In or out? Stay or go?
Those are the questions facing Aberdeen's mayor and city council and the city's chief of police, Randy Rudy.
Rudy's contract comes up for renewal next month and, unless a majority of the council votes to end it, the contract automatically rolls over for another year.
Outwardly, at least, Rudy, a retired Maryland State Police trooper who has headed the Aberdeen force for the past eight years, is sanguine about his prospects for staying on the job.
"As long as the majority of the city council wants me to run the police department, I would like to, for at least the next several years," Rudy said this week, adding he has no retirement plans for the near future.
With just weeks remaining, however, the chief hasn't received any indication if new mayor Mike Bennett wants him to stay, or if the majority of the council supports keeping him, though he says he has been talking with council members.
But there are strong indications from several city government insiders that it's just a matter of time before the chief will be sent packing — his bags, not his gun.
To get rid of Rudy as chief, it will take three votes from among four council members and Bennett, who each have a vote.
In all likelihood, if Bennett wants to replace the current chief, he'll get the other two votes he needs.
On Thursday, Bennett was evasive about Rudy, saying nothing has been decided about the chief and claiming not to know any details about Rudy's contract, which Rudy says renews automatically for a year come February.
"I requested information including contracts from the city manager, but I haven't seen or looked at anything in detail yet," Bennett said, adding it wasn't appropriate for him to discuss Rudy's contract at this time.
Rudy says he has had minimal interaction with the new mayor, claiming the two communicate through City Manager Doug Miller when the need arises, which is no surprise since Bennett campaigned on the promise of being a "hands off" mayor who wouldn't have daily interactions with the police chief.
"I think he has maintained what he said he would do that way," Rudy said Thursday.
The chief faced similar uncertainty about his job two years ago, following the election of S. Fred Simmons to the mayor's office. When Simmons took office, he believed the department wasn't waging an aggressive enough campaign against criminal elements in the city, particularly drug dealers and gang members or wannabes. The former mayor quickly learned he could work with Rudy and the two formed a close working relationship. During his two-year term, Simmons allotted funding to the police department to hire more officers and boosted the pay of those already on board. With some direction from Simmons, Rudy established a small task force called the "Rapid Response Team" to patrol crime hotspots, and arrests in the city climbed. Rudy also worked with Simmons to set up a street surveillance program around the city, modeled after a similar program in Baltimore City and with the support of Gov. Martin O'Malley.
The closeness between Rudy and Simmons became a potential liability for the chief, however, once Bennett, a former state trooper himself who still works for the agency in an administrative capacity, defeated Simmons in November's municipal election. Bennett made it clear during his campaign and shortly after that he did not support Simmons' anti-crime initiatives, particularly the way the former mayor would ride along with Rudy through some of the city's most crime-ridden neighborhoods and Simmons' much-talked about habit of carrying a handgun.
Thus far, Bennett and his chief advisor, Art Helton, who leads the mayor's transition team, have tried to deflect questions about the future course of the police department. Helton said recently he believes the top priority for the administration is to bring the police officers' service requirements and retirement eligibility in line with those in other area departments in order to reduce turnover, which is costly and impedes the mission of the department.
Helton also declined to comment Thursday on Rudy's future with the department, saying the transition team's mission is strictly to observe city functions and not to review individual employees or contracts.
"We're not doing evaluations on individual employees and we're not offering recommendations," Helton said during a phone interview.
The committee is expected to make its reports to the mayor and city council in two weeks, after which a public meeting will be scheduled to go over the findings.
Bennett wouldn't even endorse keeping the "Rapid Response Team" or the street surveillance program, both started by his predecessor Simmons, even though both programs recently received awards from the governor.
With February just around the corner and no reassurance from the mouth of the new mayor, it looks like a rough few weeks for Chief Rudy, as he rides the roller coaster of his future.
Originally published in The Record 1/4/08. |
