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Permalink Reply by Nick on December 7, 2008 at 2:05am

I work in Marshall, Mi in Calhoun County. We operate with a public safety director. Our last director was very good. We have three assistant chiefs on each shift and the director knew to stand back and let the guys who knew what they were doing run the show. He basically just took care of dealing with the city manager and the council. Previous directors had sucked. The one they had before i joined ignored the fire side and gave everything to the police, fire side had to beg for stuff. Due to issues we currently don't have a director. The deputy chiefs of both departments are in charge. The city council lis currently debating having seperate police and fire chiefs and just promoting the deputies.

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Permalink Reply by FETC on December 7, 2008 at 1:06pm

Can I ask how big is your department and how busy are you?

So you have Deputy Chief's that are now running the department in absence of the last Director and you have an A/C running each operational shift.

You must be top heavy. Basically already have enough chief officer's to not need a director anyways.

Most places around my way that look to go to a combined fire/police public safety diretor are looking to reduce the upper management due to the cost savings of his bigger salary.

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Permalink Reply by Jay Nicholson on December 7, 2008 at 1:20pm

This is just my opinion. It seems that in a few bigger depts the chief, although s/he came up through the ranks, has spent very little time actually in the trenches. There seems to be an 'administration' ladder that they take to the top. A couple years at most in each rank.
The advanced degrees that chiefs hold is usually a Masters in Public Administration. They're bean counters at that point. How many times have you actually seen the Chief of the Dept. at a routine working fire? Unless it is a major conflagration, I can't recall ever seeing the chief there.

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Permalink Reply by Ron Ayotte on December 7, 2008 at 2:16pm

If it is a big city department, the Chief should not respond to an incident until it has gone to mutiple alarms. he should be notified if there is the potential of mutiple alarms, or loss of life or injuries to the personnel under their command.

I suggest you read Leo Stapleton's "30 Years On The Line" and "Commish".

As far as the position of "public safety director"... a servant cannot serve two masters. Some people (especially politicians who look at saving a buck to make themselves look good at election time) have no problem with a Police Chief taking over the Fire Chief's job.. imagine the howling that would go on if it was the opposite? Critics would be coming out of the woodwork saying a fire chiuef doesn't know the laws, protocoals and procedures of police work. Firefighters, on the other hand are told to sit back, shut up and take whatever is given to us.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on December 7, 2008 at 2:32pm

WTF is the first thing that comes to mind. The next thing that came to mind is, as Ron points out, is Leo Stapleton's book "Commish."

The police chief may, or may not, make a good fire department MANAGER. As far as being a good LEADER... that is an entirely different thing.

I suspect the St. Joseph firefighters (combination of career and paid on call staff) are more than a little displeased. It's a small department with one fire station and a Captain, Lieutenant and two FFs on duty each shift, according to their web site.

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Permalink Reply by Jay Nicholson on December 8, 2008 at 11:27pm

Stick my foot in my mouth. Major incident today and there's the Chief. I agree with you completely. If the police chief had been laid off, the howling would have been heard here in SoCal

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