The choices are down to four. Three candidates to head Atlanta's police oversight agency already live in the metro Atlanta area, and one is from New Orleans.
One is a man and three are women. Two already work for the city of Atlanta.
All want to be the next executive director of the Atlanta Citizen Review Board, created in response to public outrage at the police shooting of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in her home during a botched drug raid in 2006.
The candidates took questions from the civilian members of the board that governs the agency and then from 10 members of the public Thursday.
More than 160 people applied to succeed former executive director Cristina Beamud. The four remaining candidates were selected out of 10 finalists.
“It is our belief, the search committee’s belief, that each of these candidates present sufficient qualifications,” said Alan Morris, who was chairman of the search committee.
The board said it hoped to meet next week and choose a new executive director, a full-time paid position, from among these four candidates:
- Valerie Bell-Smith of Atlanta is a senior public relations manager in the city's Department of Public Works. She was an executive assistant with the Atlanta Police Department from 1992 through 1994. Her bachelor's degree from Georgia State University is in public administration and economic development.
- Clyburn Halley was chief of the Grantville Police Department for more than a year, and he was a captain with the DeKalb County Sheriff's Department. He has a degree in criminal justice from Saint Leo University.
- Sheena Robertson of Marietta is one of two investigators for the Atlanta Citizen Review Board. She has a degree in political science from City University of New York and a degree from Hofstra University School of Law.
- Holly Wiseman was the deputy "independent police monitor" in New Orleans and was a civil rights prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice. Her degree in romantic languages is from Princeton University, and her law degree is from Boston University School of Law.
The ACRB has been without an executive director since November when Beamud resigned. She had a difficult relationship with the Atlanta Police Department and its officers, who initially refused to answer questions from ACRB investigators.
Also, the agency is facing the threat of changing its purpose and how it operates.
The Atlanta Police Foundation, as well as the APD, have pushed to shift the ACRB from an independent investigative agency to one that reviews completed police internal investigations.
The candidates agreed that the ACRB should continue as an independent investigative agency and that an "audit model" would be ineffective.
At the same time, all four candidates promised to work in concert with the APD, but they all said it was just as important to work with the community.
"I want justice for the police officers. I want justice for the victims," Wiseman said.
Questions from board members concerned getting more public attention for the board and recent decisions to remove from the ACRB’s website reports and information that have not been altered to hide names of officers and the people who file complaints against them.
Bell-Smith spoke of her experience working with neighborhoods. Halley focused on his experience in law enforcement. Robertson said she “started the entire investigation process” at the newly created ACRB and she was already on the job and "can start today." Wiseman explained that she had set up a similar board in New Orleans and had extensive experience in police oversight and experience as a federal investigator.
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