Mayor Greg Fischer announced Friday the names of five candidates he will be interviewing for the job as the chief of Louisville Metro Police.
Four of the candidates have strong ties to Louisville, with two of them - Lt. Col. Vince Robison and Lt. Col. Yvette Gentry - currently serving as the deputy chiefs of the department.
Two others, Steve Conrad and Rick Sanders, are chiefs in other departments who also previously worked for either the former Louisville or Jefferson County police departments. Conrad is currently the chief in Glendale, Ariz., while Sanders commands the Jeffersontown Police Department.
The fifth candidates is Glenn Skeens, chief of police in Owensboro.
"We have five very solid candidates, and I look forward to hearing directly from them about their goals and visions for LMPD," Fischer said.
Each of the candidates will now have an interview with Fischer, who has said he hopes to have a new chief in place by April 1.
Ishmon Burks, a criminal justice professor at Jefferson Community & Technical College, has been serving as the interim chief since Robert White left in December to become chief of police in Denver.
Originally, 16 people put in applications to be considered for Louisville's top police job. Those candidates were assessed by a small group from the Southern Police Institute at the University of Louisville, which is conducting the chief search. The field was narrowed to 11 people based on a rating system that gave points for experience, education, and their position papers, which provided responses to 12 topics.
Those candidates were interviewed the week of Jan. 20 by a panel that included Deborah Keeling and Cindy Shain, of the Southern Police Institute. The panel also included Therone Bowman, chief of the Arlington, Texas, police department, and Mark Hamlin, an assistant chief from the Tampa, Fla., department, and Mark Bidner of RecoverCare, a local businessman identified by the Louisville Metro Police Foundation.