Nathaniel Clark

By virtue of a letter sent to all the members of the Fort Smith Civil Service Commission, Fort Smith police chief Nathaniel Clark has officially withdrawn a proposal in which he had sought to be able to make supervisory hires outside of the Civil Service Commission.

The letter, penned by city attorney Jerry Canfield, puts an end to several months of internal struggle and strife among the members of the Fort Smith Board of Directors as a faction of that body attempted to ram through the proposal through a set of questionable maneuvers and tactics. The letter was delivered to the five sitting members of the CSC last Friday.

The controversy, fueled in part by the efforts of individuals seeking to “diversify”the demographic make-up if the FSPD by any means, resulted in contentious and sometimes borderline tactics stemming from illegal emails hat got some directors in hot water to the addition of to new members of the CSC that Director Don Hutchings decried as an “effort to stack the court” in recent BOD meeting.

Along the way, criticism has been leveled at a voting bloc of four directors-Keith Lau, Andre Good, Mike Lorenz and Tracy Pennartz-and has created such a stir among members of he Fraternal Order of Police and local firefighters union that the mebers of those two organizations have announce a petition dive to recall three of those directors.

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