I’ve been meaning to blog for a while now. There is certainly a lot of things happening at the IFPD that are worth a mention.
First of all, the IFPD said many goodbyes this summer as we had 7 police officers retire. Sgt. Phil Grimes, detectives Curtis Bateman, Steve Barnes, Brent Lawrence and officers Mark Burnell, Kevin Pettingill and Lynn Case all retired.
That was 210 years of experience that left the department. We’re certainly happy for them as they enter retirement, but they will be missed.
With retirements comes of course the opportunity to fill positions with new hires. Thankfully, after the budget process we were able to fill all of our vacant positions.
We were able to hire three people right away. Jon Baird was sworn in on Aug. 25 and is currently attending the Idaho POST academy in Meridian. Next Monday, Sept. 22, we’ll swear in Coleman Moore and Chris Hendry (both of whom currently work for the IFPD as dispatchers).
All three are great new hires!
In August we also had 100 people that took the civil service test and then the top 32 people from the test went through the panel interview and agility test. From these candidates will fill the remaining vacant positions.
As I write this, the chief and the captains are interviewing perspective new officer hires. We could have some good news in the next coming weeks!
Along with the retirements and hires, there was a shake-up with captain assignments in August. Capt. Clements is now overseeing patrol, Capt. Cook is overseeing detectives and Capt. Cawley is overseeing IFPD services (animal control, dispatch, training and records).
This will hopefully be a great way to allow for different perspectives on how divisions are operated.
Anyway….as you can tell it’s been a busy summer here at the IFPD!