Police department carries on without chief

Cloquet police chief Jeff Palmer resigned last week, something which will change operations at the police department very little, as he had already been on “voluntary paid leave” since April 16.

Palmer, whose salary was set at $102,096.37, submitted his resignation Thursday, Aug. 8, effective the same day.

Patrol commander Carey Ferrell has been acting police chief since Palmer went on leave April 16, and city administrator Aaron Reeves said he expects him to continue in that role for now.

Ferrell, whose salary was increased to the same level as Palmer’s in his absence, said nothing will change now that Palmer has officially resigned.

“The only thing that changes is his name is removed,” Ferrell said. “I’ve been running the department since he left in mid-April. I will continue to run the department and move it forward, leave the past behind us and try to get everyone to work together.”

A 25-year veteran of the department, Ferrell is one of two commanders. According to the department’s policy manual, in the absence of the chief, the order of command goes to patrol division commander (Ferrell) first, and to the investigation/administrative commander (Derek Randall) if the patrol commander is not available.

The Cloquet City Council had closed its meeting briefly Wednesday evening to “review an employee’s health and medical data.”

Reeves said he could not confirm or deny whether it was Palmer’s data the council was reviewing. He did say that Palmer had been using accrued sick leave and vacation time over the months that he was off.

The process of filling the police chief vacancy will be discussed by the council, Reeves said, but he didn’t think a search or other action would begin immediately.

“I anticipate it will not begin until after the police study is completed, as this will be an important document that potential candidates will need to be aware of,” Reeves wrote in an email to the Pine Knot News. He said they were planning a conference call regarding the study Wednesday, Aug. 14 and he hoped to have a draft copy in front of the council by its Sept. 2 meeting.

“The city really should have a city administrator hired before they make that final (police chief) hire,” said Reeves, who recently gave notice that he is taking a different city administrator job in Hudson, Wisconsin. His last day in Cloquet is Sept. 5. “Even though I hadn’t started yet, I came to be part of the final library director (discussions). You want your administrator involved with those department head decisions.”

Palmer was appointed police chief only a couple weeks after Reeves started his job with the city of Cloquet on Oct. 2, 2017.

Palmer had been serving as interim chief after being appointed by the council in March 2017, when then police chief Steve Stracek was placed on paid administrative leave after members of the police union passed a vote of no confidence in Stracek. The council and former mayor Dave Hallback, a retired Cloquet police officer, bypassed the commanders in making that interim appointment after calling an emergency closed meeting to discuss the situation with Stracek and the union.

Although Stracek was ultimately cleared of any alleged wrongdoing and found to simply be doing his job as requested by the council when he was hired, he made a deal with the city to retire early in June 2017.

In October of 2017 — two weeks after Reeves started — Hallback motioned to add the police chief appointment to the council agenda for that evening and later motioned to appoint Palmer to the position on a permanent basis. Reeves assured the council that evening that he would have ample time to work with Palmer during his one-year probationary period to help him successfully transition to police chief.

While the appointment was legal, it deviated from policy and past practices for Cloquet city officials in several ways. City personnel policy states that all vacancies for permanent, full-time duties will be posted on the city bulletin boards and advertised in at least one Cloquet newspaper. The police chief position wasn’t. The Citizen Advisory Board — a three-person group appointed by the council to assist with hiring, discipline and firing in the police department — was also not part of the decision. Finally, making the appointment without any kind of testing or interview process went against past practices.

Although the appointment was not on the agenda for the Oct. 17 meeting, Reeves had included 13 letters of recommendation for Palmer in the council packet. Reeves said he included the letters because the interim chief provided them and they were pertinent to the discussion — which was contentious — held during the work session prior to that evening’s council meeting. Neither the official police chief job description or Palmer’s resume was included in the packet;

Palmer had a high school diploma and attended the New Orleans Police Academy for six months in addition to ongoing job training throughout his career in Floodwood and then Cloquet.

When asked about the requirement in the police chief job description for a bachelor’s degree in police administration, criminal justice or related field (master’s degree preferred), plus eight to 10 years progressive police experience, including four in a police supervisory capacity, Cloquet human resources director James Barclay said experience could be substituted for a degree.

In 2018, Palmer’s first full year as chief, the department was more than $200,000 over its budget, as detailed in last week’s Pine Knot News.