Between now and June 28, the day Middleburg Police Chief Steve Webber's formal retirement becomes effective, the Town Council will have its public safety work cut out for it.

1. Council must seek out, carefully screen, interview and hire a new Chief of Police.

Many citizens of Middleburg believe there is at least one excellent candidate currently serving on the force, and maybe more than one. Indeed, in recent weeks the Town's line patrolmen have often been praised for their work, and especially for their courtesy and responsiveness to citizens' requests for service.

Whether the new candidates for Chief are drawn from the current force, or are recruited elsewhere, they must be rigorously screened.

The leading candidates for the post of Director for the Loudoun Public libraries were put through a background review process that including criminal background checks and fingerprinting. The candidates for Chief of the Middleburg Police force, and for that matter, for all its armed line officers, should be subject to no less scrutiny.

2. Council must, once and for all, determine who will be the new Police Chief's day-to-day supervisor.

In order to do so, Council must eliminate the discrepancies between the Police Department's current published regulations and the Town's Employee Handbook.

Both the public, and the police officers serving under the new Chief deserve to know, in no uncertain terms, just who is in charge. The chain of command must be made clear, and unambiguous.

3. Council must set guidelines for adequate oversight and review of the Police Force's performance, and especially that of its Chief.

Among other things, Council must decide what, if any new rules, regulations and guidelines for Police behavior it will adopt. Leesburg's current guidelines for "Community Policing" as well as the "Dimos Rules" noted elsewhere in this paper, might well serve as a start.

4. Council must enforce its own rules.

Oversight of the police force and its Chief must be ongoing and meaningful. The presentation of an Excel spreadsheet once a month, followed by a statement of willingness to answer questions (of which few, if any, are ever asked) must no longer count as "oversight."

5. The events leading up to and following the arrest and parade of the Eccentric's Editor in Chief down Federal Street must be thoroughly investigated.

The Council must determine what steps, if any, the current Chief of Police took to convince the Virginia State Police that the time, place, and manner of arrest in the Hubbard case were inappropriate.

If he made no such suggestions, Council must determine why.

If he made such suggestions and was simply ignored, he should make clear why he did not bring the State's plans to the attention of his superiors, who might have intervened on his behalf.

Most important, Council must determine why the current Chief did not make the State's plans for the arrest, and his role in executing those plans, clear to the Mayor, or Town Administrator, the head of the Town's Committee on Public Safety, or any other member of the Town Council or Staff well before the event.

Recent testimony under oath by Hubbard's accuser, Jack Goehring, indicates that he was informed of the day, time and place of the pending arrest after simply "pestering" the Chief about it.

6. Once the Webber Case has been investigated, the lessons learned from it must be used for improvement.

The new Police Chief and his officers must clearly understand that only flight risk, or genuine fear for the safety of the public (or the accused) can be used to justify such behavior. "Perp-walking" a suspect in order to humiliate them, or in an effort to enhance the "tough-on-crime" image of the police force or Town should never be tolerated.

Alerting the press, or the general public, and especially one of the parties to the crime for which a suspect is being arrested must be made clearly unacceptable.

Lying to the Town Council (or to the public, or to the press) or attempting to mislead them by misdirection, obfuscation, sophistry, half truths or silence must not be tolerated, or, worst case, must be tolerated only in the most dire of circumstances.

7. The notion that an action of the part of a police officer is "right" just because it is not "illegal," should be banished forever from both the Police Force, and those responsible for managing it.

There are times when it is an officer's duty is to lay his badge and gun on the table rather than carry out orders that conflict with his or her sense of honor, duty, ethics, and good judgment. There are times when what "can" be done and what "should" be done are mutually exclusive. There are times when an officer should be dismissed or disciplined by his or her superiors for simple lack of good judgement, or behavior that is merely improper, even though it is perfectly legal. Our next Chief must be a person who can be trusted to be able to make those distinctions, and with the character to act on them.