Botched Nomination of the Year: Tonya Chapman

Imagine a police chief of a midsize city who blasted “toxic employees” in a mass email, awarded a medal to an officer who was later charged with shooting a fleeing suspect, alleged racism in her department even though the supervisor who forced her out was also an African American woman (as was Tonya Chapman’s successor) and then announced on TV that she was turning over evidence of “systemic racism, discriminatory practices and abuse of authority” within the department to the FBI. Now imagine that this individual applied to lead a much larger police department. You might take a pass on that, right? Not County Executive Marc Elrich, who in July nominated Chapman to be the county’s next police chief. After the county council made it clear that it wouldn’t confirm Chapman, Elrich eventually turned to an applicant he initially rejected: acting Chief Marcus Jones. Jones was confirmed by the county council in November.