Tuesday morning the Lebanon Police Department may welcome a handful of new officers, well new-old officers.
Lebanon's City Council heard the department's proposal for a new structure.
You may remember that Mayor C.P. Craig's first duty after he was sworn into office was to demote nine police officers.
Four, including the chief, ended up quitting as a result.
Craig has said all along though that the change was only temporary until a new structure could be designed by the officers themselves.
That's been completed now, but it can't go into effect until council says yay.
"There's a lot of work that still needs to be done."
But according to Lebanon Mayor C.P. Craig, a lot of progress has already been made.
Interim Police Chief Raymond Blackburn brought his department's proposal for a new rank structure before city council Monday night, but behind closed doors.
Council went into closed session to weigh-in on the new chain of command, which is different than the old one, but only to the eagle-eyed citizen.
Mayor Craig says the rank of corporal has been eliminated entirely and replaced with three levels of patrolman in order to allow for growth within the department without promoting people to officer positions.
“There will be patrolman, second class patrolman, and senior patrolman,” Craig explains.
None of them are officers.
That reduces the number of supervisors from 14 to about 10, and the number of supervisors per shift from 3 to 2.
The position may be deja vu for some of those soon-to-be officers, but until the plan has been approved, Craig is not saying whether the new officers will include any of the 9 former supervisors.
What he is saying, though, is that numbers are far from the most significant change to the police department; Craig claims its morale.
“The leadership was doing anything but leading. Today they're leading."
The city council went into closed session and we have not received any information about the vote yet.
We'll pass it on to you as soon as we do.