PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — After two candidate searches and nearly three years, the city’s Citizens Police Oversight Commission finally has a permanent executive director. Tonya McClary, a pastor, lawyer, and the head of the Dallas Community Police Oversight Commission Board for three years, is expected to start sometime in May.
“I want to make sure that we recognize Tonya McClary and make sure that the entire world knows how happy we are that she’ll be arriving and how welcome she is,” said Anthony Erace, who has served as interim executive director since the commission was created in 2021 in response to calls for police accountability after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“This transition will be smooth and it’s essentially the next step in the evolution of CPOC and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.”
Chair of Commissioners Jahlee Hatchett recognized Erace’s service.
“I often tell people when dealing with something like this, that’s the first of its kind, … it’s kind of like giving someone who just got their learner’s permit the keys to a Ferrari, saying ‘Have fun,’” Hatchett said. “There was no blueprint, but I think that you really did a phenomenal job.”
The commission, a replacement for the relatively toothless Police Advisory Commission, has the power to subpoena and to investigate citizens’ complaints against police. But that hasn’t happened to the initially envisioned scale without a permanent leader.
During Erace’s tenure, infighting among the commissioners was commonplace and led three of them to resign last year. Former Vice-Chair Afroza Hossain cited the contentious search for a permanent executive director as a primary motivation for her resignation.
At the time, she said a number of commissioners were so determined not to permanently hire Erace that they were prepared to back a candidate who had been a member of a police union, in direct violation of the legislation that created the commission in the first place.
Hatchett at the time denied any bias against Erace before throwing out the year-long search to contract with HR firm Jane for help relaunching the process that led to McClary’s hiring.
With a new phase for the commission on the horizon, Erace got his flowers from Hatchet.
“I would like to thank you … for the work that you have done in order to get the organization from pretty much scratch to where we are right here. The organization has gone through a lot of firsts — a lot of firsts — in terms of building out, organizationally, a job that was not an easy job.”
The salary for executive director of the commission is $175,000 a year.
KYW Newsradio's Pat Loeb contributed to this report.