Whitewater Police Chief Jim Coan has treated Whitewater, WI (and Mankato, MN) to one of the greatest examples of dodgy answers in their respective histories.
Whitewater Police Chief Jim Coan is a candidate for the public safety director’s post in Mankato, Minnesota. I’ve written about his candidacy there before, in Whitewater chief has experience in diversity, budget crunches
I will reproduce the questions, excerpts of his answers, and a brief analysis in reply, below.
QUESTION ONE
From the Mankato Free Press: Q: What experience do you have with diversity in your department and in your community?”
Coan’s answer to the question:“I am currently Chief of Police in Whitewater, Wisconsin. We are a college town….We also have a very sizeable Latino population here. As such, we are a very diverse and dynamic community…. Over the years we have been very sensitive to minority victimization, cultural issues, and community concerns. We have developed outreach programs and conducted listening sessions, which I have directly participated in, as a means of enhancing trust and building strong ties with our Latino citizens. Our Hispanic officers deliver presentations and act as interpreters and liaisons. We have conducted cultural diversity training for all of our officers and have always included minority representation in our Citizen Academies and on our Police and Fire Commission.”
Analysis: There are lies, and then there are lies told so brazenly that one marvels at their audacity. Few in the city could have allowed and overseen so many acts contrary to diversity as Coan has allowed. Coan allowed Investigator Larry Meyer — a disgrace to Whitewater, Wisconsin, and America — to run wild in Whitewater.
As a consequence, there were federal allegations in a civil suit that Meyer harassed Mexican workers at the local landscape company, and thereafter Meyer was responsible for the raid on Star Packaging, in which Mexican workers were arrested, jailed, separated from their families, and then deported.
Whitewater had to settle the lawsuit regarding Investigator Meyer’s actions concerning the Fourth Amendment claims from the landscape company’s owner with a six-figure sum.
The later Star Packaging Raid attracted statewide attention, and brought inevitable embarrassment to Whitewater.
When asked in the press about the hardship from the Star Packaging Raid on Hispanic families, among others, here’s what Coan had to say:
“The consequences from all of this are not our responsibility. It is those who commit crime.” That’s right — Coan was cold and
indifferent to the damage his investigator caused, but now when he’s looking for a job elsewhere, he’s oh-so-sensitive.
Coan also described racist death threats in 2009 against black students at Whitewater High School, according to a television report, as a “more along the lines of a prank.” His comments attracted statewide attention, and embarrassed our city yet again.
Coan is caring the way a chameleon’s yellow because it sits on a banana — it’s all a matter of time, place, and circumstance.
(I note that Coan uses the term Latino in his press interview, and perhaps he does so because he thinks it’s more progressive, and will give him a left-of-center veneer. That’s a departure from his prior practice here, when he’s used the term “Hispanic.)
For more on Coan’s leadership, and its impact on minorities, see:
- Jim Coan and Larry Meyer’s Shameful Legacy
- Clear Information on the Lawsuit Against Larry Meyer
- The Identity Theft Excuse
- Parsing Jim Coan’s interview with The Week on the Star Packaging Raid
- Coan on Star Packaging from the WPD Newsletter, Volume 48
- Cat Has Your Tongue?
- On Racist Graffiti Found in Whitewater High School
QUESTION TWO
From the Mankato Free Press: Q: An auditor’s report found a lack of cohesion between fire and police sides of the Mankato department. How would you help them to work more effectively?
Coan’s answer to the question:“I believe that police work and firefighting are very noble and courageous professions. I also believe that whether you are a firefighter, police officer, medic, or a dispatcher that we are all part of a larger public safety brother- and sisterhood. In effect, we are all elements of a front line which serves to maintain a sense of safety and security in our community….”
Analysis: Officers in the field surely and clearly deserve respect for their service and courage in the line of duty. They also deserve more than lines from a leader looking for a job yet again. Truly honoring their service demands a leader’s help, not airy words. Coan’s answer is just a collection of platitudes. Coan’s had no meaningful impact on Whitewater’s volunteer fire department. He has no oversight over that department, and neither does Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission, to which Coan is — at least under the law – answerable.
(A local ordinance exempts the fire department from PFC oversight.)
As for the frontline, what can one say? Coan has no aptitude or skill with field officers, or ordinary citizens, for that matter. I sometimes think Coan wouldn’t recognize the field if he fell down in a pasture.
For more on PFC, how mediocre it is, see:
- Police and Fire Commission: Introduction
- Police and Fire Commission: Performance Generally
- Police and Fire Commission: Hirings Without Oversight?
- Police and Fire Commission: Citizen Complaints
QUESTION THREE
From the Mankato Free Press: Q: What was the most challenging decision that you?ve faced in your career and how did you handle it?”
Coan’s answer to the question:“One of the significant challenges that law enforcement and fire service agency administrators everywhere face is working within growing budgetary constraints while still delivering quality service. This is especially true today given a still struggling economy.
We have always prided ourselves here in delivering quality, highly professional, and cost-effective policing and safety service to our community. This approach to policing and public safety has helped to make things more palatable for us here in economic hard times.
I’d like to think that it has been my leadership, management style, and philosophy of policing that has helped to see us through some very lean budgets and continued economic constraints. I have sought the input of my staff in constructing budgets, listened to the suggestions and concerns of our personnel, and developed a team approach to meeting adversity and challenge. My approach to managing these types of situations has been to be inclusive, interactive, to be a good listener, and to open minded in my decision making.”
Analysis: Wow, too funny.
Here’s a man who for years had a pricey uniform allowance, wasted his time publicizing vainglorious ride alongs to big cities that were suspiciously like tourist spots, and demanded more during budget negotiations only two years ago. If he’s now a careful spender, it’s either because he’s miraculously reformed, or because he’s being asked a question about being a careful spender.
A sharp reader wrote in, and reminded me, about Coan’s use of foot patrols, something that didn’t last long! Coan talked about foot patrols only when gas prices were high. As a matter of policing, he should have done that all along. Even his supposed budgetary concessions are more cheap publicity trick than philosophical commitment.
For more on Coan’s leadership, and its impact on our budgets and spending, see:
QUESTION FOUR
From the Mankato Free Press: Q: What do you see as challenges facing Mankato’s public safety department and what are its strengths?
Coan’s answer to the question:“I believe that the challenges facing Mankato’s Department of Public Safety are really very similar to the challenges we face here and across the country. Namely, the recruitment and retention of quality personnel at all levels of the organization, providing cost effective safety services in tough economic times, developing close partnerships with various stakeholders in the community, effectively dealing with juvenile crime and sensitive crimes (i.e. sexual assault and crimes against children and the elderly), and being well prepared to effectively deal with any contingency (be it a natural or man-made event).
The strength of the Mankato Department of Public Safety is clearly its human resources. Everything I have read and heard about the organization suggests that it is comprised of some very dedicated and highly professional men and women. As such, I believe that the future of the Department is very bright and that together we will be successful in meeting the aforementioned challenges.”
Analysis: Here Coan answers in a generic way, with a response that would be suitable for any city, with no unique perspective on Mankato. Coan might just as well have taken a word processor, typed up a bland statement of the obvious, inserted the word “Mankato,” and memorized that paragraph. He’ll be able to edit the file, with the name of another city, when someplace else is unfortunate enough to interview him.
When would what Coan calls “human resources” (what others call “employees,” or “people”) not be important? Nice of Coan to see that people matter.
If you’re wondering about how approachable and personable Coan is, you need wonder no more. He’s the kind of awkward leader who speaks with stilted phrases like “aforementioned challenges.”
Even among the dull and lazy, Coan would be remarkable. He has a poor grasp even of the law, and his charging recommendations are sometimes ignored by our district attorney’s office.
QUESTION FIVE
From the Mankato Free Press: Q: Describe your philosophical approach to leadership and policing.
Coan’s answer to the question:“My philosophical approach to leadership includes a belief that one of my key responsibilities as a Chief or Director of Public Safety is to identify and mentor talented people in the organization and to give them the sort of opportunities, training, and experiences that will develop their leadership skills now and into the future.
It is also important to build a strong command staff and to develop a team approach to problem solving. I am an interactive and inclusive leader who treats people with dignity and respect.
In terms of an approach to policing I believe that a police or public safety department can have a very positive and even profound impact on the quality of life in a community. It is my goal to maintain a feeling of safety and stability in our community and to be as responsive as possible to citizen concerns about public safety. I believe in many of the precepts of a community-oriented style of policing which places emphasis upon problem solving and building strong partnerships with our community.
At the same time, it is important for us all to recognize that any strategy or philosophy of policing which relies solely on the police to cope with problems or challenges is destined to fail. While clearly we can have a significant impact upon crime and criminality, we need to encourage the support and involvement of our citizens. We must all share in the responsibility of keeping our community safe….”
Analysis: President Obama wrote a best-selling book called, “The Audacity of Hope.” If Coan wrote a similar book, it would be entitled, “The Audacity of Hype.” Coan is a prince of third-tier public relations over actual accomplishment. Yet, in the end, this is a man who has the opposite of the Midas touch; everything Coan touches turns to dirt.
Whitewater has always deserved a better police chief than Coan, and those who care about accountability and community policing should have rejected him years ago.
For more on Coan’s philosophy, see:
- The Force We Need
- “Ultimately” Responsible
- Signs of a Broken Police Culture
- Whitewater Police Department Re-Accreditation
- Inflexibility as a Way of Life
As longtime readers of FREE WHITEWATER know, Coan led a months-long effort to uncover my identity, during which he wasted time, disregarded lawful constitutional rights of anonymous political speech, and — wait for it — confronted the wrong man, at that man’s home, with a senior officer in tow! Coan’s shabby and simple-minded justifications for all this made him a laughingstock both locally, in Wisconsin, and in places beyond. My series on that wrongful and ridiculous conduct, entitled, Witch-Hunting a Blogger in Whitewater, Wisconsin,” is available online. See, also, To the Municipal Opponents of Free Speech for more on this subject.
Whitewater would have been better off without Coan; we would have been better off if he had gone to Apple Valley or Hudson when he accepted (but later backed out) of those jobs.
What, though, of those others who might have to endure his incompetent and mediocre leadership? It would not be right to leave Coan’s disgraceful career unremarked, in the hope that someone would hire him, yet unaware of his many failings. One owes it to others, and to oneself, to write about Coan clearly and candidly.
I can guess whether Coan will be hired elsewhere, and you can, too. The truth of his career is unchanged. Writing about the difference between the policing we need and deserve and what Coan’s ilk offers won’t change. Two decades of his unworthy leadership have diminished this city; reform will come slowly, someday.
Yet, that better day will come, and we have no reason to settle for anything less.