City of Ithaca
Chief of Police Search Process
Committee Resolves Debate on IPD Chief Search Input
The screening committee in charge of gathering community input in the search for Ithaca's next police chief decided at an emergency meeting Wednesday night that the Ithaca Police Department had not intentionally tampered with community feedback.
At Monday night's screening committee meeting, Ithacan Mayor Alan Cohen '81 and members raised concerns over results from forms handed out at a Jan. 22 community forum asking community members to prioritize a list of qualities they thought a police chief should possess. Respondents were also supposed to group characteristics into larger categories.
Committee members voiced apprehension because IPD members accounted for over half of the submissions.
In an interview yesterday, Joann Farbmann, co-chair of the committee and director of the Task Force For Battered Women explained IPD submissions accounted for 21 of the 41 total rating sheets submitted.
NO SKEW
Several members of the IPD attended Wednesday night's meeting and maintained that the department had not intentionally tried to skew the results.They explained they took approximately 30 forms, after being encouraged by the screening committee, and distributed them within the department to anyone available at the time, Farbmann said.
"We didn't skew the results," said Bill Finnerty, IPD police officer and screening committee member.
In an interview yesterday Finnerty explained "The real problem seemed to be the lack of responses on behalf of the community. If there were more responses from the community, then it wouldn't seem as if we were trying to sway [the results] them. No one within the department, as far as I know, had intentions to tamper with the rating forms."
Farbmann said the committee ultimately decided that there isn't any concern left that the IPD did anything wrong. She said, however, that because the committee received such a large number of IPD rating forms, the final results were contradictory to the priorities of many local residents.
UNSURE
Both Farbmann and Sivilay Somchanhmavong, co-chair of the committee, said they were unsure why the community response to the rating forms was so low.Finnerty explained IPD concerns and community members concerns are often different. "While the residents are looking for a chief to provide services reflective of the community, police officers are looking for someone they can work with, someone who possesses good management ability who can get along with his subordinates," Finnerty said.
Ithaca residents also held stronger concern for the issue of diversity both within the department and in the community.
"It's hard to hear that some of the police department don't consider diversity as an important issue," said Joyce Muchan '97, a Tompkins County Human Rights's commissioner.
The Cornell Daily Sun
2/14/97
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