Today, the public will get its first chance to hear from the seven candidates vying to be police chief for the city of Dallas. The panel will be streamed from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The city has used a series of surveys to solicit input from the public. About 4,500 took part in the first. Today’s public interview is an upgrade from the original plan, which included a series of panels with community groups as selected by the city manager. Those still happened yesterday, but were not broadcast publicly. Today’s panel will be; its moderator is Gary Peterson, the head of the search firm that helped identify the finalists. The city again used a survey to help guide the questioning, but that closed yesterday at noon.
You can stream today’s panel at this link.
Four of the candidates are current or former high-ranking officers within the Dallas Police Department: Deputy Chief Albert Martinez, the former head of the Southwest Division who left the Department to run security for the Catholic Diocese of Dallas; Assistant Chief Avery Moore, who heads the Investigations and Tactical Branch’s 865 sworn detectives and support staff and its $127 million budget; Maj. Malik Aziz, who was a finalist for the job in 2017 and is one of the final two selections for Milwaukee’s chief; and Deputy Chief Reuben Ramirez, who is over four divisions, 16 units, 474 officers, and a $100 million budget.
The external candidates include Irving Police Chief Jeff Spivey; Charlottesville, Virginia Police Chief RaShall Brackney; and outgoing San Jose Police Chief Edgardo “Eddie” Garcia.
The city has pulled together their biographies here.
What priorities do you have for the police chief? We’ve put together a quiz using some of the selections the city provided. Fill it out below, then we’ll publish the answers next week. (For the ranking priorities, we used the same selections the city provided in its survey.)