Glenwood Mayor Martin comments on police defection

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    Glenwood Police

    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 police 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.’”

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