Jun 19, 2007 9:20 am US/Central
Police Board Narrows Applicant List For Top Cop
At Least 2 Women From Chicago, 3 Or 4 Outsiders On List
CHICAGO (STNG) ―
Three and "possibly four" outsiders with police experience in "large urban areas" and at least two women from Chicago will vie to succeed retiring Police Supt. Phil Cline, the Police Board president said Monday.
Demetrius Carney said he has already polled the board and expects to meet this week to formally narrow the list of applicants to 10 semi-finalists who will be summoned for in-person interviews after extensive background checks.
Sources said the list includes at least five insiders: Chief of Patrol Charles Williams; Deputy Supt. Hiram Grau; Assistant Deputy Supt. Eugene Williams; Chief of Detectives Maria Maher and Assistant Deputy Supt. Deb Kirby, head of the Internal Affairs Division.
A third woman, Assistant Deputy Supt. Anne Egan, also has a chance of making the final cut.
Assistant Deputy Supt. Matt Tobias and Frank Limon, chief of the Organized Crime Division, are longer-shot possibilities. First Deputy Police Supt. Dana Starks, who had a strained relationship with Cline, did not apply for the superintendent's job, sources said.
The insiders will join "three and possibly four" present or former police officials from large urban areas outside Chicago in the semi-finals, Carney said. Interviews are expected to begin this week as the board races to beat Cline's mid-July departure deadline.
Carney refused to name the outsiders for fear of compromising their current jobs. He said only that 40 percent of the 40 to 50 applications came from outside the city.
"We got applications from New York, Los Angeles and Detroit. Our instruction to our search firm was to reach out to large urban areas with comparable issues. We didn't want anybody from small-town USA. We wanted someone who had dealt with issues of a large urban area," Carney said.
Carney acknowledged that none of the outsiders are current police chiefs. But, he said, "They could be first deputies. Maybe they've retired and doing other things. The finalists we've selected from outside have strong credentials in education and experience. Maybe they're [Charles] Ramsey types."
The Sun-Times reported last week that former Washington, D.C., police chief Charles Ramsey had become the second high-profile outsider to opt out of the competition for the $185,652-a-year superintendent's job.
Cline resigned April 2 in the wake of the controversy surrounding police handling of three barroom brawls involving off-duty police officers.
(Source: Sun-Times News Group Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2006. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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