The City of Oakwood officially has a new police chief.
Tim Hatch was sworn in to the role Monday morning.
Hatch, who comes from St. Mary's Police Department, said he found the job at Oakwood Police while looking for more fulfillment out of his career. "My wife and I did a lot of praying about things, the situation I was in in St. Mary's was not generating the kind of joy and satisfaction in my life that I want. And to me, joy and satisfaction, that's quality of life. I don't equate money as quality of life, but joy and satisfaction. So we started considering looking elsewhere and at that point in time Oakwood had just opened up and it just was appealing," said Hatch after his swearing in ceremony. "I don't necessary think bigger is necessarily better. There's a lot more that makes an agency excellent and just the way the job description was phrased indicated to me it was a really good potential agency to work for. So I put my hat in the ring and I was selected."
Once he gets settled and adjusts to how things are done in Oakwood, Hatch said he has some goals for the police department.
"We've talked a little bit, myself and the city manager, talked about some of the future goals. The biggest one we're probably to try and bite off in the next year or so would be to obtain state certification, which is a professional set of credentialing , meeting a series of about 130 standards to obtain status as a state certified agency," said Hatch. "That causes us to have a set of policies, it has a lot of requirements behind it, but it ultimately generates a better, more professional agency and officers who are more professional officers in the way they operate."
He said his management style is more laid back , but supportive - "I figure we hire these officers and we give them a badge and a gun and tell them to go and enforce the laws, we should trust them to do that, so I don't feel like I have to be in the middle of every decision," - he believes in outfitting his force to better serve the community.
"I believe that law enforcement is a service, or a service organization, a service-oriented profession. That might be handling cases that are not necessarily traditionally law enforcement cases. You don't have to go an make an arrest decision, maybe it's just helping a family in need or getting a kid out of bed to go to school - unfortunately sometimes we do get those calls," Hatch said. "But I like to look at law enforcement as a profession that solves problems for the community and it's not always about making an arrest or writing a ticket."
Hatch will fill the shoes of Randall Moon, who retired after 25 years as chief of the force earlier this year.
