As of this writing, I am halfway through the FBI National Academy in Quantico Virginia. I left for the national academy on January 6th. It has been a wonderful experience so far with some of the best leadership training I have had the opportunity to take during my entire career. Less than 1% of all law enforcement officers get selected to attend the National Academy and I’m honored to represent our wonderful city. I am part of session #275 and our class has over 250 police administrators from the United States as well as 26 other countries represented.

During my time here, Sgt. Sean Lundry has been acting chief of your police department and he’s been doing a wonderful job. I have weekly teleconferences with him to keep up on the activity at our department. I also have been actively working on budget items when time permits. The goal is to keep myself up to date so I’m ready to hit the ground running when I return on March 15th.

Interviews are completed for the open Records Specialist position and Records Manager Julie Smith informed me she was extremely pleased with the results of the recruitment process which has been refined with the addition of our wonderful HR Manager, Angie Welty. We have narrowed down the candidates and will be ready to make a final decision by the end of this week. I’m told all the candidates that interviewed were well qualified and did a great job.

The recruitment process for the open Officer position is moving forward as well. We are still in the process of accepting applications and the first round of interviews are scheduled for late February. Again, Angie Welty helped us update our recruitment and we’ve seen the results of that with many more applications then we had last time we recruited. Your officers and staff had many ideas on how to change our process and their hard work has paid dividends.

I hope all of you had a great new year. I am having a wonderful time here but at the same time, I’m missing Sandy, my home. We have a lot of work to do in the coming months, with budget, contract negotiations etc. It’s always a challenge. We face them together.