Edgartown selectmen are set to interview veteran patrolman David Rossi for the position of police chief, and Det. Sgt. Chris Dolby for the position of lieutenant Monday, at the recommendation of interim police chief Jack Collins. The board may vote on the candidates during their regular meeting.

Mr. Collins conducted an extensive evaluation and search from inside the department for a successor to Antone Bettencourt, who retired May 2 after five years as police chief. Mr. Collins issued an 89-page report entitled A Blueprint for Excellence, which offers high praise for the Edgartown police department and its officers, but also makes some wide-ranging recommendations for improvement.

“He did a pretty thorough job,” said Michael Donaroma, chairman of the board of selectmen in a phone interview Wednesday. “We should feel pretty good. When you listen to all the other stuff that’s going on in the world, around the country, we’re doing all right.”

Mr. Collins was appointed interim chief in January, spending time with every member of the department over the past four months while handling the duties of the chief.

“I’ve told people if I knew it was this much fun, I would have done it a long time ago,” Mr. Collins said Wednesday. “It’s an 18-member family. We have our ups and downs. I got to know and really appreciate the people.”

Mr. Collins was called in to consult for the town during the previous transition, but conducted his evaluation from outside the department. At that time, Mr. Collins recommended Mr. Bettencourt be promoted to run the department after the retirement of former chief Paul Condlin.

“I did it five years ago,” Mr. Collins said. “Selectmen said do some ride-alongs, give us an assessment of how the department is doing, who the new chief should be. It was just on the surface. It was good enough because we had a lieutenant (Mr. Bettencourt) at the time. Unless I found there was some reason the lieutenant was not the right person, or someone else was dramatically better qualified, the job was his.”

He contrasted that process with the internal procedure over the past several months. Mr. Bettencourt’s resignation was somewhat unexpected, and left town officials without a clear line of succession for the next police chief. The department did not have anyone in the rank of lieutenant as it did five years ago.

“It almost felt like overnight, it caught a lot of people off guard,” Mr. Collins said. “If, in the future, they have lots of notice and they want to open it up and be more competitive, those are all options they can talk about. But they did the right thing. I had a chance to do something almost nobody has ever done. Was it confusing to some people, of course. There was no precedent.”

The report, in part, is an evaluation of the Edgartown police department, based on the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. President Obama formed that panel after the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., last summer, following the shooting death of an unarmed African American man by a white police officer, and the subsequent decision of a grand jury which decided not to charge the officer with any crime.

“It is clear that the Edgartown police department is no Ferguson,” Mr. Collins wrote in the report. “However, the task force report, issued in March, combined with the list of topics the Department of Justice considers essential to a properly operating police department, can serve as a measuring stick against which all police departments can gauge themselves.”

The report begins with a community profile, noting that violent crime in Edgartown is about on average with other Island towns, but less than half that of the rest of the cities and towns in Massachusetts, according to FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics. Edgartown reports substantially more property crime than other towns on Martha’s Vineyard, and nearly double the rate for the rest of the state. In the broad categories of policy, oversight, technology, social media, community policing, crime reduction, education and officer wellness and safety, Mr. Collins generally awarded high marks to the Edgartown police department.

In several areas, he offered recommendations for improvement. One of them was community policing. “If they have a shortcoming, it is that most officers have very little contact on the job with individuals that are beyond responding to calls for service,” Mr. Collins wrote. “They do not perceive this as part of their responsibility as a ‘patrol officer.’ This means that some of the basic tenets of the ‘community policing’ philosophy — partnership and problem solving — are not given the time they require.”

On technology, Mr. Collins said he did not sense a call for police to wear body cameras, a hot topic of debate in many cities and towns. But he said the department should weigh carefully the significance of any new technology. “The chief needs to consider ways to involve the public in discussions related to the protecting of their privacy and civil liberties prior to implementing new technology.”

The report recommends that in addition to appointing Officer Rossi as chief, and promoting Detective Sergeant Dolby to lieutenant, Mr. Collins wants the department to prepare for promotions in the lower ranks.

“The department should seek to promptly identify at least three potential candidates for the rank of Sergeant. Having an additional three attend the training is wise as it proved a cadre of potential Sergeants for the future.”

He recommended that the police department work towards accreditation by the Massachusetts Police Accreditation Commission, which involves an extensive independent evaluation to insure the department is meeting certain standards in management, operation and training.

Many of Mr. Collins’s recommendations involve updating or improving training. “It appears over the years the budget has tried to add much needed personnel, but did so by reducing other expenses, most notably training,” he wrote. “The Edgartown Police Department needs a ‘training officer’ whose job is to arrange for training, monitor participation and assure that officers are receiving what they need to do their jobs. Attendance at training is not best left to an officer’s discretion.”

Mr. Collins himself is an experienced instructor and advisor to police departments, according to Mr. Bettencourt, who made the recommendation that Mr. Collins be appointed interim chief, and who included a letter of support in the final report.

“While the selection of the town’s special labor counsel, attorney Collins, to serve as police chief may have surprised some observers, this is a role for which he is uniquely suited,” Mr. Bettencourt wrote. “Jack knows the ins and outs of the criminal aspects of being a police officer. Jack has also been a certified instructor for numerous courses, (probably more than any other instructor in the state) by the Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee.”

Mr. Collins has trained Edgartown police officers in the past, and will be doing more training in the coming year. He was asked whether his role in recommending more training conflicted with his role as one of the department’s course instructors.

“There’s all kinds of people that can train,” Mr. Collins said Wednesday. “That never occurred to me.”

Mr. Donaroma also saw no conflict. “I think that’s Jack’s specialty, is training,” Mr. Donaroma said. “I think we take that with a little grain of salt. His point is, always to try to stay [caught] up 
. . . . Things change fast.”

Mr. Collins was paid $3,100 per week as interim chief, after filing notice with the state ethics commission and approval from selectmen to hold the position at the same time he serves as the town’s labor attorney. Mr. Bettencourt was receiving a salary of $167,000 at the time he retired.

The next police chief will oversee a department of 18 full-time officers, two part-time officers and five summer officers, with a budget of $2.8 million.