Selectmen voted 3-0 to offer Plymouth Police Capt. Bruce McNamee the Edgartown police chief position at the board’s regular meeting on Monday.
“This is a dream come true for my family,” he said after the vote. “You have a great community here and a great department. I can’t wait to work here.”
The board’s unanimous decision came after the three final candidates, McNamee, Robert DeFlammis Jr., assistant chief of police at the Massachusetts Port Authority, and Brian Lauzon, lieutenant with the Natick Police Department, spent the day meeting with rank and file in the morning and interviewing with selectmen at a crowded public meeting in the afternoon.
McNamee, 48, has been a police officer for 24 years, four years as an environmental police officer, holds two master’s degrees, and has the strongest ties to the Island of all three candidates — his wife Mary is from Oak Bluffs and they will live in the house where she grew up.
“I very much want to come here to raise my family, see my son go to Martha’s Vineyard high school,” he said during the interview. “I’m coming here whether you hire me or not. I plan on retiring here.”
All candidates were asked how they would deal with morale issues, a hot topic in Edgartown of late. “You have to make sure information is passed out in correct manner,” he said. “We have an open-door policy. But you also have to go to the officers, get a feel for their job, go on ride-alongs, to properly assess morale.”
McNamee said he thinks Edgartown has the reputation for being the best department on the Island: “The problems they’ve had, they’ve kept to themselves.”
McNamee has served for 10 years as administrative captain in Plymouth, where his duties include accreditation manager, budgeting, and negotiations.
He said he’s wanted to work on Martha’s Vineyard for years, and that in 2015 he “pestered” former acting chief Jack Collins about the job that eventually went to former Chief David Rossi. He was also a finalist for the Chilmark police chief job last year.
McNamee said his favorite part of his current job is being the Plymouth police department delegate to the Council on Aging.
In brief remarks after the interviews, selectmen chairman Art Smadbeck said he thought any one of the three candidates could be chief. “Our job is to find the best fit. Who fits in Edgartown,” he said.
Selectman Michael Donaroma said he saw different strengths in each candidate. “I’m concerned who will come here and stay here,” he said.
Board member Margaret Serpa agreed with Donaroma on the importance of the next chief planting Island roots. She also said the new chief should be “low-key when he comes in, not too gung-ho.”
“Two of those candidates met those criteria. One of them was over and above fitting into the department,” she said, clearly referring to Robert DeFlaminis, assistant police chief with the Massachusetts Port Authority. DeFlaminis has an impressive résumé. Before taking the job at MassPort, he retired from the New York City Police Department, where he held the position of patrol commander. If the board knew it wanted a low-key, small-town chief, it’s hard to imagine why DeFlaminis, who looks like a police chief out of central casting, and made his career in big city departments, made it to the final three. In 2006, DeFlaminis took the job of police chief in Winchendon, and quit after one day.
Brian Lauzon listed his extensive leadership training, which included the “Pinnacle of Leadership” training at FBI headquarters in Quantico, Va., as one of his strongest assets developed in his 20-year career.
Addressing the undercurrent of the need for change in the department, he said, “I see change differently than many. I consider myself a change agent. Many people fear change for all the wrong reasons. Change allows us to grow, and to be more professional in what we do.”
Lauzon was on the state assessment team that awarded certification to the Edgartown Police Department and Oak Bluffs Police Department, and, he said, will soon award accreditation to the West Tisbury Police Department.
He also said that serving the senior population is a top priority. “My grandmother raised me; it was instilled in me at an early age,” he said. Lauzon said he is the founding member of the community support team that regularly meets with the Natick Council on Aging, and as the recent storms have shown, extra efforts need to be taken to make sure the senior population gets the extra care it needs in an emergency situation.
“To me this is a job of a lifetime,” he said. “I don’t think anything needs to be fixed. There’s nothing wrong with this organization; it’s a good group of professional people.”
