CITY NOTES: It’s a busy time for Police Department
By Hugh Anderson, Charles City Chief of Police
Greetings from the Charles City Police Department!
As you may have noticed from the “For the Public Record” section of the Charles City Press, we have been pretty busy so far this year. We are not usually at a loss for incidents to handle.
It’s been busy lately with personnel changes in our small law enforcement family. We have worked quite a few months with three empty officer positions.
We did our testing earlier this year and have a certified list of candidates. So far, we have hired Nathan Cork. Nathan comes to us from Illinois and is excited to join our family. He has only been on a few weeks, but is learning very quickly. Officer Lenny Luft is training him and passing on his extensive knowledge. It is amazing when we get a new officer and go through the training process. We realize that we need to know a lot of material and skills to do our job. Nathan will be leaving for 14 weeks at the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy shortly. He and Officer Haberkorn got sworn in at the April 17 City Council meeting.
We have made additional job offers and are waiting for the final steps in the process to hire two more people. We will be excited to have our family up to full staff again, but we anticipate some officers leaving soon and we will work on that as it arises. There is never a dull moment.
We held our Citizen’s Police Academy at the Charles City NIACC over the winter. Thanks to NIACC for hosting this and to Pizza Ranch for providing food. The officers had a lot of fun getting to know our neighbors who attended. Thanks to all of them for taking time out of their busy lives. We learned a good deal from all of them and hopefully they took something away from the classes.
We trust they got a better understanding of the officer’s day-to-day workload and also what it means to be an officer and dispatcher. Thanks to a few of the law enforcement wives for giving their insight into what it means to be married to an officer.
Captain Brandon Franke is our contact for the big bike ride coming to town in July. He is busy working through the planning so it will be a fun time for all. He is balancing this with his department day-to-day workload.
Lt. Brad Worrall conducted tobacco and alcohol compliance checks and found most sites were in compliance earlier this year. He will be checking the retailers again later in the year.
He is also planning on holding classes to assist employees in reading and checking IDs before selling alcohol or tobacco. We will post the dates as they get finalized. If your business is interested in better educating your employees at one of your staff meetings, get hold of Brad and he will work with you.
Thanks to Lt. Casey Mallory who wrote and was awarded a grant for two bikes to get our bike patrol program operational. Thanks to the Floyd County Community Foundation for the grant. The bikes are very high tech and will serve us well. Officer Duane Ollendick is going down to the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy next month for a week-long class on bike patrol.
Officer Dave Bahe retired and has moved on to another job. He still works with the city as a volunteer firefighter so we still see him occasionally.
You may notice our K-9 Midnight still patrolling with his partner, Officer Zach Eckenrod. He is getting up in age and will also be looking at retirement.
closely with the schools to ensure their law enforcement needs are met. The City’s Housing Department also keeps him busy. He and Kathy Herrick will soon be working diligently to make yet another Bike Rodeo a success on May 13.
Investigator Beaver has been very busy with cases for the last year. He does a variety of cases including sexual assaults, identity thefts, burglaries, etc. He also takes care of bad checks for many businesses in town.
Kathy has been very busy registering dogs this spring. At last count, we had over 630 dogs registered last year. Please remember that your dog needs to
be registered annually. If you haven’t yet registered your dog(s), please stop down and meet Kathy to get it done. The program has quite a few successes with us being able to return a stray dog to the owner right away.
Speaking of dogs, Dave Jung, our animal control officer (the dog whisperer), continues to assist us in dealing with all types of animals, both wild and domestic. It has been a pretty busy spring with all of the wild animals coming out and getting mixed up with humans.
Kathy is our 911 coordinator for the county, also, and was instrumental, along with John Gohr, in getting Floyd County as one of the first to be able to accept “text to 911.” We stress to call 911 when you can, but use the text if you cannot call for safety reasons. We have had some successful incidents with the technology already.
We purchased two new squad cars this year. One was replaced due to an accident. While we were getting them equipped, we decided to redesign our graphics. Thanks to Officer Schmidt for giving some great input. Officer Brad Bilharz along with Lynn Wolf, the city’s mechanic, keeps our vehicles and equipment running smoothly. Brad and Lynn do a great job. Both are very handy and will work ‘outside the box’ and fabricate things we need.
In our reserve program, we hav e FOUR officers right now and are looking to get up to full strength of seven officers. Hunter Ortmayer recently got his state certification through Hawkeye Technical College on the weekends. Congratulations to him on this milestone.
Kevin Marvin has been with the program for nearly 10 years. He has been the anchor of the program and we depend on him for a lot of help. He doesn’t let us down. Doyle Schmidt stepped down from full-time and we are happy he is still with us in the reserve program. We can still utilize his knowledge and skills he learned from his years on the street.
Dustin Haberkorn joined us and is getting his training so he can get out soon. He learned that pepper spray is not a pleasant experience, but he made it through. On that note, if you or someone you know feels the calling for law enforcement, contact us for an application. If you want more information on the reserve program, contact us.
We continue to enjoy providing education to you as request. We have done many different presentations including stranger danger, identity theft and protection and Surviving an Active Shooter to service groups and others. If you want an officer to speak with your group on a topic, let us know.
Police Officers Memorial Day is May 15th and that entire week is Police Memorial Week. If you appreciate the officers, let them know during this time. If means a lot to them to know they are still appreciated. This is the week when we honor our fallen comrades.
Our Drug Take Back day is 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 29, at the Police Department. This is for Charles City residents to bring in their unused prescription medications. Please do not bring in any sharps.
We would like to thank all the businesses and individuals who have donated to support our programs. We solicit funds for our safety education program each year and it never ceases to amaze us when we witness the generosity of our neighbors. Thank you!
Follow us on Facebook (Charles City Police). We value your input and conversations there. We have enjoyed working with and meeting many of you. I have greatly appreciated meeting many of you as your Public Safety Director/Police Chief. We realize through your support on Facebook and through many contacts with you that we have a great community that stands beside us.
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