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New police chief to be appointed Monday |
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Wednesday, 05 December 2007 |
 Bishop Police Chief Joe Pecsi won the SHIELD award for outstanding initiative from the Commission of Police Officers Standards and Training in June. He announced his retirement the next month, and has been putting in light duty these past several months due to a back injury. A new chief will likely be appointed Monday. Photo by Mike Gervais By Darcy Ellis
Editor 12-4-2007
By this time next week, if all goes as planned, the City of Bishop will have appointed a new top cop to fill the Bishop blues being vacated later this month by Joe Pecsi.
With little time to spare before Pecsi’s departure on Dec. 28, and after a five-month search, the Bishop City Council is preparing to appoint a new chief of police at its meeting Monday, Dec. 10.
Until then, the identity of the individual likely to become Bishop’s newest police chief – its third in five years – will not be made public.
According to City Administrator Rick Pucci, the frontrunner did beat out approximately 50 other applicants “nationwide” to be offered the chief of police post.
He or she was one of six candidates who made it to an initial round of face-to-face interviews with the Bishop City Council on Nov. 5. The council further widdled the field to three applicants who were called back Nov. 6 for a second round of interviews, and from there a top candidate was selected.
Responsible for bringing police chief prospects to the council’s door was the recruitment firm of Avery & Associates, whose services come highly recommended by officials from the Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST).
Avery & Associates was responsible for recruiting Pecsi in 2002, as well as Planning Director David Grahand Community Services Director Keith Cauldwell.
The police chief search worked much as it did five years ago.
In addition to extensive advertisement, brochures featuring the city’s police chief profile were mailed to possible candidates in communities of similar size to Bishops.
Once resumes began coming in, Avery & Associates specialist Gary Brown, a former police chief with extensive experience in municipal government as well as law enforcement officer recruitment, then narrowed them down and personally visited the candidates he thought viable.
He then compiled a list of finalists for the City Council to interview.
Those interviews took place with Pecsi’s retirement date looming.
His last day “on the books” with the city is Friday, Dec. 28, Pucci said, almost six months after he first announced his plans to retire in July.
Pecsi’s tenure as Bishop police chief these past five years was not his first stint with the department. He worked as an officer with Bishop PD from 1978-85 before departing to fulfill a lifelong goal of becoming a game warden and working for a larger governmental agency.
Seventeen years later, after attaining the rank of captain with the state Department of Fish and Game, Pecsi saw the Bishop PD chief post (left vacant by Bruce Dishion’s retirement) as a chance to return to law enforcement and put his outside, managerial-level experience to good use.
He was appointed to replace Dishion over two other top candidates who included the current lieutenant of the PD at the time, as well as a police officer from Baldwin Park.
Five years in to the job, Pecsi found himself sidelined by back problems, which many believe have led to his retirement.
Last week, at Pecsi’s request, the City Council determined that “due to specified disabling physical conditions, (he) is incapacitated within the meaning of the Public Employees’ Retirement Law for performance of his duties in the position of police chief.”
Basically, Pucci explained, the council granted Pecsi “an industrial retirement” designation, which doesn’t have any bearing on the benefits he receives from PERS.
Pecsi has been on “light duty” for the better part of a year, working 20 hours a week for the department while Lt. Chris Carter serves as acting chief.
“He comes in and does paperwork for us, which is a big help,” Pucci said of Pecsi.
And so it was “with mixed emotions,” Pucci told those present at the Nov. 26 council meeting, that the determination was being made that Pecsi is “no longer able to be the chief based on medical evidence we received” from his physicians in regards to an “orthopedic condition.”
In the meantime, Pecsi will continue light duty and possibly work with his replacement to assist in transition.
The new chief, if he or she accepts the job on Monday, is slated to officially start Thursday, Dec. 27.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 29 January 2008 )
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