By Ryan Spoehr
SLN STAFF
As the selection process to name a new police chief for the city ramped up, the top two candidates for the position socialized with area residents at the Cravath Lake Building.
After several hours of being interviewed for the job, Aaron Raap and Michael Scott mingled with people from the community just footsteps from where one of them will work full time after the departure of retiring Police Chief Lisa Otterbacher.
Raap lives in Milwaukee. He works for Ascension Healthcare as the second in charge of security for seven hospitals in the Milwaukee area.
“We have a staff of about 140 people,” Raap said. “It’s good work, but I miss my calling – public sector work in law enforcement.”
Raap was an officer for the Milwaukee Police Department for 26 years.
“I worked almost everywhere – not everywhere because it’s a large agency, but nearly everywhere from investigations to patrol to detective to captain. I ran the downtown police district and I ran homicide before I retired,” Raap said.
Scott is from McHenry, Ill., just south of the Wisconsin border. He is the deputy chief of the Round Lake Beach, Ill., Police Department.
“The reality is right now, I do the chief’s job,” Scott said. “I don’t mean that he doesn’t do his job. What I mean is he understands what I’m looking for in a career. He lets me do those things. I do all the things a chief does. I go to the board meetings. I present. I go to the committee meetings.
It is unknown when the new chief will be named, but a decision by the Police and Fire Commission is expected soon. The commission was scheduled to meet Thursday. There was an agenda item stating, “consideration of direction to city staff to proceed with a conditional offer, negotiation and background check for a finalist.” However, the meeting was cancelled, according to an email sent by Kathy Boyd, the support services manager for the Police Department, on Thursday.
For more on the police chief candidates, pick up the March 8 edition of the Whitewater Register.
