Between two hands, the stack of Waynesboro police chief applications measures about 9 inches thick. With that fact, you know more than the average Waynesboro police officer about the search to replace Chief Doug Davis.
By mid-week, Davis will be a retired man, just one of an increasing number of crime fighters who have left the city department.
After three-and-a-half months of silence about the specifics of the search for a new chief, City Manager Mike Hamp on Friday said he’ll soon tell city cops about his pick for interim chief.
The prolonged quiet, Hamp said, lies in the stack of applications. They came from across the country, including Arizona, New York, Florida, and California.
“I’ve been in the paper review of the applicant stages longer than I’d anticipated,” he said. “We have not conducted any personal interviews yet, and part of the reason is because there were 80 applications and because so many of the applicants, at least on paper, met the requisite requirements.”
Hamp said three of the applications came from within the city department.
Initial interviews, scheduled to take place the first week of March, will include basic telephone calls in which the city manager will ask questions from a list. Throughout the process, a scoresheet will allow Hamp to track each candidate with an inexact, numerical evaluation, he said.
The city manager declined to offer a date by which he intends to make a decision. When that time comes, Hamp said he’ll be hiring someone adept at budgeting in a tough economy, setting direction, and recruiting.
“In the current environment I’m looking for somebody who can make strong relationships with all of the individuals and elements of the department,” he said, “someone who will be available and willing to make a commitment to the department and the community for more than a few years.”
The new chief will meet a depleted department with officers who’ve gone years without raises, and a team of upper-level managers closing in on retirement eligibility.
More than 10 officers have left Waynesboro for other places since 2009, authorities said. And while five officers are being trained at the police academy, by the time they hit the streets they’ll solve vacancy issues more than a year old, authorities said.
Some patrols are at half power.
This week, Officer Dominick Zambrotta will serve his last shift. Zambrotta’s decision to leave illuminated again for the department a hovering staffing problem and an uncertain future, authorities said.
Sgt. Kelly Walker said losing officers like Zambrotta hurts the department in the long run, and highlights a recurring struggle with recruitment.
“Once they become certified, courtesy of us, they are very marketable,” Walker said. “And the market is paying much more than we are even attempting to pay. [Zambrotta’s] got a brilliant future ahead of him, just not with us.”
Among neighboring jurisdictions, Waynesboro pays the least in starting salaries for police, according to authorities and records.
Without playing fortune-teller, city administration and police department leaders cannot predict when officers start looking elsewhere for work. Neither can they pinpoint when they’ll leave.
It’s not the only concern.
After a review of the department staff, The News Virginian found nine officers at or within three years of attaining eligibility for retirement. Four of those potential retirees belong to patrol shifts already operating at 70 percent capacity.
With the loss of Davis, the 58-person department will operate with 16 vacancies. Nine of those spots are patrol officers, authorities said.
“We’re vulnerable,” Hamp said. “If additional officers choose to leave our employment, if we have significant retirements, we would be confronting some very serious manning issues.”
Police officials said the department chose not to refill a vacant Kate Collins Middle School resource officer spot to keep enough people on patrol.
The city manager said he does not believe the current numbers should create alarm, that the department still accomplishes a high-level of police work despite staffing woes and uncompetitive pay. Still, the problem could get worse before it gets better, he said.
To fix the troubles would entail reviewing the city compensation system.
“You consider your opportunities to address that, even in a difficult environment when other departments aren’t getting increases,” Hamp said. “Law enforcement is a core service in municipal government and we have a duty to furnish those services. If some sort of adjustment is in order then it ought to be pursued.”
Walker said career advancement programs, long left unfunded, represent one way to stopper attrition and offer incentive for officers to make Waynesboro policing a career.
Hamp said he is reviewing that program to gauge how much it might cost and the benefits it would bring to the department. He said officer accomplishments continue to be documented, so when funding becomes available, a chunk of that money would go to their advancement.
Hamp estimated the cost at tens of thousands of dollars.
The city chief’s office sat mostly empty on Friday.
Model police cars and picture frames that once collected dust on Davis’ shelves have since disappeared. He sat behind his desk in plainclothes, top button on his shirt undone.
“It is a tight situation, and it’s certainly the tightest situation that I’ve ever been through,” Davis said. “The unknown can be a very unsettling thing.”
He said cuts and vacancies within the department would need to run deeper before the public noticed a loss in services, and that the momentary loss of a police chief should not cause concern.
“The department will function as it always has, of course that’s not any consolation to the guys working the street,” Davis said. “I feel for them. They’re going through a lot.”
He said he does not feel guilty about leaving the department in the midst of staffing and financial problems — that the time is right for his retirement and next life chapter.
“Now that it’s getting closer, I’m looking forward to the next thing,” Davis said.
He’ll become a consultant and teach at Mary Baldwin College and Blue Ridge Community College.
When he joined the department in 2003, Davis said then-City Manager Doug Walker hired Springsted Inc., a public sector consultant group, to narrow the initial applicant pool.
Hamp said the city spent $18,844 for that service, and that he did not recommend to Waynesboro City Council the reuse of the service in the current search.
“The entire recruitment, evaluation and selection will be conducted in-house,” he said. “I think a significant consideration is the expense of the effort, and when you weigh that against whether or not you believe accomplishing it in-house can lead you to a satisfactory and quality outcome as well.”
In his review of the applicants, Hamp said he has bounced questions and ideas off of people with law enforcement expertise. He has invited select members of the department to meet and provide input on the chief search.
He said he understands the anxiety officers feel about the future of the department and he respects the importance they place on procedure and process.
“That group has had more than their fair share of tough challenges, some of which I’m responsible for,” Hamp said. “We’ve reduced the size of their department in the last budget. I’m the one who ultimately makes recommendations in how quickly we replace their equipment.”
Now that he’s isolated a group of finalists for the soon-to-be vacant chief spot, Hamp said he’s ready to move to the next step.
“The appointment of the chief is a big deal for the department,” he said. “So I will name an interim and we will move on in that fashion.”
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