project is called part of a bigger project of best practices for handling domestic violence called Blueprint for Safety. For those victims at greatest risk, law enforcement officers are sent out to apprehend the assailant the same day and file charges immediately.
Mary Louise Klas, a retired judge, and Shelley Johnson, domestic abuse advocate spoke at a John Choi fundraiser about the importance of John's work in domestic violence.
Currently, St Paul is in the process of choosing a new police chief. The St Paul police force develops great candidates from within the force, so promotion to police chief from within the force has been the standard. This policy is strongly supported by the community. This is a series of continuing articles interviewing those candidates.
Like previous candidates, Colleen Luna is an outstanding candidate in the St Paul Police style. Like the other members of the St Paul police force, Colleen Luna endorses community-partnered policing. Colleen says "Community is not just a place; it is a feeling, a connection, a relationship." In the same tradition of involvement with youth, Colleen Luna was active in "Shop with cops", that helps children participate in the holiday tradition of giving. Colleen also had a broad range of assignments and a long list of community involvement projects, described more in detail later.
Current St Paul Chief Harrington is not going to renew his term, so St Paul has started the process of selecting a new police chief. Since St Paul likes its police force, since St Paul is a leader in community partnered policing and since the police department has an active policy of growing great candidates from within, we expect to be choosing an internal candidate. The selection process starts with two community meetings of input to an already selected 22 person interview team, who then recommends five choices to Mayor Coleman. Mayor Coleman then picks one.
Since the role of police chief is very demanding, I expect there are large number of family conversations happening now among potential candidates. Maria Gottfried from the Pioneer Press has the best list so far of potential Candidates:
"Names of contenders that have been bandied around City Hall include Assistant Chief Thomas Smith, Senior Cmdr. Colleen Luna, Senior Cmdr. Bill Martinez and Cmdr. Todd Axtell."
Commander Todd Axtell is the first to respond to a request for an interview. Invitations have been extended to all candidates, so we hope to have more interviews.
The first part of the interview, in the first video, focuses on Commander Todd Axtell as a person. It explores his policing motivation and his philosophy of policing.
The second part of the interview, in the second video, focusses on the role of police chief, with some tough questions.
St Paul Police Chief John M. Harrington, just announced that he will not seek reappointment to the position of chief, when this term ends June 30, 2009. Chief Harrington originally came form the southside of Chicago. He began his career as a Saint Paul police officer on July 11, 1977, serving as a patrol officer, patrol supervisor, investigator, training unit director, Senior Commander of the department's Western District and finally as Chief in 2004.
In the press release, Chief Harrington says:
"It has been a great career, in a great city, working with many great people," said Chief Harrington. "The department has accomplished much and I am proud to have been part of leading it over the past five years. "
Update: Valerie Silva, Charles Hopson, Deborah Henton are the finalists! The St Paul School board had many positive comments about each candidate, however it was an easy almost unanimous consensus. Public interview times are Valerie Silva - Wed at 5 PM, Charles Hopson - Mon at 5 PM, and Deborah Henton - Thurs at 5 PM.
The legacy of previous Superintendent Maria Carstarphen haunts these superintendent interviews, at least for me. One wants a superintendent who speak eloquently before a board, a legislature or a community gathering. That is well tested by this interview process. However, a St Paul superintendent has to be both a leader and a manager, in large urban school system known for its diversity. Since I took my children through these schools, I can assure you that there is a huge culture change, including management, from school to school. Superintendent Maria Carstarphen actually tried to "standardize" this diversity. I moved here to St Paul because of high quality and diverse public school options. I settled on A+ arts model school, Linwood, where I was a very active parent. In the reign of Carstarphen, Linwood was "merged" with another school, instead of letting the successful popular Linwood school continue intact.
So my questions are : Are these interviews, just a simple great theater performance like Maria Carstarphen's great interviews were, or is there really substance and performance behind these interviews? Do these candidates have the ability to switch modes and adjust to a wide variety of management cultures and needs? Or are these one-hammer-fits-all-needs managers? I don't know that I have the time to find the answers directly. I will find what indirect answers that I can find.
Three of the 6 St Paul superintendent interviews were tonight. The St Paul school board is finally listening to the community preferring local candidates.
Ms Nancy Stachel: Current St Paul staff promoted by the previously unfit and unpopular superintendent should be explaining how her or his leadership would be different than that previous superintendent. I have no problem that Ms Stachel does not have a doctorate. I do have a problem in that she seems to be a controlling type. She admitted she had problems working in community meetings, where the community felt unhappy afterward. No mention of successful money recruiting, or legislative persuasion. Her management style sounded like a top-down top-heavy style, where she was "pulling together" support for the teachers, and "pulling together" review. She calls herself intense. I like that she cited turning around Como school, if that was true and done without extra resources.
Mr Mark Bezek:This gentleman has way too much small talk, including suggesting that a "goalie grudge" was instrumental in his decision to go for St Paul superintendent. This gentleman made it his mission to read a list of words to drop: respect, accountability, leadership, pride, faith, trust, integrity, positive attitude, dream within boundaries, kindness, understanding, hope and passion. He had the list on a notecard. He apparently gave plastic protocol cards to his last school board. I wonder if he has the cliff notes to being a superintendent. I was impressed about his description of running many community meetings to get referendum passage and his "fish and wildlife" model funded school. He likes to stay as "visible" as possible. We are supposed to ask him why he required parental permission slips to hear Obama's speech.
Dr Stan Mack: Dr Mack seemed like a nice person in way over his head in St Paul complexity, with frequent mentions of "read the manual". He did secure funds for his area and talk the legislature into automatically bonding for replaced a mold-destroyed school. He has allies in legislation, because he makes sure that no one knows when he disagrees. Why would I trust anyone who says that? He says that he learned from fighting the "right to lie" group in a referendum, how to be more proactive in telling the truth.
I hope that tomorrow is better. Maybe I am just very tired and cranky, and all the candidates will look better in the morning.
Rarely when I call about news on an endorsement, do I hear about an enthusiastic unanimous endorsement. Yet that is exactly what I heard from a group of people on east side of St Paul who endorsed Matt Bostrom for Ramsey County Sheriff. Not only is there a group endorsement, but each member also added a personal individual endorsement.
The Eastside PAC committee is called PROGRESSPPAC, an acronym for "People for Reinvestment, Opportunity, Growth, & Redevelopment on the East Side and Saint Paul Political Action Committee". This group pulls together the east side issues. The chair, Raymond Hess, said that Matt Bostrom's presentation was "really dynamite", expressing "concern for the community". The committee was most impressed with the ideals of the good cooperation between county level of sheriff and the city levels of police. Right now, the relationship between the local police and the current sheriff in Ramsey County can best be described as turf battles. So cooperation would be a huge change in policy.
Community-partnered policing or community policing is both a philosophy and a strategy where police and citizens cooperate as partners. The people of a neighborhood and their local police use relationships, trust, empathy and a common purpose to jointly use the resources of the community to solve the roots of crime. Ordinary citizens take on the responsibility of solving community problems relating to crime, not just leaving it to the police. In this philosophy the police are part of "we, the community," instead of viewing the community as an "us vs them" mentality.
In the community-partnered policing, the first role of the police officer is to know the community well and to support the community. Knowing the community requires that police stations are located more within communities instead of being centralized. Officers are less in their patrol cars and more on the street, in town meetings, talking with people and generally being involved in the neighborhood. Police officers are encouraged to live in the community and to become socially involved in the communities.
The neighborhoods under community policing begin to look different. People form block parties, block clubs, neighborhood watches and action groups. People know and care who their neighbors are. Activities move from closed-off back-yard parties to more open front-yard parties. In walking through the neighborhoods, more people walk and talk on the streets, and kids are actively bicycling. Boulevard gardens display the new front-yard focus.
In a special election to fill a resigned school board seat, Vallay Varro with a very active campaign won easily.
The interesting election was the school board race because the St. Paul Federation of Teachers endorsed for Jean O'Connell, who did not even seek DFL endorsement. So the DFL endorsed three generally liked candidates: Elona Street-Stewart, and Tom Goldstein, who the St. Paul Federation of Teachers did not endorse. The St. Paul Federation of Teachers and generally everyone had issues with the last school superintendent choice and the incredibly slow start to this superintendent search, including conflict over choosing an internal St Paul style superintendent.
It became obvious that Jean O'Connell was well liked and had a great campaign. Therefore she was going to get a seat. Then it became a race between the DFL endorsed candidates who generally run cooperative campaigns. It was a case of who could campaign the best.
In the school board race, the top three vote getters will become school board members. There is only an 82 vote difference between second and third place and 394 vote difference between third and fourth place. In fourth place, a generally well liked incumbent Tom Goldstein lost, which is probably a case for the record books.
While Minneapolis is actually using ranked choice voting, St Paul just had a ballot question on whether to use use ranked choice voting.
Final Results
YES 17083 52.45% NO 15486 47.55%
Actually, I am surprised! It is a practical idea whose time has come. Ranked Choice Voting (RCV)will also the provide financial savings of skipping a low-turnout primary. However St Paul tends to be cautious!
The attitude of St Paul can be summed up in this comment, "I'm still not sure what I think of ranked choice voting (RCV) but I think it's just prudent for St. Paul to wait and see how it works in Minneapolis." On the other hand, I and others argues that there many good government practices that Minneapolis manages to mess up, just because it is Minneapolis. St Paul is a much more different culture than Minneapolis, based on more caution, with good reason for St Paul has a much smaller tax base. St Paul has a culture more based on personal relationships and trust built over a long time.
Fiscal prudence of St Paul is pushing for ranked choice voting. Last year, we could have eliminated a primary. If RCV passes, then our St Paul legislators would have obtain a state legal change to allow the school board to be included, which is given a high likelihood.
At a "meet and greet"small gathering, I heard John Choi speak of what makes a better Ramsey county attorney and better justice. I have often heard people ask about actual courtroom experience for the role of Ramsey county attorney when in truth the role is managing a large number of prosecutors. John Choi says the best measure of doing well is not the number of convictions, but rather the right result for justice. The best result would be that a person would never come through the prosecution process again. This means that the Ramsey city attorney becomes a more publically engaged figure involving the whole community in creating better justice outcomes.
John Choi says that our entire justice process is like a giant assembly line where everyone is doing their particular job really well, yet no one is looking at the end of the assembly to see if we are getting is what we truly want. John Choi is good at the end product analysis of justice, and then working with various partners in the community to achieve that result. Currently, John Choi is that kind of manager as the St Paul city attorney.
John Choi helped implement one recent improvement in the process of handling domestic violence, called Blueprint-for-Safety. Basically, each morning a prosecutor and police officers review the domestic violence cases to pick out the most-likely-to-be-dangerous as priorities. In domestic violence calls, the most sophisticated abusers are likely to be gone before the cops arrive, which means that in the old process, the reports were filed with no immediate action. However, these most sophisticated abusers are now the identified as the most dangerous, so picking up these particular abusers is given a high priority on limited police resources.
St Paul Police Chief John M. Harrington, just announced that he will not seek reappointment to the position of chief, when this term ends June 30, 2009. Chief Harrington originally came form the southside of Chicago. He began his career as a Saint Paul police officer on July 11, 1977, serving as a patrol officer, patrol supervisor, investigator, training unit director, Senior Commander of the department's Western District and finally as Chief in 2004.
Rarely when I call about news on an endorsement, do I hear about an enthusiastic unanimous endorsement. Yet that is exactly what I heard from a group of people on east side of St Paul who endorsed Matt Bostrom for Ramsey County Sheriff. Not only is there a group endorsement, but each member also added a personal individual endorsement.
In a special election to fill a resigned school board seat, Vallay Varro with a very active campaign won easily.
At a "meet and greet"small gathering, I heard John Choi speak of what makes a better Ramsey county attorney and better justice. I have often heard people ask about actual courtroom experience for the role of Ramsey county attorney when in truth the role is managing a large number of prosecutors. John Choi says the best measure of doing well is not the number of convictions, but rather the right result for justice. The best result would be that a person would never come through the prosecution process again. This means that the Ramsey city attorney becomes a more publically engaged figure involving the whole community in creating better justice outcomes.
