By John Brice
Correspondent
Local residents and members of the media were left hanging by a City of LaFayette council meeting which had been scheduled for Tuesday, August 27th of 2024 that was canceled due to a lack of quorum with only two council members showing up to attend. After rescheduling the meeting for the very next night on August 28th, that meeting was canceled as well due again to another lack of a quorum with only two council members present. Councilman David Ennis and Councilwoman Tammie Williams were in attendance both nights while Councilman Terry Mangram, Councilman Toney Thomas and Councilman David Ellis were each conspicuously absent.
Retired Valley Police Chief Tommy Weldon and Chattahoochee Valley Community College Police Chief Danny Williams were on hand Tuesday night to present their recommendation of current interim chief Captain Christopher Trice to be selected as the new LaFayette Police Chief as members of the special committee assigned with that mission. Despite the impossibility of the council meeting being held that night, Mayor Vines asked the two chiefs to present their findings to the assembled crowd. Chief Williams began by stating “You guys reached out to me to form a chief of police hiring committee. Myself, Chief Weldon, Chief Head who is Eclectic Police Chief took on that task. Once the process was done with the closing of the applicants, I met with Ms. Tammie. She gave us the resumes and we went through them. We emailed Clerk Davidson the applicants that we wanted to interview, that we saw fit that were qualified for the job. We scheduled five for that day and only three showed up.”
Chief Weldon then remarked “Chief Williams provided some questions, I think it was twenty questions that we asked all of the applicants. You always ask questions about how they resolve conflict, what experience they have. After reviewing the resumes, you look at have they stayed anywhere any length of time or are they just jumping from department to department. That kind of stuff, you factor all that into I guess their reliability or their consistency. Of the three that we interviewed, Mr. Trice, his knowledge and I know he has an advantage because he has worked here twenty years. His familiarity with the city, his commitment to the city, his love of the city, you can hear it in his answers to the questions.”
Providing further context, Weldon continued “When you ask a question, some applicants will talk all around that question but never answer what you asked them. You know, they just like to talk about themselves but not deal with the issue you are trying to question them about. So, we saw some of that. Independently we scored all of the questions and added them up, Trice was definitely at the top of the three. I think his loyalty to the city and like I said his love of the city and the people showed very strongly.”
