Chaffee council to vote on new police chief

The Chaffee City Council will have a special meeting Thursday to vote on hiring a new police chief.

The city council met Monday and agreed to hire Chaffee native Jim Chambers to run the department, as well as appoint Steve Loucks to fill the remainder of Ward 3 councilman Bill Dysinger's term. Dysinger resigned earlier this year.

Chambers, who currently works as a jailer for the city of Cape Girardeau, has also worked as a Scott County Sheriff's Department deputy. He will fill a vacancy created when Jesse Chisum resigned after being police chief for less than a year. Chisum left the department to focus on completing a nursing degree. His tenure was marked by power struggles among the police, city council and the city's police board.

But Monday's meeting was invalidated by a technical glitch.

According to city attorney David Summers, four members of council were present at Monday's special meeting — not enough for a quorum — and councilman Tom Cunningham attended by phone.

Summers said on arriving at his office Tuesday morning, he double-checked Missouri's open meetings and records act, nicknamed the Sunshine Law, and found that, while emergency votes by phone or the Internet are allowable, a quorum must be physically present.

"I don't want to hang it all on the Sunshine Law," he said. "There is a quorum required in order to validly hold a meeting, and I don't want that issue to come into question later."

So he called city officials and advised them to have another special meeting, making sure at least five members of council made it to city hall.

Chisum was enthusiastically hired in August 2007, but the mood quickly soured and was followed by a series of confrontations among the new chief, the mayor, the city council and the city's police board. In October, Chisum rescinded a threat to resign; instead, the three police board members quit. Complaints mounted over investigative stops, and in February of this year, the city council attempted and failed to impeach Mayor Loretta Mohorc in a closed meeting. The Sunshine Law requires elected officials to be confronted publicly. Mohorc then tendered and withdrew a resignation.

The majority of conflicts appeared over by the time Chisum left the department.

The Chaffee City Council's special meeting is set for 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Chaffee City Hall, 222 W. Yoakum Ave.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127

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