For a few moments, Aberdeen’s City Council meeting Monday night was sickeningly sweet.
After Police Chief Randy Rudy gave his regular update to Aberdeen Mayor Mike Bennett and three members of the city council - Ruth Elliott, Ron Kupferman and Ruth Ann Young - the elected leaders fawned over the chief. (The fourth, Mike Hiob, an avowed Rudy supporter, was absent.)
The praise for Rudy was the Aberdeen government’s way of telling the public that no matter what they had heard, and there was plenty of whispering around the city about the chief’s future, Rudy wasn’t going anywhere. Of course, not unless he won the lottery or choose some other reason to leave on his own. The elected officials abandoned any notion they may have had about trying to get rid of him.
Monday night’s show of affection, started by Elliott and quickly followed by Kupferman and Bennett, put the majority of Aberdeen’s five elected leaders on the record as publicly supportive of Rudy. That’s probably best.
The only thing cattier than small town politics is small town police politics. And that’s unfortunate because if there’s one thing overtaxed residents of small towns should be able to depend on is the comfort of a stable police force.
In Aberdeen, and small towns elsewhere, the police chief shouldn’t be caught in the divisiveness of yakking, part-time politicians. They shouldn’t be, but they almost always end up stuck between bickering politicians. Gone are the Andy Griffith/Barney Fife days. Small town policing invariably has become as dangerous as big city policing. There are a lot fewer of them than in the cities, but there still are drugs, gangs, guns and the potential for big-time, lethal violence. And that takes a professional police force led by a professional police chief.
Does Randy Rudy have shortcomings? Who doesn’t? But by all public appearances, he is a professional who represents Aberdeen well. That doesn’t mean he’s not often the target of criticism from folks who don’t have the experience nor the insight to make honest judgments. That’s just part of the business of being a small town police chief.
The most important part of being a small town police chief is getting everyone in the agency to do the best they can to protect those in their community. Monday night’s city council meeting should go a long way to getting members of the Aberdeen Police Department to focus on their jobs and not idling away any more time speculating on whether Randy Rudy is going to still be their boss.
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