Mayor Tim Kelly will announce Chattanooga's new police chief by the end of the month, according to the city's timeline, and he has often said it could end up being "the most important decision" he makes during his time in office.
The mayor will announce the new chief after launching a nationwide search in October to replace former Chief David Roddy, who announced his retirement in June.
Late last month, the city announced it had narrowed its search to four candidates, representing a diverse pool of talent with varying levels of expertise and experience. They hail from Atlanta; New Orleans; Vancouver, Washington; and Chattanooga.
As the final selection nears, the Times Free Press reached out to each of the candidates and looked into their history to provide a clearer picture of what they may bring to Chattanooga's Police Department.
Celeste Murphy
Celeste MurphyAtlanta Police Department Deputy Chief Celeste Murphy, who was appointed in 2020, has made a name for herself as she worked her way up the ranks, with more than two decades of experience in the department.
She did not respond to requests for comment, but she detailed her job and what drove her to enter law enforcement in a 2020 department video.
"I wanted to be a police officer from watching TV," she said. "Looking at 'Cops' and 'NYPD Blue' and all of that stuff. It boiled down to dealing with some of the issues and people that are most vulnerable in our communities and developed somewhat of a passion that transcended itself and my career."
She added that working with the department's Special Victims Unit was an especially rewarding chapter of her life, saying it "tapped into why I originally thought about being a police officer, [which] was to help people. And those are your most vulnerable victims. [It was] one of my most enriching positions in this department."
Murphy, a Black woman, also discussed in the video what it has been like to work in a predominantly male field. As a minority, she said, there's a lot of pressure, and people are raised to "do better, you have to do more, and you have to be ahead of the game at all times."
Rather than compete with other officers as a minority, though, she instead competes with herself to continue to grow, she said.
"It was a lot more challenging than it is now," she said. "The Atlanta Police Department has become extremely progressive through the years."
Murphy held her role as deputy chief during the nationwide protests after former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in May 2020. She recalled both the protests and the aftermath as she and her department attempted to rebuild a connection with the community.
"I felt compelled to look at [the video] because with each incident we see, it taps into you in a different way to look for more ways of how we could do better as a department, how I could do better as an officer," she said. "I did look at it; it just crumpled me inside."
With distrust in police surging at the time, she said it's necessary for officers to be compassionate.
"There's nothing you can put into a bad cop to change that. So we need them out," she said. "I think that's one thing our department is good about. We're a reactor to disciplining and pointing out bad cops."
Noting she had a family member die in police custody in New York, she said she understands the desire for change. She also said she has no problem with protesting to make that happen.
"We don't mind protests, because that's what Atlanta's known for," she said. "And that's actually what we're good at."
However, she added, it was also hurtful to see how police officers were treated as they dealt with crowds of thousands of angry residents. At the time, the department saw a noticeable dip in morale.
The solution is to ensure that the police properly engage with residents and speak the same language as them, which the Atlanta Police Department has been able to accomplish in many cases, she said.
"I'd really like to see how that transitions into some of the people we reached out to and were able to find common ground and they come to the police department," she said. "Those are the types of people that would be awesome to work with."
Murphy has served as a patrol officer, detective, sergeant, lieutenant and captain. She was appointed to the rank of major in 2016 and was chosen to lead the Office of Professional Standards.
Last year, Murphy was among seven finalists for police chief in Austin, Texas, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Paul Noel
Paul NoelNew Orleans Police Department Deputy Superintendent Paul Noel has been nationally recognized for his ethics policies.
Noel, who declined an interview because of the department's Mardi Gras responsibilities, last year received the Gary Hayes Award from the Police Executive Research Forum, a national organization that recognizes officers with novel approaches to police enforcement.
"I'm truly thankful to members of [the New Orleans Police Department]. We have shown that we can effectively reduce crime by policing morally and ethically while continuing to build community relationships," Noel said in a statement last year.
Noel received the award for helping create the Ethical Policing Is Courageous program, which teaches officers how to interact with colleagues who may be breaking department policies or laws and intervening to prevent misconduct from happening.
His success led to a 2021 editorial in The Advocate, the local newspaper, that stated "New Orleans Policing is better because NOPD's Paul Noel makes ethics policies important."
"The Hayes Award is important recognition for Noel and the NOPD colleagues he's helped do the right thing," the editorial stated. "More important, however, is that New Orleans has seen fewer questionable or clearly inappropriate incidents. Thanks to Noel, citizens benefit from his desire to see his department serve citizens and visitors with behavior adapted by others."
In a 2020 Facebook video created by the department, Noel spoke of the importance of the program in the context of the death of George Floyd, a Minneapolis man murdered by former Police Officer Derek Chauvin that same year.
"I wasn't so much focused on what Officer Chauvin did, what I was really focused on was what the three officers who stood by him didn't do," he said. "That's what really EPIC is designed to prevent."
Noel has served in the department for more than 20 years. His experience includes serving as commanding officer for the special victims section, the criminal investigation division and the chief of field operations.
"I have spent a large portion of my career in the investigative support bureau," he said in the 2020 video. "My passion really does lie with working with victims of sexual assault, child abuse and domestic violence."
In a 2018 video by the department titled "Riding in Cars with Cops," Noel and a fellow officer also detailed what it's like to patrol the city.
In the video, a dispatcher describes a vehicle being sought following a carjacking, and the car promptly pulls directly in front of Noel and the driver as the officers are pulling out of a Taco Bell.
"It was kind of ridiculous. I was holding these drinks and one of them ended up dumping on the floor where we had a clipboard with all of our paperwork, and I ended up throwing the other out the window, I believe," he said. "I can remember vividly to this day about 4 inches of Coke and ice sloshing around by my feet as we're chasing this car that was just involved in a carjacking."
He went on to praise the department and the work it does for the community.
"When I came to the job as a 21-year -old kid, I had no idea that I would ever move up this high [in the department]," he said. "But if you work hard, value your partnerships within the police department, value your partnerships in the community and just do the right thing - it's real easy to do the wrong thing, but sometimes it can be difficult to do the right thing - but make the right decision and you'll be fine."
In his current role with the New Orleans Police Department, Noel oversees all investigative functions, the crime lab and various support functions.
Troy Price
Troy PriceTroy Price, 56, is assistant chief of the Vancouver Police Department in Vancouver, Washington. He also serves as the department's neighborhood liaison.
Homelessness has been a growing issue there, as in Chattanooga, and Price has been involved in addressing it.
"Our city here is a beautiful city," he said in a presentation at the Oasis Christian Center in February 2021. "There are mountains, there's rivers, trees, there's everything that one would think about when one thinks about what a beautiful place looks like. And so when we look at our beautiful city right now, what do we see? We see hurting broken people now, more than I've ever seen before. We moved here 23 years ago. And it wasn't like this then. But now if you take a drive around Vancouver, or you go across the bridge into Portland, what do you see? Broken people everywhere. They're living in tents. They're living in boxes, they're living under bridges. They're in our face, they can't be ignored anymore."
Local newspaper Clark County Today reported in 2019 that Price was working with community members to address their concerns about the homeless population, vagrancy and crime since a center for the homeless opened in November 2018. He took issue with a crime analyst's report calling an area where homeless people congregate an "open air drug market."
"A phrase like that is a little concerning because I think it presents an image that's different from the reality," he said. "Are people conducting drug sales in that area? I would guess they are. That happens all over our city. Parking lots of businesses and parks. Those are the places that people normally conduct drug sales when they're not inside of a private residence."
Price also told the news outlet neighbor complaints are not being ignored.
"I think it has guided us and some of our activity in that area, because we want to address those concerns," he said. "We certainly don't want any type of particular criminal behavior to get a foothold. And so when we can act in a responsive way that addresses the problems that we are seeing it enables us to address crime smarter, and actually increase the livability in the area.
"We are in this with them," Price said. "And we are going to continue to push, and push, and push until we've come to some meaningful solution that has long-lasting impacts."
Price noted complaints from the neighbors had decreased as the city focused on the issue.
"We don't want people to get frustrated and give up, and not report, that's for certain," he told Clark County Today. "And we said this at the meetings, and I will continue to say this, we have finite resources. And, you know, a person committing some minor infraction in an alley is not going to take precedence over an in-progress, violent crime somewhere else in the city."
When it comes to transparency, Price is a proponent of body-worn cameras for police officers.
According to Fox 12 News, the local city council approved an estimated $3 million in order to fund the program where both officers and cruisers will have cameras. According to the article, Price said that the program is much more than simply putting cameras on officers, it's about the staff that goes through the footage as well. Ultimately, Price said, it's about meeting community needs.
"The goal is ultimately to give as much transparency into what we're doing and how we're doing it and make sure it meets our community's expectations of us," Price said at a news conference announcing the launch of the program.
Price declined an interview in a brief phone conversation with the Times Free Press, saying he wanted "to respect the process and the mayor" in Chattanooga as they work to make the decision on the city's new police chief.
Glenn Scruggs
Glenn ScruggsGlenn Scruggs didn't expect it to come to this when he started out. In the world of law and order, he saw himself in the courtroom, fighting for the accused as a criminal defense attorney.
So, how did he get here? How did his journey weave its way into a longtime career with the Chattanooga Police Department, a rise in the ranks to the role of assistant chief with approximately 260 sworn officers under his command, and a tenure distinguished enough that he's one of four finalists to become the department's new chief?
Well, it seems that on his way to the courtroom, Scruggs, 50, got tired of the classroom, got burned out on his studies. At that point, his best friend advised him to try another direction - enforcing the law instead of arguing it.
"I was a professional student. I was always in school," Scruggs said in a telephone interview. "So I said, you know what, I will give it a crack, I'll do two years to sort of get some experience under my belt, and I'll transition and go on my normal way that I plan on going."
Those two years became 28 and counting. Since his police academy graduation in 1994, Scruggs has worked in the Public Housing Unit, the Neighborhood Policing Bureau and the Investigations Bureau.
He is one of the founding members of the department's Gang Unit and serves as the assistant chief for the department's Neighborhood Policing Bureau. He completed a three-month leadership program with the FBI at Quantico, Virginia.
Scruggs also completed a bachelor's degree in business from Belhaven University.
"It just kind of clicked," Scruggs said about his experience during the police academy and quipped that "the law enforcement bug bit."
Scruggs has been married for 22 years, has an 11-year-old son and comes from a tight-knit family. He said transparency and communication are important to solving any problem.
"Without transparency, the folks that are the neighborhood that you're working in, and the people that you're trying to build relationships with, they can't trust you," Scruggs said. "They don't know what you're doing."
Scruggs also talked about the importance of the community knowing that speaking up against any wrongful behavior by an officer will be heard and taken seriously.
"When John Q-citizen makes a complaint about [an] officer, they know they made the complaint, then they don't really know what happened on the back end of it," Scruggs said. "I really want to make people aware of how our process works. So they'll know that there's a really big accountability piece associated with that, and I think transparency will help that a lot, which in turn will help our relationship with the community."
Along with transparency and communication, Scruggs hopes to address gun violence in the city as well as drugs should he be selected as the next chief.
"Gun violence in this city is what we need to make priority right now," Scruggs said. "We need to make sure we beat those numbers back. Chattanooga is a beautiful city, it's got all these rivers and mountains and the aquarium downtown. None of that means anything if people don't feel safe."
As a Black man in law enforcement, there are things Scruggs has learned that he hopes to bring to the position of chief.
"What I saw from the George Floyd protests, there are still chiefs of police, still law enforcement officers and still people who think that we can't do any wrong, and that clearly isn't the case," Scruggs said. "We have to make sure that we articulate very well that certain things can't be allowed, putting your knee on a man's neck for nine minutes we can't excuse it. What I learned specifically was that we need to do much better."
Contact La Shawn Pagán at lpagan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6476. Follow her on Twitter @LaShawnPagan.
Contact Logan Hullinger at lhullinger@timesfreepress.com or 814-319-5158. Follow him on Twitter @LoganHullinger.