Salem’s new police chief says his top priorities are getting the staff fully trained and specialty positions in the department filled.
Tyler Rose was promoted to Chief from Deputy Chief last week with the departure of Chief Todd Boles. Rose did not apply for the chief position the last time it was vacant.
“Last year when I was promoted from investigations to the Deputy Chief position, it was very short notice,” Rose said. “I was given just a few weeks of training before stepping into the interim role. At that point, I was very unsure about what would come up that I didn’t know about over the next year. Now that I’ve experienced a year in administration, I feel I’ve seen and countered a lot of the day-to-day things that are going to come up throughout the year and the different certifications through the state that I wasn’t necessarily familiar with before.”
Rose has also just completed a command school program at Northwestern University.
Rose said one of his current top priorities is training new officers.
“Right now, I’m trying to keep it very simple moving forward. We just want to get back to our normal day-to-day and the service that we’ve provided in the past. I want to make sure with these new officers that they’re properly trained and that they’re out there doing the job, and that they’re confident in doing the job.”
Rose says with a full staff of 17 patrol officers, the department will return to having two detectives. He wants to continue working on the homelessness problem and plans to study how the TASC program is working on giving those on the street a place to stay and help with any issues that led them to being on the streets. Rose wants to resume programs aimed at assisting senior citizens and presentations on issues such as scams to community groups.
Rose says another issue is handling the large number of Freedom of Information Requests stemming from the implantation of the body cameras. Right now, the chief’s office assistant is handling that duty, but he’s not sure that will be enough in the future.
Rose will also seek to fill his former position as deputy chief sooner than later. He anticipates that appointment being an internal promotion.
Rose says he began looking at moving up into special positions and eventually management at the police department while working as a patrolman. He says the trajectory was much quicker than he anticipated.
