EASTHAMPTON — The city has named Easthampton Police Lt. Chad Alexander and Longmeadow Police Captain Carl Mazzaferro as finalists to lead the Easthampton Police Department.

Former Police Chief Robert Alberti announced that he was stepping down from his post in July, citing personal health concerns. Since then, Lt. Dennis Scribner has been serving as the interim chief and leading the department, which has more than 30 employees.

Mazzaferro and Alexander were chosen from a pool of four selected candidates who were assessed over the weekend by Public Safety Consultants, the consulting group hired by the city to facilitate its police chief search.

Mazzaferro, 49, currently serves as captain of the Longmeadow Police Department, where he has worked since 2008. He has served in his current position for about four and a half years, and is also the department’s accreditation manager and training supervisor.

In June, Mazzaferro graduated from the FBI National Academy — a 10-week leadership program for police executives. The program provides communication, leadership and fitness training to attendees from around the world.

“Captain Mazzaferro is a very dedicated employee,” said Longmeadow Police Chief Robert Stocks. “He gives 110% to everything and he is an asset to the Longmeadow Police Department.”

Alexander, 41, has spent the past 23 years of his career in the Easthampton Police Department, starting as a dispatcher. He has been an Easthampton officer for almost 22 years, being promoted to sergeant in 2017 and lieutenant in 2023.

Alexander serves as the department’s Lieutenant of Operations, also overseeing firearms licensing, the K-9 unit, the sex offender registry, public records requests and many of the department’s day-to-day operations. He also began the department’s “Coffee With a Cop” program which was put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its “Cookout With a Cop” program which takes place each August.

“He is a very strong leader,” said Interim Easthampton Police Chief Dennis Scribner. “As I’ve been in the interim chief position since last year, I’ve relied on him pretty heavily to assist me.”

Over the next two weeks, the finalists will conduct individual meet and greets with the Police Department and one-on-one interviews with Mayor Nicole LaChapelle, who hopes to announce a final decision in mid-May.

Once that decision has been made, the new chief appointment must be approved by the City Council. LaChapelle hopes for this to occur at the council’s second May meeting.

The meet and greet session and interviews with the mayor will not be open to the public. LaChapelle explained that Public Safety Consultants and the city chose not to involve the public in this process in an effort to formulate the best and most impartial assessment process for the community. However, she added that public input has been taken into account through an anonymous public survey that went out before the assessment process began and through the community guidance on policing reforms that have taken root in recent years.

“I felt like the community over the last three years has put a lot of thought into the Police Department and what they want policing to look like,” LaChapelle said.

She noted that what impressed the city about Public Safety Consultants’ approach to finding a new chief in neighboring communities, such as Northampton, was that they don’t use a “cookie cutter” process. Rather, they tailor what that process looks like to each community, including the level of public involvement.

“Easthampton deserves the very best,” LaChapelle said. “We’re not going to compromise … we wanted a good, third-party validation.”

With this in mind, LaChapelle said she has been hands off with the search process, especially since the city anticipated internal candidates like Alexander vying for the position.

“I wanted to have a fully external search,” she explained. This way, any internal candidates would be vetted through an open search process along with external candidates.

The timeline for a final decision will ultimately depend on interview scheduling.

Alexa Lewis can be reached at alewis@gazettenet.com.