Police chief interviews open to public

The public will be able to attend the interviews conducted by the Police Advisory Committee in City Council chambers in the lower level of City Hall, 808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.

These interviews also will be shown live on CityCable 5 and streamed on the City’s website at www.spokanecity.org. The interviews are scheduled on July 25 as follows: 11:10 a.m. with Daniel Mahoney, 1:15 p.m. with George Markert, 2:20 p.m. with Frank Straub and 3:25 p.m. with Blair Ulring.

Residents can attend a meet-and-greet reception with the chief candidates in the Chase Gallery in the lower level of City Hall from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

• Daniel J. Mahoney, 62, was born and raised in San Francisco and has worked in law enforcement for 30 years.

Mahoney has served as interim assistant police chief and has been deputy command officer of the Ingleside Police Station for about 15 months. The station serves 123,000 people in six square miles.

Mahoney studied justice administration at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, Calif., from 1984 to 1989. He earned a bachelor’s degree in management from St. Mary’s College of California in 1995, then a master’s degree from Colorado Technical University in 2005.

Mahoney has been married 24 years and has two children.

• George E. Markert, 49, worked as a corrections officer for 3  1/2 years before joining the Rochester Police Department in March 1985, according to his résumé.

Markert became captain in 2001 and oversaw all investigations of police-involved shootings, in-custody deaths and other critical incidents. Markert earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Empire State College in Rochester, N.Y.

Markert is involved in church, school and other community activities, including the Rochester Rotary Club.

He and his wife, a retired police sergeant, have been married 22 years. They have an 18-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter.

• Frank G. Straub, 53, is a police reform advocate who was hired in Indianapolis in January 2010 after serving as public safety commissioner in White Plains, N.Y. since 2002. He previously served as deputy commissioner of training for the New York Police Department and was a special agent for 10 years with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General.

Straub earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from St. John’s University in 1980. He graduated from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 1989 with a master’s degree in forensic psychology, then earned his doctorate in criminal justice from City University of New York in 1997.

Straub is an adjunct professor at Indiana University and Purdue University.

• Blair J. Ulring, 52, spent his 25-year law enforcement career at the Stockton Police Department, about 50 miles south of Sacramento, Calif.

He began as a field training officer, a patrol sergeant and a traffic sergeant. He became chief of police in August 2009.

Ulring studied criminal justice at Sierra Junior College and San Joaquin Delta Junior College before receiving a bachelor’s degree in administration of justice from La Salle University in 1997, according to his résumé.

Ulring resigned in August 2011 after the Stockton City Council rejected his salary increase. Ulring told the local newspaper when he started in 2009 that he wanted to do a “top to bottom” review of the department’s resources, procedures and goals.