Trying to implement swift and sweeping changes in a short time at the Roswell Police Department may have been the undoing of Chief Dwayne Orrick, who was unexpectedly placed on administrative leave and then resigned last week.
Orrick had numerous ideas on how to improve efficiency after he was hired to replace retiring Chief Edwin Williams in February 2011. He came to the department with a reputation as an experienced trainer and mentor of new chiefs for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. He also authored a 2008 book about recruiting and retaining good officers, “Recruitment, Retention, and Turnover of Police Personnel.”
Drawing upon his 21 years as the police chief and director of public safety for the city of Cordele, Orrick implemented a dizzying series of changes aimed at improved efficiency in less than two years. Those changes included reorganizing the entire department, overhauling the performance review process and joining the city’s SWAT team with the cities of Alpharetta and Milton to create a North Fulton SWAT team.
But it may have been too much, too soon for some employees. The only critique in Orrick’s personnel file related to the changes and how he communicated about them.
“He tends to rush things; therefore, he should focus on taking a measured approach to future change to ensure adequate time to communicate, assess & measure the effectiveness,” City Administrator Kay Love wrote in Orrick’s performance review.
Orrick did not return calls seeking comment, but his lawyer, Michael Caldwell, said he suspects there was a great deal of resistance to change within the department. Orrick’s predecessor had held the position for 16 years.
“Some people had gotten comfortable in ways of doing things that were not the most efficient or most ethical way to do things,” Caldwell said. “Dwayne’s efforts to change that probably incurred a considerable amount of push-back. And that push-back may have been exercised behind the scenes without his knowledge.”
City leaders have been mum about the reasons for Orrick’s departure.
“He’s a good guy,” said City Councilman Jerry Orlans. “He’s done some good things for us, but we’re not at liberty to jump in and discuss personnel.”
The quiet way Orrick’s departure was orchestrated has some residents concerned, said Janet Russell, 66, who has lived in the city for 40 years.
“As soon as I heard it, I thought, ‘I bet he stepped on somebody’s toes,’” Russell said. “We have a lot of micromanaging going on within city council as I see it and somebody probably didn’t like what he did.”
The city contracted with the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police to screen candidates for the Roswell chief job before hiring Orrick.
Frank Rotondo, the executive director of GACP, said Orrick was a very progressive chief who bested other applicants on measures such as command presence and technical and professional knowledge.
What happened in Roswell is not uncommon, though. LaGrange Police Chief Lou Dekmar, an internationally recognized expert in police management who chairs the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, said the average tenure of a police chief is three to five years.
City leaders are entitled to depose a chief, Dekmar said, but they may pay a political price themselves if the community is not on board.
“A community generally gets the kind of city police chief, city manager or city department head that they deserve,” Dekmar said. “If you have a sorry group of elected officials, over time you’re going to end up with a sorry group of department heads.”
The new deputy chief, Rusty Grant, a retired GBI agent formerly in charge of the Canton field office who was hired just a month ago, will serve as the interim chief until the position is filled. He said department services will be unaffected by the transition.
“Morale was and remains high,” Grant said.
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