City of Ithaca
Chief of Police Search Process
Major Project Events to Date
Community Interpretation Forum held Monday, February 10th
The community Interpretation Forum was held at Southside Community Center, and enabled the community to interpret and discuss the implications of the selection criteria developed by the community, and to give input on the Candidate Evaluation Form that will be developed to assess candidates when they come for interviews. Community members were in general agreement that the nine characteristic categories described well the range of issues the community had brainstormed and the 74 characteristics that were organized in the previous community forum. People had some concerns about how the concept maps could be interpreted, and made a number of suggestions for how they could be edited to more accurately reflect community views. Concerns were also raised that a fairly large number of officers in the Ithaca Police Department did the priority ratings and that the results of priority ratings might be skewed by their views and less reflective of the views of the community, apart from the department. It was decided that the Screening Committee would meet to discuss the feedback and decide how to proceed with revisions to and release of the results of the community input process.
Community Idea Organizing Forum held Wednesday, January 22nd
Community members met to organize and prioritize the statements that were brainstormed. This forum will involved interested citizens in two separate tasks. First, each person was given a deck of cards with one statement per card and asked to pile the cards into groups of similar ones. Second, each participant received a rating sheet with all of the final brainstormed statements and was asked to rate each statement on a 1-to-5 importance scale (where 1=Relatively unimportant compared to the rest and 5=Extremely important compared to the rest). This information will enable us to map the views of the community, develop a candidate evaluation instrument, and provide valuable information to the screening committee.Those who could not attend the meeting were able to pick up the complete set of instructions and materials, do the organizing and prioritizing at home, and drop their results at the drop boxes at:
The organizing materials were only available from Monday, January 20th through Wednesday, January 29th.
- The Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC)
- Titus Towers
- Northside Community Center
- Southside Community Center
- City Hall
Screening Committee Consolidates Statements to Final 74
The Screening Committee for the Chief of Police Selection Process met to review the 310 statements generated by the community. Because there were so many different ways community members could brainstorm statements (community forums, drop boxes, phone, web site) we knew there would be many similar statements. The committee carefully reviewed all of the statements and consolidated them to a final set of 74 characteristics that members of the community would like to see in the next Chief. You can review the final list of statements to see what will be used in subsequent phases of the process.
Community Brainstorming Completed
Members of the Ithaca community brainstormed the specific characteristics they would like to see in the next Chief of Police. People provided input in many different ways:
We received 310 statements in all! You can review the complete list of statements to see what everyone said.
- by taking part in one of our two community-wide forums;
- by submitting brainstorming forms that were printed in the Ithaca Journal;
- by submitting forms at the drop-boxes in various locations;
- by calling the 24-hour 800-telephone number;
- by entering them at this website
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This project is sponsored in part by:
Concept Systems Incorporated |
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