One sees that Whitewater’s police chief, Jim Coan, wasn’t hired for the public safety director’s job in Mankato, Minnesota.
Coan faced an uncertain field, and even then, he wasn’t hired. One candidate dropped out, one candidate wasn’t even currently working, and the third rival Coan faced wasn’t even a police officer. Coan sought a position that combined police and fire-fighting oversight, and his nearly twenty years of supposed leadership weren’t enough to best someone not an officer. (That’s no criticism of the fire-fighter — he served ably for many years. Yet, Coan’s supposedly amazing career offered no dispositive advantage.)
In the print press from Mankato (but sadly not online), one learns that among the community panel evaluating the candidates, a majority scored Coan last, the fourth of four. (The majority picked the candidate that Mankato finally chose, as did citizen-attendees from the meeting who completed a survey asking for their preferences.) There’s no surprise in this. One could have guessed as much, and there were clues in the coverage of the hiring process that pointed to the unlikelihood of Coan getting the job.
Credit where credit is due — Mankato proved wiser than Whitewater was in 2006, when Coan came scurrying back, hat in hand, from Hudson. Mankato avoided our mistakes, and we should be happy for them that they were not so foolish as we have been.
Coan never should have served, never should have led, never should have been re-hired. Those public officials who have defended him have done so ridiculously and wrongly. They have wrongly conflated the needs of one mediocre leader with the needs of dedicated field officers. Coan isn’t the essence policing in Whitewater — not a bit more than a papier mache animal is a living creature. Too many officials propped up a mess, and in doing so, they have allowed problems to fester, simply by looking away. They are to blame for failing to correct Coan properly for his many transgressions. An obstinate few have made themselves ridiculous to those who believe truly in the fairness and decency of America’s promise for all people.
Coan’s made a mess of his career, at Whitewater’s expense. His recent interview with the Mankato Free Press shows he’s not changed, reformed, or acknowledged his many mistakes. There was little chance any other people, in sensible communities, would be foolish enough actually to hire him.
He remains with us. Coan won’t become a better leader; he’ll likely become a worse one.
Whitewater, like every community in America, deserves real accountability, real community policing, genuine fairness, and a good police leader.
Whitewater will not have good leadership until it stops pretending that it does, or insisting that honest people look away from mediocrity.
No one owes Whitewater’s town fathers a life of lies and delusions.
There’s much good work to be done, and we are just the city where it needs to be done.
I am convinced that there is no better place in the world, in any time in history, than America. Whitewater will always be at her best when she draws closer to the free, honest, open American tradition.
The more here, the better.