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Date: 9/19/2023
AMHERST — Moving forward in the search for a new police chief, town officials reached out directly to the community, inviting the public for their assessments and their hopes in what qualities the department’s next leader should have and what type of person they should be.
Within two public listening sessions on Sept. 12, community members answered questions and engaged in dialogues with representatives from GovHR, an Illinois based executive search firm commissioned by the town to assist in the search process.
A new chief would fill the position vacated when longtime Chief Scott Livingstone retired in May. Captain Gabriel Ting has been serving in the interim role since Livingstone’s departure.
The sessions hosted at the Bangs Community Center and the Jones Library covered areas of background and experience, management styles and working relationships as key factors in identifying candidates. Whether or not a potential new chief has had experience policing in a college town and how long they would serve were also among topics of discussion among the group of approximately 20 at the Bangs gathering.
Community member Paul Wiley said a new chief would need to address the problems within the system itself, policing in general and the perspective of the officers as well the people of the town.
“I’ve said often to myself if you put good people in a bad system, the system wins. I think we have a lot of really good people here who want to serve this community, I think they’re suffering from systemic, you know, racially biased systemic malaise. It’s just there and it’s built into the system to such a degree that good people who are on the force are suffering. There’s mistrust, they walk down the street, people look at them make assumptions about them and vice-versa, police make assumptions about us too,” Wiley said. “So that system needs to be somehow dismantled and reassembled in a way that’s going to be workable here in Amherst, we’re not Minneapolis, we’re Amherst.”
Other community members said it is the responsibility of a chief to change the problems with the system as they impact the town and that should be considered in the overall selection of candidates.
Local resident Russ Vernon-Jones said an important direction to consider would be a new leader’s relationship with the town’s Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Service department and the need for a chief to address and work with a portion of the community’s lack of trust in the police.
“The community needs to know that CRESS has its independence and is its own program and responds to needs not at the direction of the Police Department, not under the Police Department, not carrying out the agenda of the Police Department but prioritizing the needs of the community,” he said. “So, in the sense that police, fire and CRESS are all equal divisions of the safety constellation, yes they’re partners, in the sense they have some different agendas and different responsibilities, they need to have their own independence.”
Resident Katherine Newman said a person who is “highly collaborative” would be a positive for the town.
“Amherst is such an interesting place, we have a very interesting town,” Newman said. “We have a lot of the answers within our community sometimes and if there’s a way that we can not rely on officers to fix many of those problems.”
Newman also acknowledged that finding a candidate who meets every qualification or standard would at a minimum be a challenge.
“I don’t know about you all, but I don’t know anybody who is perfect and can bring every single thing to the table,” Newman said.
Additional listening sessions will be conducted online and will include town administrators, committee members as well as police officers to help formulate what will be a template for the application, interview and recruiting mechanism.