Evanston will announce the names of three final candidates for the vacant position of police chief on Friday, Aug. 26, City Manager Luke Stowe said during an Eighth Ward meeting Thursday night.
(Update: The names of the candidates were announced Friday. Click here for that story.)
Council member Devon Reid, (8th Ward), added that City Council and other city leaders interviewed a number of candidates for the job two weeks ago, and they narrowed their search down to three finalists.
Those candidates will participate in a public forum at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 8, and each finalist will have the chance to answer questions for an hour, according to Stowe.
Sol Anderson, the president and CEO of the Evanston Community Foundation, will moderate the candidate forum, Stowe said, but he did not give any names for the candidates. However, Stowe did say that two of the finalists are women.
Evanston has not had a permanent police chief in place since June 2021, when Demitrous Cook retired from the department. Currently, Interim Chief Richard Eddington, who served as EPD chief from 2007 to 2018, is leading the local force.
EPD has also faced problems with staffing over the last two years, and the department currently has 27 vacancies out of 154 sworn members, according to Stowe.
Recently, the department had to suspend its community policing patrol for at least the next 60 days due to understaffing.