By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — The City Council is heading to interviews with three of the eight companies submitting bids for a review of the police department and its operations after completing an initial review of the submissions in closed session on Thursday.

The three companies being offered interviews for the work submitted the lowest bids of the eight submitted, according to Council President Leo T. Fontaine.  Fontaine was joined by council members Suzanne J. Vadenais, John F. Ward and Christopher Beauchamp in holding the work session meeting on the bids. A vote would have to be taken during a regular meeting of the council to complete the selection process.
The council already approved the hiring of a consulting firm to conduct the management study and Fontaine said the panel wants to complete that step as soon as possible. That decision was made in light of continuing controversy surrounding the department’s operations under Police Chief Michael L.A. Houle and a number of high profile missteps in department operations.
The list of concerns aired by the council has included the improper destruction of evidence from local police cases stored at the department, the handling of an internal investigation into alleged tampering with a department computer from outside the department and a series of incidents highlighting department policy lapses such as a suspect’s possession of a loaded firearm while being held in a department jail cell.
Other issues have also cropped up in recent weeks that indicate the department’s problems are not abating, according to Fontaine.
“At this point in time, I think we need to move forward on this as quickly as possible,” Fontaine said.
The department is already being reviewed as part of a move by Houle to win it national accreditation but Fontaine said the two efforts are not expected to cover the same material.
The accreditation process is expected to establish a collection of best practice policies for the department that could alter the way its officers handle individual incidents or routine procedures while the management study would consider a broader view of how members of the department interact with each other while carrying out their roles as city police officers, according to Fontaine.
“The management study would focus more on the issues that have come up such as the handling of department evidence,” he said. To complete that task, Fontaine said the company hired would likely hold meetings with the department’s members to air their concerns.
“I would want them to do that through a round of interviews with both police officers and the department’s leadership,” he said.
In the end, the company would complete an evaluation of its investigation of the department and return a report with recommended improvements to council, according to Fontaine.
“The whole point of going through this is so that they will be able to make recommendations based on those findings,” he said.
Fontaine has already begun to contact the companies to schedule their interview with the council and will be able to schedule a meeting to hold them all on the same night once he hears back from the firms.
The three being asked to meet with the panel are Matrix Consulting Group out of Andover, Mass., which filed a bid of $35,000 for the work, Resource Management Associates of Tinley Park, Ill., with a bid of $37,860, and Justice & Security Strategies of Silver Springs, Maryland, with a bid of $62,820.
The other bidders for the work were Rachlin, Cohen & Holtz of Miami, LLP, of Miami, Fla., at $76,000, the Bratton Group, LLC, of New York, at $86,807; Carroll, Buracker & Associates, Inc. of Harrisonburg, Virginia, at $98,000; OSS Law Enforcement Advisors of Spring, Texas, at $142,500; and Kroll Inc. of Philadelphia, at $185,000.
Fontaine said additional interviews with the bidding companies could be scheduled as the council’s review of the submissions continues. “We want to start working our way through these and decide from there if we need to bring others in for interviews,” he said.