Two finalists named for police ombudsman

Spokane once again has two finalists for the job of police ombudsman, one of whom has been doing the job since February.

The city’s ombudsman selection commission named Bart Logue, the current interim ombudsman, and Jacquelyn MacConnell, the commander of the Cape Verde Marshal’s Office in Arizona, according to a news release. MacConnell was formerly an officer with the Phoenix Police Department.

The police ombudsman commission will decide whether to move forward with those candidates at an Aug. 2 meeting and will likely conduct interviews and community meetings in mid-August, the release said.

This is the third round of ombudsman candidates being considered by the commission. A lengthy hiring process produced three finalists nearly a year ago, but two were rejected over concerns about their background, and the remaining candidate, a Canadian, was not able to secure a visa.

A second hiring process that began in late 2015 ended with three interim ombudsman finalists. Logue was selected from among them.

The city laws governing the ombudsman’s office require the selection committee to pick three finalists, but the committee wasn’t able to do so, the release said. Of the 11 applications the city received for the job, only seven met minimum qualifications for the job. The commission decided to interview five of them, but three withdrew from the process shortly before interviews, the release said.

The names of the other candidates were not released because several of them requested confidentiality.

“The Committee decided that it was not in the best interest of our community to further extend this already lengthy process” by re-opening applications to find a third candidate, the release said.

Rachel Alexander