Sunday, November 22, 2009
News, Politics, Atlanta
WHO BROUGHT APD CHIEF PENNINGTON TO ATLANTA?
By Stephanie Ramage
[Editor’s Note: When The Sunday Paper went to press on Thursday, Nov. 12 for the Nov. 15 edition, we had not yet discovered the identity of the executive recruiter who brought Police Chief Richard Pennington to Atlanta. As a result, the cover story, “After Pennington,” correctly identified the executive search firm picked by Mayor Shirley Franklin to find a police chief in 2002, but it didn’t identify Sam Pettway, the man who brought Pennington here.]
Sam Pettway’s employer, the executive headhunting firm Spencer Stuart, was one of five firms engaged in 2002 on a pro-bono basis by newly elected Mayor Shirley Franklin to find candidates to fill several key leadership positions in her administration. Spencer Stuart was tasked with finding a pool of police chief candidates.
Kasim Reed, who is now a mayoral candidate and who has frequently and erroneously been cited as bringing Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington to Atlanta, was one of five members on a transition team whose task it was to coordinate the efforts of those firms. Reed did not, however, have a direct role in hiring Pennington.
Civil rights attorney Lawrence Ashe Jr. headed the search effort from City Hall.
“Mayor Franklin did something unprecedented, in my opinion and experience,” says Ashe. “She determined that the top five or six positions in her administration would be filled on a purely merit basis.”
Ashe reached out to Pettway, who was at that time a senior executive with Spencer Stuart. The search firm, says Ashe, narrowed the field to 12 to 15 candidates, and the mayor’s transition team narrowed those to five before forwarding them to Franklin, who chose Pennington. Ashe recalls that the other top contenders included a second-in-command officer from Illinois’ state police agency who would later become chief of police in Richmond, Va.; a deputy chief from Washington, D.C.’s police department; an officer from Cobb County; and an officer from Texas. They’ve all since gone on to higher positions in their careers, says Ashe. There were two candidates from the APD, but they did not make the final five.
“I remain very proud of that search,” says Pettway. “Pennington was absolutely the right man at the right time for Atlanta.”
Pettway left Spencer Stuart to start Boardwalk Consulting. Boardwalk Consulting continues to do business with the City of Atlanta, having most recently recruited CFO Jim Glass.
Pettway dismisses any present disenchantment with Pennington among the populace and the police.
“Bitching and moaning about the leadership just goes with the territory in law enforcement,” he says, recalling his stint as a seaman in the U.S. Navy. “My captain said, ‘When the bitching stops, I start worrying.’”
Pennington gave Pettway another opportunity to do more headhunting. He suggested Atlanta needed a police foundation like that in New Orleans. Greg Giornelli, chief operating officer for Mayor Franklin, who was at that time her chief policy officer, turned to Pettway to find leadership for the Atlanta Police Foundation.
Pettway rounded up a board of directors, and in 2003 he recruited Elizabeth Kelly, a former executive vice president of the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, to head the foundation.
In 2005, upon Kelly's departure, Pettway tapped Dave Wilkinson to fill the post. At that time, Wilkinson directed the Atlanta branch of the Secret Service. Pettway says Wilkinson had been “the No. 2 man” on President George W. Bush’s White House detail.
“Dave Wilkinson was on the plane with Bush on 9/11,” says Pettway.
Wilkinson remains president of the foundation.
Pettway has not yet been retained to help find Atlanta’s next police chief. But, he says, “Both mayoral candidates have very good options to choose from within the police department.”
So was Pettway the guy The Sunday Paper’s New Orleans sources said came to check out Pennington but wouldn’t listen to critical comments regarding Pennington’s use of COMSTAT, a crime data-tracking system? Pettway says he thinks that may have been a news reporter or someone else. He doesn’t recall such an incident.
“The mayor didn’t even know what COMSTAT was at the time,” says Pettway, who serves as the foundation’s vice chair today. “I have no knowledge about the COMSTAT part at all.”
SP