City launches search committee for Long Beach police commissioner

Just a few weeks after new City Manager Jack Schnirman appointed Lt. Mike Tangney the Police Department’s acting police commissioner, a search committee was formed last week to find Long Beach’s next top cop.

After months of speculation and rumors about who would take over for former Police Commissioner Tom Sofield Sr., who has retired, Tangney, a 34-year member of the department, who has served as head of its traffic division, among other posts, took over its day-to-day operations until a permanent replacement is found.

“This appointment shall be in effect until such time as a thorough and thoughtful search and selection process can be completed for a permanent police commissioner,” Schnirman said at Tangney’s swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 6.

He said last week that the search committee consists of “police and criminal justice experts,” and on Friday he identified its six members. They include Councilman Scott Mandel, an attorney and a Long Beach Auxiliary Police officer who worked with the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office, and former City Manager Glenn Spiritis, who was hired by the Republican coalition in 2004 and stayed on the job for a year. Spiritis was deputy city manager from 1979 to 1986 and is a former commissioner of community development for the Village of Hempstead.

The other members of the committee are Republican John Gallagher, a former Suffolk County police commissioner and Suffolk’s former chief deputy county executive; Lawrence Cunningham, an associate dean at St. John’s Law School and a former assistant district attorney in the Bronx; Long Beach resident Jim Mulvaney, the former deputy commissioner of New York state’s Division of Human Rights and a former member of the governor’s Inspector General Panel; and William Owens, a former director of security at Long Beach Medical Center and a former member of the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals.

“We wanted to put together a balanced group that brings regional expertise in criminal justice as well as a deep reservoir of local knowledge and history,” Schnirman said of the group’s mix of residents and outsiders. “We’re getting folks involved who bring expertise without regard for politics.”