In the 19th century, George Plunkitt, a leader in New York City’s Democratic Party, attempted to defend the spoils system of political appointments by saying, “You can’t keep an organization together without patronage. Men ain’t in politics for nothin’. They want to get somethin’ out of it.”
Cynical, self-serving political climbers like Plunkitt are exactly why the federal government (as well as most state and local governments) enacted civil service reform. At the federal level, the 1883 Pendleton Act stipulated government jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit. It provided a method to select government employees through competitive examinations. It also made it illegal to fire or demote covered employees for political reasons or to require them to give political service or payment, and it set up a Civil Service Commission to enforce the law.
Leaders in Washington knew then, as we now know, vesting too much power in too few hands is a recipe for failure, invites corruption and undermines the public will. The situation currently unfolding in the Pine Bluff Police Department provides a prime example for the necessity of civil service protection.
As reported in the Commercial, the Pine Bluff Police Department has been besieged by a rash of personnel matters. The case of Assistant Police Chief Ivan Whitfield stands out as a particularly troubling matter. Moreover, it is the kind of morass tailor-made to elicit lawsuits and needless costs to the public.
When the Pine Bluff City Council voted to disband the local civil service commission, it laid the groundwork for the kind of apparent managerial lunacy before us now. As governmental missteps go, one would have to look deeply into local civic history to find a bigger failure of public policy.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
If the civil service commission was still in place, Whitfield could have pleaded his case to that body, instead of there having to be furtive executive sessions of the city council to undo what appears to be the fruit of dubious personal intrigues wrought by police chief Brenda Davis-Jones.
Even the unsubstantiated allegation that Davis-Jones’ children, love life or personal affairs of any kind should factor into her professional relationships shows the folly of “at will” appointments.
Of course Whitfield’s once-lost-now-found gun only serves to complicate matters. Had that situation provided the only material facts at play, the necessary outcome would have been self-evident. As it stands, this looks more like a schoolyard ruckus than a disciplinary matter between two public servants.
All of this swirls back to an unavoidable truth: We need an impartial, third party to sift through the departmental wreckage. The erstwhile civil service commission would have been able to do just that, but the city council and mayor’s office just couldn’t leave well enough alone.
As Plunkitt said more than a century ago “they want to get something out of it.” The city council got “something” all right. They got “something” and it now covers the whole city in the stink of incompetency and governmental failure.
Regardless of whose version of events is ultimately validated, it’s obvious the public has already lost. At a time when the police administration should focus on fighting crime, they instead concentrate on sophomoric tit-for-tat antics.
This behavior is shameful, and we wonder if the police ship can be righted under its present leadership. Even with Whitfield’s reinstatement, the issue is not settled. In fact, things may now be worse than they were previously. Throughout the course of this whole sordid affair, the professionalism required to effectively manage a large public bureaucracy has been lacking.
If the city council wants to discuss something, they should start by empaneling a new civil service commission.