The search for the next chief marshal in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, will go outside of the two communities.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Hildale Mayor Donia Jessop said last week that internal candidates weren’t qualified.
The towns’ monitor and police consultant, who will make the hiring decision, are expected to choose someone who isn’t from the towns.
Hildale and Colorado City are collectively known as Short Creek and home to the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
For several decades, FLDS leaders influenced who was elected to office and served in municipal jobs in the towns. That changed last year when Hildale elected Jessop and three City Council members who do not follow Warren Jeffs, the FLDS President who is serving a life-plus-20 years sentence in Texas for sexual abuse of two underage girls he married as plural wives.