MEMORANDUM

TO: City Council

FROM: David J. Deutsch, City Manager

SUBJECT: Police Department

DATE: November 16, 2005

When Bowie voters went to the polls on November 8th, approximately 77% voted “yes” to the question of “Should the City of Bowie establish a local police department…”.

The ballot question was advisory, and therefore City Council needs to take action to initiate implementation of the police department. If Council approves going forward, staff will begin to prepare a Master Implementation Plan. We may need to recommend some consulting assistance as we proceed.

RECOMMENDATION: City Council should direct the City Manager to initiate the implementation of a local police department for Bowie.

The first order of business is to hire a police chief. I suggest using an executive recruitment firm to assist in the selection of the chief. Using a “head hunter” has become quite commonplace across the country in recruiting municipal managers and certain department heads.

Preliminary contacts with several executive recruitment firms with national practices indicates that the cost of the engagement would be approximately $15,000 to $25,000. Some of the organizations are within our region, such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), both of which are located in Northern Virginia.

The benefits of using an executive recruiter include:

• Experience in recruiting for this critical position.
• Familiarity with top professionals in the field.
• A focus on the recruitment.
• A tested process of review of applicants, assistance in short listing the contenders, interview process, and background check.
• Use of a community/position profile that goes beyond the job ad placed in newspapers and trade journals.

We have a very busy personnel operation. They do not have sufficient time to focus on this recruitment and assist in producing the needed result in as timely a fashion.

My intent is to put an RFP on the street next week and have responses due within three weeks.

DJD/asf