A sergeant candidate may have to meet minimum qualifications, take a written exam, sit through a structured interview, complete an assessment, compete against other candidates, and live with a scoring system somebody can point to afterward.

Then the chief’s job opens, and sometimes the process gets looser.

A city may review resumes, conduct a few interviews, check references, and make the appointment from there. Some cities use much stronger systems, but I think we’ve got it backwards anytime we’re more deliberate about choosing the first-line supervisor than the person who’s going to run the entire department.

A sergeant may supervise a shift. The chief can shape hiring, promotions, discipline, training, policy, staffing, budgets, equipment, and the supervisors who carry those decisions into the rest of the department. That’s a much broader job, so I’d want to know more than where the candidate worked and what titles they’ve held.

ICMA and the Police Executive Research Forum published an entire handbook for local governments on selecting a police chief. It lays out a process from recruitment through appointment and treats the decision like the management decision it is. That doesn’t mean every city needs the same process, but it does show there are better options than relying mostly on a resume and a good interview.

A chief candidate may come from another agency with different ranks, policies, resources, and responsibilities, so using the same test we’d use for an internal sergeant promotion wouldn’t make much sense.

What I’d want instead is a process that looks at what the person actually did with the authority they already had. How did they handle discipline? Did they develop employees? What did they do with weak supervisors? How did they respond to political pressure? Did the organization they helped lead actually improve? Sure, a title tells me what position somebody held, but it doesn’t tell me what they did with it.

I’d also want the process to test the job they’re being hired to do. Can they manage a budget? Can they make an unpopular decision and explain it? Can they discipline somebody they like? Can they defend somebody who’s being treated unfairly? Can they make a decision when every option has a downside? Those questions tell me more than asking somebody to describe their leadership style.

And if we’re being honest, there are chiefs and sheriffs who would struggle with the same promotional process their own agencies require of people below them.

None of this means officers should choose the chief. The mayor, council, manager, commission, or whoever has the legal appointment authority should keep it. A structured process doesn’t take that authority away. It gives the people making the decision better information before they use it.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police describes an executive-search process that can include candidate profiling, job analysis, applicant screening, background investigations, interviews, and assessment centers while the hiring jurisdiction still makes the final selection. A city doesn’t give up control by asking better questions.

No selection process guarantees a good chief. People interview well. References miss things. Records can be incomplete. Politics are always going to be part of a job that answers directly to elected officials or city management. The process should still match the authority being handed over. It doesn’t have to look like a sergeant promotion, and it probably shouldn’t.

But if a city expects a sergeant candidate to prove they’re ready to supervise a shift, it should be able to explain how it decided a chief candidate was ready to lead the whole department.