The Paducah Police Department rushed background investigations and did not fully follow
its hiring procedure for police officer candidates the city commission hired Tuesday.
Assistant Chief Danny Carroll, whose division performs the background checks, said the
department’s staffing shortages — Tuesday’s hires still leave three positions open — both
increased the number of candidates needed and left fewer officers to review them.
“The constant rush to get these done led to having to alter the process,” he said. “The constant short staffing has affected every aspect of the department.”
Two of the officers the commission voted to hire Tuesday began classes at the state police
academy Monday. City Manager Jim Zumwalt said it has been city practice since he has been city manager and perhaps even before to allow the city manager to hire conditionally pending the commission’s approval.
“It may well be that the commission will want to change that practice or place restrictions on it,” he said. “If that’s the case, we’ll follow it.”
The ordinance outlining his duties says the city manager “may fill vacancies in the classified
service” pending commission action. The ordinance does not define the classified service,
but longtime city attorney David Denton said it has generally been construed as a reference to civil service positions, which would not include police officers.
The department’s hiring procedure sets out an order of steps, which include several screenings — a drug test and medical and physiological examinations — to be done at city expense after the commission approves the hire. According to city records, those tests were performed for the four candidates hired Tuesday sometime between July 14 and July 25.
Mayor Bill Paxton said it was understandable how the issue arose given the deadline to get the officers enrolled into the academy and recent turmoil in the department. Former Chief
Randy Bratton, who oversaw the hiring process, resigned and left the department last
week. Still, Paxton said he was comfortable with the decisions made by the department’s
management.
“I would say 99.9 percent of the time we do follow procedure,” Paxton said. “In
this case maybe we didn’t, but I don’t see a lot of harm that was done.
“I’m very comfortable that under regular circumstances that would never happen, and it should never happen.”
The background investigation of one of the candidates hired by the commission — Trevor N. Youngblood — turned up an assault charge that led to a loss of rank during his service in Army National Guard in Kuwait last year. The information provided to the city commission
characterized it as a minor assault and said he was highly recommended by his commanding officers, among others.
Youngblood and Derik Perry began the 18-week course at the state police academy
Monday. The department has to request spots in the academy, where a new class begins
roughly once a month. The department has three slots in the class that began Monday and three in the class that begins in October, but none in September or November. The department generally has to provide information about the officers to the academy three weeks before classes begin, but because of the time crunch the information was sent to the academy July 31. Commissioner Robert Coleman, who voted against the hires, and Commissioner Gerald Watkins questioned the way the process was handled.
“The city ordinance clearly states that the commission does all the hiring,” Watkins said. “When they’re already at the academy, in essence you’ve already hired them. To me that’s somebody overstepping their bounds.”
Watkins said the commission discussed waiting for more information on Youngblood before finding out during Tuesday’s closed session that he was already in the academy.
“We were all just flabbergasted,” Watkins said. “No one wanted to yank someone out of the academy. What choice did we have?”
Coleman has been a longtime critic of the city’s hiring policies and said this situation
is a clear illustration of the commissioners being excluded from the process despite personnel decisions being their responsibility under state law. “These people were hired
prior to the commission hiring them,” Coleman said. “That’s a violation of the state statute.”
Commissioner Gayle Kaler said the city won’t send officers to the academy before the commission votes to hire them again.
“Once I understood the situation, I understood why it was done that way,” she said. "They’re doing as much as possible to get those positions filled.”
Kaler said the city cannot afford to give up spots in the academy, and Commissioner Buz Smith agreed. “I think these candidates were vetted properly,” Smith said. “It’s a pretty stringent process, and they all go through the same process. I do not believe anybody was
treated any differently.”

C.D. Bradley can be contacted at 575-8617.
cdbradley@paducahsun.com
Printed in the Paducah Sun, August 14, 2008