Police and Fire Commission Interviewing

Police & Fire Commission 08/29/2013 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.

Last week, Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission considered whether to have the Whitewater police chief or senior police leaders present at civilian PFC interviews of candidates (promotions, etc.). (See, about this topic, Interviews & Citizen Oversight.)

Whitewater’s past practice has been to assure that police leadership attends these civilian interviews.

The obvious problem, of course, is that the law requires civilian oversight, and civilian oversight isn’t genuine if there are no moments when civilians can independently interview candidates on behalf of the community (composed mostly, after all, of fifteen-thousand civilians).

It’s very true that Whitewater has had a police staff presence at interviews for years: that precedent doesn’t excuse the continuation of an all-too-servile approach. But I know, well enough, that some on this commission were not selected for civilian independence, but for deference to others.

Ms. Jan Bilgen, current chair of the Police and Fire Commission, contends that one of the reasons to have a police leadership presence in civilian interviews is to determine whether candidates’ answers are the same as in previous interviews (ones solely with the chief or other police leaders).

Is Ms. Bilgen joking?

A leadership presence in PFC interviews is the surest way to guarantee that every answer will be canned to fit a safe and comfortable line. She’s supposedly looking for discrepancies, but what she’ll really get is those who can parrot a prepared speech over and over. You won’t get discrepancies with a leader present, you’ll get prepared answers.

Far from producing a better force, her way is sure to encourage a careerist and dull one.

One should hope for an independent interview that produces the unusual and unexpected; her way stifles those differences (ones that could be discussed afterward with police leaders and PFC alone, comparing notes).

Ms. Bilgen has been a dutiful supporter of leadership orthodoxy, and she likely wouldn’t have been on this commission otherwise. Not a supporter, alone, but a particularly obliging one, first of then-Chief Coan, now of current Chief Otterbacher.

I’m not a gambler, but if I were so inclined, I could think of no safer bet than counting on Ms. Bilgen to flack reflexively for whatever practice the city’s leadership advocates.

Funny, that the city watches her in an open PFC session, as even that’s a practice that she once spoke against (and her husband, too, that evening, if I recall correctly).

The time to test water for drinkability is before one slurps cup after cup, not afterward.

The time for consideration of the right practice would have been before repeating unthinkingly the current one.

It’s no surprise, though, that Ms. Bilgen likely won’t place the topic on the next PFC agenda (“I will place it on the next…not the September agenda, because I think that one’s pretty full, if memory serves. Umm, but if not the September agenda, then the next meeting…”)

Shoved into the drawer to collect dust; all-too-obviously – but successfully – done.

This department will be the last part of the city to develop a modern outlook, long after others have done so. Being the last, it will by then seem especially out-of-place. It’s doubtful that today’s leaders can imagine any different time, let alone that time.

Yet it doesn’t matter, as the social and political forces that will transform the department come from far beyond the city, are approaching steadily, and will prove inexorable.