Pike County Sheriff’s Office to handle calls, patrol
PJ TRACY
Glenwood Herald, Editor
GLENWOOD – At Tuesday
night’s Glenwood City
council meeting, police chief
Randy Reid submitted his
resignation.
The resignation will be
effective October 30, according
to Glenwood Mayor Ron
Martin.
The council accepted the
resignation unanimously.
According to Martin, the
meeting was originally called
because the other officers indicated
to him they wanted a
meeting with the board.
At the meeting, all of Glenwood’s
officers, excluding
Reid, resigned their jobs.
“They all turned in their
badges, equipment and stuff
and resigned,” confirmed
Martin.
The board accepted the
group’s resignation, and
went into executive session
to further discuss the situation.
After that discussion,
Reid tendered his resignation.
“I think the other officer’s
point was a lack of communication,
up and down the
chain [of command], they
were not happy about that,”
said Martin.
The Mayor confirmed
that there was a recent incident
that may have brought
the issue “to a head” but
stated that he’d rather not
go into further details about
any single incident, and felt
that it was an accumulation
of incidents via the afore
mentioned lack of communication.
A search for a new police
chief is going forward, however,
the source said the city
was in no hurry and that
they would name an interim
chief if necessary until the
process was completed.
“We’ve talked about a
plan, but there is no plan in
place yet, we haven’t delved
into it. We know we’re going
to have to hire some officers,
and probably we will
not have another chief of
police – we’ll probably have
an officer that will be called
an ‘assistant chief’ or ‘acting
chief’ — but we will likely go in
that direction,” stated Martin.
“We will have to replace
two full time officers.”
Martin said there was
a process to doing such –
advertising the positions included
– but that the city has
already received several applications
for the positions.
Martin said that Pike
County Sheriff Charlie
Caldwell has agreed to have
the Sheriff’s Department
(PCSO) help cover Glenwood.
“He assured me that he
and his deputies would help
cover and take calls until we
[the City] got all of our stuff
straightened out and get
back to normal. It’s going to
take time for us to get it all
worked out,” said Martin.
Martin also added that everything
was under control
and that the citizens of Glenwood
didn’t need to worry
about not being represented
by law enforcement.
“For this period of time
the PCSO has agreed to po–lice our area and stay
on top of that – they have
assured me they will – and
we’ll roll out phone here for
direct calls to the Sheriff’s
Department, and they’ll have
some deputies up in this
area, and if we have to we’ll
work out something else.
We have some ideas, maybe
hire an off duty policeman
or something like that to fill
in for a period of time. But
we’ve made no decisions
despite having talked about
several things. The people
will be covered.”
Martin said that the
board would continue the
discussion through October
and that there would
“probably no official decision”
until the November
council meeting. “But, there
will be ongoing discussions
throughout October about
what we need to do and what
direction we need to go. We’ll
have to have some meeting
to discuss what the future of
police department is going
to be here in Glenwood and
where we are going to go.”
And, while he feels the
council is working diligently
on the issue, Martin stated
that the local citizenry is
“welcome to make suggestions
– that’s no problem –
that’s their right to come in
and say ‘we think this or we
think that.’”
