Update: Modesto says it has two finalists for police chief but declines to name them
Modesto is down to two finalists for its next police chief.
City Manager Joe Lopez picked them from the four candidates who were interviewed by two panels and in consultation with an official from Ralph Andersen & Associates, the executive search firm the city hired to help in the recruitment.
Deputy City Manager Caluha Barnes said the next step is for Lopez to meet with the finalists before naming a police chief. She said no dates have been set.
Barnes said Modesto will not release the finalists’ names. She said the city understands the public’s interest in knowing who they are but said that is outweighed by the need to protect their privacy and their relationships with their current employers.
The city did not release the names of the four candidates when it announced in June that it had narrowed its search from the 14 applicants who had applied for the job after a nationwide recruitment.
But interim Police Chief Brandon Gillespie confirmed then that he was one the four. He said in a text Friday morning he had not been notified on whether he was a finalist but would confirm his status once he knew. “... Hopefully we’ll be notified today,” he said.
Barnes said Friday afternoon the finalists had not yet been notified and expected that to happen early this week.
Gillespie has been interim chief since the December retirement of Galen Carroll, who retired after serving as chief for nearly eight years.
Gillespie has worked for the Modesto Police Department for 20 years, starting as an officer and working his way up. He has been assistant chief since October 2019. The department has a $72.4 million budget and is budgeted 298 employees, with about two-thirds of them sworn officers.
The four candidates were interviewed over Zoom on Wednesday by the two panels.
One panel was made up of the directors of city departments that work closely with the police, such as public works, as well as the city’s two deputy city managers and the Modesto Police Officers Association president.
The city said the second panel was made up of Latino Community Roundtable President Aaron Anguiano, Chamber of Commerce President-CEO Trish Christensen, Modesto-Stanislaus NAACP branch President Wendy Byrd, Jessica Self with MoPride, Brad Hawn with Modesto Neighborhoods Inc., the Rev. Darius Crosby with the Modesto Clergy Council, and Stanislaus County Sheriff Jeff Dirkse.
Independence, transparency, accountability
The Ralph Andersen & Associates official facilitated both interviews and briefed the city manager on them.
Barnes said the participants in the second panel agreed to keep the candidates’ information confidential.
“... I signed a confidentiality agreement so I can’t comment on the interviews,” said the NAACP’s Byrd in a text. “But what I can say is that regardless of who is selected, there still needs to be a broadening of independent investigations, transparency and accountability. A good chief would welcome another set of qualified eyes to either validate what the department is doing well or to receive early alerts on what needs to be improved.”
The NAACP and others in the community have called for Modesto to hire an independent auditor and form a civilian review panel to provide oversight of the Police Department.
“No agency should ever be the sole investigators of themselves,” Byrd also said in her text message, “especially when dealing with life threatening or life altering situations.”
Considering potential reforms
The city has launched Forward Together, an effort to look at how to improve the department. It includes a committee that will spend six to 12 months looking at potential reforms before making recommendations to the City Council. But the committee’s work will start with learning more about law enforcement.
The committee’s first meeting is Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at Greens on Tenth, 953 10th St. The meeting is open to the public. The public also can watch the meeting at www.youtube.com/thecityofmodesto. More information is available at www.modestogov.com/forwardtogether.
Law enforcement agencies across the nation have come under scrutiny since the May 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man, while in the custody of Minneapolis police. That scrutiny was heightened here after the December fatal shooting of an unarmed man by a Modesto officer.
This story was originally published July 16, 2021 at 11:03 AM.
