By Jack Krampitz
At a special meeting of the city council, Mayor Jeff Caggiano announced the appointment of Deputy Chief Mark Morello as acting Chief of Police and the city council voted to unanimously place Morello on Step One of the salary schedule for Chief of Police, effective Friday, April 6.
The appointment was a mayor’s appointment, so a vote by the council was not necessary.
A 24-year veteran of the Bristol Police Department, Morello has, until last evening, held the position of Deputy Chief of Administration. Previously, he was Deputy Chief of Patrol Operations, a lieutenant with responsibility for internal affairs and community relations, as well as lieutenant overseeing communications, specifically 911 dispatch.
The Middletown native is a child of immigrants who came to United States as teenagers from Sicily. He is a graduate of Xavier High School and holds a bachelor’s degree in public policy and government with a minor in criminal justice from Eastern Connecticut State University and is near attaining a master’s in public safety at the University of Virginia. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy, Quantico, Va.
As part of last evening’s meeting in the city council chambers at city hall, Mark Penney, director of human resources, explained the recruiting and hiring process for the next Chief of Police.
The city will be using the Daigle Law Group, an established testing authority that Bristol has used in the past, Penney said. The candidate pool will be determined in the next couple of weeks. The pool of candidates will first be limited to current Bristol police personnel.
The written exam will be held in early May, and the oral exam will be in late May or early June. The panel for the oral exam will be comprised of professional personnel in the law enforcement field.
Once the testing is complete, Penney said he will submit a list of up to the five highest scoring candidates to the Board of Police Commissioners, who will appoint one candidate from that list for the promotion. The appointed candidate is then subject to the approval and confirmation of the mayor and city council.
If the first candidate is rejected, the Police Board then appoints another candidate from the list, and the process continues until the eligibility list is exhausted. If that happens, then an open competitive exam process begins.
There was a brief discussion and questions were asked as to why the initial hiring process was for Bristol police officers only.
Penney cited a sentence in Section 60 of the city charter that states that the first competitive exam should be for internal candidates only, and if no candidate obtains a grade of 70 percent, then an open exam process will be undertaken, not limited to Bristol Police Department personnel.
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