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Here's salute to retiring chiefs
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Here's salute to retiring chiefs
Due to the nature of the jobs, the working relationships between newspaper editors and police chiefs can be harmonious one day and adversarial the next.
But I have no mixed feelings about the recent retirements of two of this area's longest serving chiefs -- James Jimison in Bainbridge and Wayne Godzich in Solon. They are two of the finest law-enforcement professionals I've known in my 33 years of editing newspapers.
Police and journalists share an interest in the welfare and safety of the people in their communities. In that pursuit, we work together in providing important information to the public, such as making residents aware of criminal activity in their neighborhoods, seeking witnesses to crimes or disseminating composite sketches of suspects.
Sometimes there are disagreements over public records. The citizens have a right to know whether their government agencies, including police departments, are serving their best interests. But they do not need to know the details of investigations that might jeopardize witnesses or prematurely alert suspects to impending arrests.
While police and journalists both are committed to the Constitution of the United States, we sometimes disagree over its interpretation.
I have objected to searches of students' cars in high school parking lots, for example, and to criminal charges against juveniles who happened to be present but had consumed no alcohol at a teen drinking party. I criticized the intrusion by officers without a search warrant into a home where they knew juveniles had been drinking but where the adult owner refused them entry. Police chiefs and I have disagreed over what constitutes the unreasonable searches and seizures that are forbidden by the Fourth Amendment.
More often than not, though, my editorials and opinion columns have praised the work of these two police chiefs and their respective departments.
I've known Mr. Jimison since the late 1970s, not long after he was hired as Bainbridge's first police chief. I was among the journalists who reported on his firing at that time by a contentious board of township trustees and his subsequent reinstatement. I defended him against another termination attempt by two different trustees and bogus allegations surreptitiously raised in the late 1990s by a former Geauga County sheriff.
I've also known Mr. Godzich since the late 1970s, when he was a member of the Solon detective bureau. Believing Mr. Godzich was the best candidate for the police chief's job in Chagrin Falls in 1994, I raised questions about then-Mayor Edward R. Towns' choice instead of James Brosius, a Shaker Heights officer who was at the center of an ongoing legal dispute involving the termination of a fellow officer.
That decision turned out to be as good for Solon as it was for Chagrin Falls. Mr. Godzich was appointed as Solon police chief two years later by then-Mayor Robert A. Paulson. Under new leadership, integrity and professionalism were restored to two police departments.
Like other citizens, journalists value the vital services that are provided by local police. We also value honest and open communications from law-enforcement leaders who understand our dual roles in American democracy. On that note, I salute Chief Jimison and Chief Godzich.
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