Community relationships, front line experience push David Dostal to top of Cedar Rapids police chief candidates

CEDAR RAPIDS — Capt. David Dostal’s front line, boots-on-the ground policing experience — from his earlier days as a bicycle patrol officer to rising through the Cedar Rapids Police Department ranks over more than 30 years — pushed him to the top to become the city’s next police chief.

Several members of the community and Cedar Rapids City Council, which unanimously approved Dostal’s appointment as police chief Tuesday, favored the homegrown candidate after a nationwide search. Council member Scott Olson was absent.

As a candidate with extensive relationships throughout Cedar Rapids, City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said he selected Dostal to build upon a framework of community engagement, transparency and collaboration within the department and beyond.

Starting Feb. 28, Dostal, 56, will assume his role at the helm of the department, which employs 270 full-time equivalents. His salary will be $174,953.46.

Dostal succeeds Wayne Jerman, who retired last April after aging out of his certification when he turned 66 years old and signing a severance agreement with the city. Deputy Chief Tom Jonker has filled the role on an interim basis.

“It’s all about partnerships,” Dostal said. “It's about conversations. It's understanding and learning about each other. I am all about being in partnership with all the community. I firmly believe that develops the trust and it's a two-way street. We learn from the community, the community learns from us, and that is the biggest way I see of developing a partnership that will ensure a safe and secure community.”

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‘Competitive process’

Before the council voted to make Dostal’s appointment official, council member Marty Hoeger said about a month ago, Pomeranz told him, “There's a name that's kind of rising to the top and we've got to go through a process.” Hoeger said he responded, “Absolutely, we have to stick through the process, because you never know who may rise in every process. But I will tell you, Jeff, that if it is David Dostal, we win.”

In media interviews after the meeting, asked about Hoeger’s remarks and whether he knew he wanted to hire Dostal before the Feb. 7 interviews with all four finalists, Pomeranz said he did not.

His conversation with Hoeger would have been before the Civil Service Commission on Jan. 30 narrowed a pool of 17 applicants to those four. The other three were:

“There just was a number of people who thought he’d be an excellent person for the police chief position,” Pomeranz said. “He did mention that, and yet what was most critical was the competitive process.”

The city spent $62,650 for Virginia-based International Association of Chiefs of Police to assist with the national search. Members of the city’s Executive Team; a selection committee, including a member of the Citizen Review Board as laid out in city code; a six-person focus group from the Police Department; and a community group committed to strengthening community-police relationships participated in Feb. 7 interviews.

There was a possibility Pomeranz would do additional site visits to visit external candidates’ departments, but he did none.

Ultimately, Pomeranz said the community’s support of Dostal and his experience swayed him toward the internal candidate. He received at least 30 letters largely favoring Dostal as the next chief. Of the 31 letters provided to The Gazette through an open records request, only one favored Coday for the role.

“The care that David has for Cedar Rapids, the knowledge of Cedar Rapids, the experience he’s had with the citizens and the officers really made him stand out in my mind as an outstanding candidate,” Pomeranz said.

Council member Dale Todd, chair of the council’s Public Safety and Youth Services Committee, said he believes the “process was pure” and without any undue influence from council members.

“It's a question of do you bring somebody in to build a department, or do you bring somebody who’s already engaged in the department and build on the framework here?” Todd said. “In this case, I think you build on the framework.”

Al Pierson, president of the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association, said he felt the process allowed Pomeranz to gather input from a diverse array of people.

Monica Vallejo, a member of the Citizen Review Board that was created to provide oversight of local law enforcement, said she thought the process moved too quickly at the end, but “we’ve waited for so long to have a chief of police.”

Community policing

What stood out about Dostal to Harold Walehwa, another member of the review board who participated in interviews, was “how he appreciated and was really interested in furthering community engagement.”

Walehwa, who also is part of the nonprofit Advocates for Social Justice, said he hopes to see Dostal reduce racial disparities in arrests, citations and use of force.

Anthony Betters, NewBoCo’s community engagement manager, said it’ll be important for Dostal to expand community outreach and support for youth and diverse populations. Betters said he appreciated Dostal’s ideas of promoting community policing through more on-foot interaction in neighborhoods.

“It’s not approachable with (an officer) sitting in their neighborhood, in a neighborhood that is seen as a ‘bad neighborhood’ from the connotation Cedar Rapids has of Wellington Heights,” said Betters, a Wellington Heights resident who said he has seen officers linger in their cars outside his house.

Pierson said he was confident Dostal would maintain communication with neighborhoods and support community policing, efforts to reduce gun violence and to partner with Foundation 2 Crisis Services on mental health initiatives.

Jerman, still a resident of Cedar Rapids, said “everybody in the city of Cedar Rapids will benefit” from Dostal’s selection.

When Dostal was promoted to lieutenant and took over a shift of young officers, Jerman said he engaged with them and insisted they interact with the public.

“From the time that he was promoted and I’m sure continues today, he was a supporter and proponent of community policing and interacting with the community,” Jerman said.

Being local was ‘not enough’

Some community members participating in the interview panels questioned Dostal’s lack of outside experience, Betters said, but ultimately “he’s from here, he’s been here for a while, he already knows a lay of the land.”

Vallejo said those on her panel interview similarly were curious about how candidates would address issues such as homelessness, violent crime or school shootings that can be more common in larger cities.

"We’re growing, so I wish we can have somebody with experience in a big city too,” Vallejo said. “That’s what Cedar Rapids is becoming … so we have to be ready for that.”

Dostal said he’s open to new methods of policing and to attending trainings to learn new concepts.

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Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell said Dostal being from Cedar Rapids wasn’t enough to push him to the top of the candidate pool. Stories of Dostal “when no one was watching” were compelling recommendations, she said.

“This is a chief who had to compete with the best, and it was important for us as city leaders to make sure that we had a pool of the best for our city,” O’Donnell said.

In the letters to Pomeranz, Richard Vale, a special agent with the Narcotics Enforcement Division of the Iowa Department of Public Safety, said Dostal was a leader who could attract officers to the department and “who has done the job, and can use his experience to guide fellow officers.”

Former City Clerk Amy Stevenson wrote that Dostal’s integrity, dedication, sense of humor, problem-solving skills and ability to connect with people are a testament to his character.

“ … Working in the various roles within a department before becoming the leader offers a unique perspective and invaluable historical knowledge,” Stevenson wrote.

Doug Shannon, the Mount Vernon-Lisbon police chief, wrote that Dostal has “demonstrated his commitment to teamwork, community outreach, and interagency cooperation to enhance public safety.”

Comments: (319) 398-8494; marissa.payne@thegazette.com