CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The City of Corpus Christi is still working to find its next police chief.
Over 40 people have already applied and more may do so as the city works to eventually cut that list down to a handful of finalists. But, there are a number of questions that remain like whether or not interim Police Chief David Blackmon has thrown his hat into the ring.
"He thought about it but in the end he’s decided not to pursue being an applicant, City Manager Peter Zanoni said. "It was a tough decision for him but he feels he made the right decision.”
Chief Blackmon tell 3News that he wants to stay as the Assistant Police Chief of the Corpus Christi Police Department and simply decided not to pursue the job because he wanted to spend time with his grandchildren.
"We are in the process, as I mentioned, of getting a few more applicants to consider moving through the interview process and in the meantime the department is in real good hands with our acting chief,Chief Blackmon," Zanoni said.
Zanoni says the city is using a recruiting firm called Baker Tilly out of Chicago for the nationwide police search. The company has been going through a stack of over 40 applications and doing candidate interviews in an effort to try and get the list cut down to just a handful of people.
"We want to narrow that down to about, between four and six finalist candidates that’s our goal," Zanoni said.
In the end there are going to be four panel groups who will interview the finalists. One of those groups will be made up of Corpus Christi police officers who will grill the candidate on how they plan on running that department. City manager Zanoni will be part of another group and we asked him what he was looking for from a new police chief.
"What we want is someone who talks like a police chief, acts like a police chief and perceived to be a strong police chief," Zanoni said.
Zanoni believes that whoever is selected as chief is going to have not only be able to sell themselves to him and the community but to all of the new recruits hired by the city over the last few years. Those 100 officers now represent around 1/4 of the force.
Also, a new police academy is going to be held this summer which means another 50 cadets who will be joining the department of 454 sworn officers.
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