Annapolis Capital Punishment

The following has been generously provided by Doug Smith, president of the Ward One Association. CP invites comments and postings from other community activists and civic leaders.:

On January 14, I presented a petition to City Council requesting monthly updates on police force staffing. A number of people have contacted me for more information and to explain why I have suggested this approach. My total objective is to get the crime issue front and center on the city council agenda. As I'm sure you know, our form of government puts about 99% of the power with the Mayor and we need to engage her power in causing change. Only the mayor can set goals and tell department heads what she wants to see happen. Also the Mayor can focus attention on a project that requires cooperation between two departments – in this case, cooperation between APD and the City HR department.

I have attended almost every city council meeting for 2007. I do not recall one conversation about crime or discussion of new actions being taken. Maybe these discussions take place in other meetings, but city council is the main event in city government, and that's where I think most citizens would like to hear about actions and results. If there is more visibility to the positive actions taking place, then I feel citizens and business owners would feel more confident that pro-active measures are underway. In addition, if discussed before City Council, the Aldermen and Alderwoman have a chance to ask questions of the process. How are we doing relative to recruiting? in what towns are we recruiting? If people are turning us down, WHY?; Are we calling candidates to keep them interested rather than lose them to other jurisdictions?, etc.

Secondly, I have proposed that there be goals for hiring. I am a business person, and goals are the way you run a business. Someone will immediately say “ Annapolis is not a business”. But in this case, I believe borrowing ideas from business can be very useful. We have a lot of very talented people, experienced business people across the entire city. You set goals so you can measure progress. If you don’t meet your goals, you look into the problem and take corrective action. We now have about 19 vacant slots in the police force. To fill those slots takes a lot of work. Say you start with 179 applicants. You invite them in for testing... and only 65 show up. After the test, only 36 pass the test. You do background checks and interviews on those folks, and find that 17 make it through the 21 screening steps in the background check. Some of the 17 find other jobs or decide not to join APD, but you successfully hire 7 new officers. (the number of new officers hired in 2007.)

Now relate that to the 19 open slots we have today. if you work that back up the line, we need approx. 400 applicants to start the process. The Chief tells me recruiting is the job of the Annapolis HR department. APD does selection and training. So now it makes sense to ask the HR department to take us through the actions they are taking to attract another 400+ applicants, with the goal to see if some of our smart marketing and executive search people can help the HR department generate more good candidates.

The goal is to give more visibility to the hiring process. We need more police officers. I think the citizens of Annapolis can help with this process if given a chance. To apply our talents, however, we need to know where the problems are, and that requires open communication.

Doug Smith
Pres. Ward One Association.