Alliance Police Department Chief Philip Lukens was named one of four finalists for the vacant position of Police Chief for the City of St. Joseph, Mo.
The announcement was made by the City of St. Joseph on April 26 in a press release. Lukens was one of four finalists selected out of a pool of 23 applicants.
“They possess the characteristics and have the experience sought by the St. Joseph community and police department personnel, as described during numerous community forums conducted in anticipation of the police chief search,” the release states.
Lukens and the other three finalists are expected to meet with three interview panels on May 11 and will attend a community meet and greet event.
St. Joseph City Manager Bryan Carter stated, “The four finalists possess exceptional experience, qualifications, leadership characteristics, and approaches to policing. The high quality of this group is a testament to the process that Public Sector Search and Consulting, Inc. developed for our police chief search. We look forward to hosting them in St. Joseph and, ultimately, naming one of them to lead our police department.”
Lukens began his career in law enforcement in 1995 and he has served as Alliance’s Chief of Police since December of 2020 following the retirement of Chief John Kiss. Lukens, who hails from Colorado, said during an interview with the Alliance Times-Herald after took the reigns at the Alliance Police Department, he was inspired to go into law enforcement by his grandfather.
“I started out as a police explorer, and my grandfather was the town marshal in Crook, Colorado,” said Lukens. “It was exciting because when my grandpa would go out on patrol, he brought us home candy bars from the gas station. I just always thought it was so neat that he would put us in the car and take us with him to the gas station. I just felt like this was the greatest thing on the planet.
“I was intrigued as a young teenager by it,” Lukens said. “There was a local police explorer post in Lafayette (Colorado), and I joined that explorer post and really got involved volunteering, helping do things. As a police explorer, you got to go on a ride along with the police officers. Boy, I loved that.”
Lukens explained during that interview that he has a vision for the police department moving forward to help grow the ways in which it serves the community by being proactive.
“My overall vision is for us to get to a place where we address the causes of issues instead of running to the calls that are the approximate cause,” Lukens said. “I think you can never, ever stop all of those things from happening. I recognize that. But, I think through educational programs and community partnerships, we can impact how much reactive work we do, and how much proactive work we do.
“Our vision is to be proactive, and law enforcement keeps saying that it’s proactive, but they’re reactive,” said Lukens. “How I want to build on that is we impose so many different problem-solving projects. What is the issue? What is the cause? What is the approximate cause? How can we work that out? When we can address things through other facets and other resources in our community, we can circumvent crime. We need to support all sorts of facets.”
Officials with the City of St. Joseph said that there is not a definitive timeline for a hiring decision to be made following the interviews on May 11.