Search for Cape Coral police chief narrows to 3 candidates

We’re getting closer to having a new police chief in Southwest Florida’s biggest city.

Cape Coral City Manager Rob Hernandez has narrowed the search down to three candidates.

Candidate No. 1 is a familiar face: Interim Police Chief Anthony Sizemore.

He has spent more than 20 years with Cape PD, working his way up the rank.

“We are growing and the challenge is to continue to recruit a diverse workforce ready to come in and help keep this community one of the safest in Florida,” he said.

Candidate No. 2: Deputy Chief Richard Bash from Columbus, Ohio.

He said he knows how to lead a growing police force in a growing city.

“I’m bringing quite a bit of experience with growth, planning the expansion of police departments, the new facilities. We built a crime lab here, a state-of-the-art crime lab just a few years ago. We built substations. We planned for significant growth in the city and I was part of that planning.”

Candidate No. 3: New Smyrna Beach Police Chief Mike Coffin.

WINK News was unable to speak with him, but we spoke with someone who knows him well: the state attorney in Volusia County.

“He doesn’t sit in an ivory tower and rule from above, he gets out there and works with his folks, he asked him how things are going, he gets in the trenches with them,” said RJ Larizza, state attorney for the 7th Judicial Court.

Hernandez said he’s in no hurry to make a decision; he wants it to be the right one.

The city spent months conducting a nationwide search to identify a pool of candidates. The three finalists were chosen from a group of 70.