Haines Borough interim manager Brad Ryan will bring three police chief finalists to town for interviews, taking two candidate recommendations from the Public Safety Commission and adding a choice of his own.
The Public Safety Commission met Tuesday to review 10 semifinalists selected by executive search firm Brimeyer Fursman, and recommended Ryan invite four to Haines for in-person interviews.
The commission’s finalists were Gerald “Ed” Casey (Department of Veterans Affairs chief of police in Los Angeles 2012-2014), William “Dave” McKillican (Hoonah chief of police since 2014), Timothy O’Neill (police officer, investigator then sergeant in La Crosse, Wis., since 2005) and Christian Pedoty (police lieutenant for the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority 1990-2011).
Ryan also chose McKillikan and O’Neill, but discarded Casey and Pedoty and instead inserted Christian Carelli, who rose from dispatcher to sergeant in 18 years with the University of Michigan campus police.
“I just really liked the way his resume and profile read,” Ryan said of Carelli. “(The commission) seemed kind of not as invested in (Casey) and (Pedoty), so I felt like I wanted to pick one a little bit different.”
Commission members are chair Jim Stanford, Kay Clements, Judy Ewald, Judy Erekson and Bob Duis.
Duis was unimpressed with the semi-finalists the headhunting firm brought to the table.
“I really didn’t think there were that many of them that were qualified,” Duis said. “I just didn’t see the community policing, the years of experience to speak of, I guess, at a police chief level.”
“When I went through, I wrote down an awful lot of ‘No’s’ right off the bat,” Duis added.
Interim police chief Josh Dryden also seemed underwhelmed by most candidates.
“I think on a lot of these, they don’t qualify because they don’t have the small town (experience),” Dryden said. “They don’t have the real, on-the-ground police work. I feel that I am going to have to go and retrain the majority of these people to actually go out there and go to a call with me. And we don’t have the time.”
In an interview after the meeting, Dryden said he is very much in favor of McKillican, the Hoonah chief. Dryden has attended classes taught by McKillican, including a week in Hoonah last summer for training.
He called McKillican “honest” and “down-to-earth,” and said he was impressed with how McKillican treated dispatchers, officers and members of the public.
McKillican was the only police chief semi-finalist with Alaska experience, aside from local officer Brayton Long, who didn’t make the cut for the finalists. Before beginning work as a chief in Hoonah in 2014, McKillican worked in Fort Wainwright, Texas, as a training officer and watch commander for nine years. He also worked in Fairbanks and Fort Yukon as an officer and sergeant.
Both Stanford and Ewald said they were averse to candidates working in large cities within large institutions. “I shy away from the person that is from big infrastructure, simply because of the reason that they have a tremendous support structure around them. And the person that needs to be in this position needs to be able to operate within the fish bowl, probably without a huge support structure,” Stanford said.
Interim manager Ryan will reach out to the finalists to see if they are still interested in the position. Finalists will be in town May 13-14.
McKillican and Carelli each disclosed in their applications that they had once filed for personal bankruptcy. Semifinalist candidates Brayton Long and Michael Braly also acknowledged personal bankruptcies.