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St. Petersburg will replace Chief Goliath Davis III, who will become a deputy mayor Oct. 5.
By MIKE BRASSFIELD and LEANORA MINAI
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 27, 2001
ST. PETERSBURG -- Out of 117 candidates to be the city's next police chief, Mayor Rick Baker has picked four finalists, at least two of whom have controversies in their pasts.
Two finalists are local, two from out of town. Three are white and one is black. All are men with at least two decades in law enforcement.
"I have to tell you, I think we've got four good candidates for police chief," Baker said. The finalists are:
Chuck Harmon, St. Petersburg's assistant police chief in charge of patrol.
Luther Hunter, commander of the school services division of the Nashville police. Patrick Stephens, a Cleveland deputy chief.
Mack Vines, who was St. Petersburg's chief from 1974 to 1980.
The city will replace Chief Goliath Davis III, who will become a deputy mayor Oct. 5.
Baker says he doesn't have a front-runner in mind.
The only finalist who works in the St. Petersburg department is Harmon, 41, a 19-year veteran who lives in Pinellas Park but would move to St. Petersburg if offered the chief's job. He has helped Davis run the department's daily operations since Davis announced his upcoming retirement.
The other local finalist is Vines, 62, who was St. Petersburg's chief in the late 1970s.
He left to become police chief in Charlotte, N.C., and then Dallas, where he was fired in 1990 after being indicted on perjury charges. He was accused of lying to a panel investigating the firing of a white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Mexican citizen. Vines was acquitted.
Vines has declined to let the public see his performance evaluations from St. Petersburg Junior College's police academy, which he ran from 1991 to 1999. Vines said Thursday he would release the evaluations to the city for its background check.
Baker had asked Vines to interview community leaders about their next police chief. Later, Vines submitted his own resume.
The only black finalist is Hunter, 51, a 29-year Nashville police veteran who oversees school resource officers, DARE officers and crossing guards.
In April, Hunter was suspended without pay for 25 days after he was accused of intimidating an airport security officer who had stopped him for running a red light. Hunter says he was a victim of racial profiling.
The other out-of-town finalist is Stephens, who has been Cleveland's deputy chief of field operations since mid-1999. He oversees patrol, traffic enforcement and community policing.
- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.