PORTSMOUTH
To fill 39 police officer vacancies, Chief Tonya Chapman says, the city needs to reduce the power of the panel that vets candidates.
At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, she said some civil service commissioners’ strict criteria, such as opposing applicants who have smoked marijuana, “made no sense.”
Circuit Court judges appoint the commission, which assists in hiring officers and firefighters. It also provides a place to file grievances.
The current hiring process requires a majority of the panel to approve background checks.
The problem is, some of the commissioners base their criteria on principles from the 1990s, Chapman said, making it challenging to hire officers from today’s population.
“The commission feels as though they should be held to that same standard, and if that’s the case, we will never hire police officers,” she said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Her statement sparked a conversation about marijuana.
“In other words, they’d all smoked a little weed,” Mayor Kenny Wright said to Chapman.
“They all smoked a little weed,” she replied, “and one of the comments were, if they smoked weed more than 10, 20 times, that means they have a drug dealer, and they can be influenced, so they shouldn’t be police officers. And that makes no sense.”
Councilman Mark Whitaker added that the city could start seeing applicants from states that have legalized marijuana. So Chapman might approve that person and the commission wouldn’t, he suggested.
Chapman said the department tries to set a “reasonable” number of times that applicants could have smoked marijuana and considers how long ago they stopped.
“Where someone experimented as a juvenile or someone had a habit, that is a decision the fire chief and I feel as though we as professionals have that authority to make, and we have the experience and the expertise along with my HR and my background investigators,” she said.
During a recent round of hiring, she said, she submitted 12 candidates to the commission, and it turned down five. “I told them, I am 39 officers down, so you keep having these high standards that no one can meet, and we will never have officers on the street.” After the meeting, she said she’s authorized to have 254 officers on the force.
The process also puts Portsmouth a month or two behind neighboring cities that don’t use a commission, said Elizabeth Gooden, the human resources director. Norfolk is the only other South Hampton Roads city that does.
Gooden said all the localities are competing for the same candidates, so time matters.
City Manager Lydia Pettis Patton said revoking the commission’s power over background checks also was key to diversifying the Police Department.
Dropping the commission and using the HR process “will address the opportunity for a broad section of individuals to be able to apply and qualify to get into the public safety arena,” she told Whitaker.
Council members Elizabeth Psimas and Bill Moody said they were in favor of getting rid of the commission, and Whitaker appeared open to that. Curtis Edmonds and Paige Cherry supported giving more authority to Chapman. Danny Meeks was absent.
Only Wright advocated against making a quick decision and said he wanted a meeting with commissioners.
The Rev. Devlaming Peace, a commissioner, said he didn’t know whether the commission should be maintained. The 77-year-old has never been in law enforcement but said he has served about 28 years on the panel. He said that they use “basic” regulations to review officers’ background checks and that their process could be improved.
Commissioner Barbara Reynolds declined to comment when asked whether the group should remain.
Pettis Patton said the council would need to hold a public hearing on the question of terminating or altering the commission, and any changes would need to be sent to the General Assembly.
After the meeting, Chapman told The Virginian-Pilot there are 17 vacancies and 22 frozen positions in the department. She said the council has agreed to unfreeze them in increments of five as she fills openings. The council froze a couple dozen positions in May 2015 as it closed an $11.7 million budget gap.
Johanna Somers, 757-446-2478, johanna.somers@pilotonline.com Follow @JohannaSomers1 on Twitter.
