I am very happy to announce that Alex Ehlers will be taking over the duties as Mapleton Police Chief as of Sept. 1, 2023. Alex has been with our department as a part-time officer for five years. Alex is a deputy with Monona County Sheriff’s Department and will remain with them also. He will be assuming this role on a part-time basis but handling all of the duties of the position.
In addition, we will be adding an Assistant Chief as well. Jeremy Bellis has been hired for this role. Officer Bellis has an extensive career in law enforcement. He is currently a Sergeant with the Monona County Sheriff’s Department. Officer Bellis will be part-time with us as well. The reason for the assistant chief role was to add the experience and to make sure we have coverage as needed with both being part-time.
With these two individuals in charge it brings many years experience that strengthens our department. This will end the cycle of hiring people right out of college, sending them to the academy, training them and then having them leave. If we do hire any full-time officers in the future, they will then have very experienced leaders training them.
Both Ehlers and Bellis will have a minimum amount of hours per week they will have to fulfill under this agreement. This also gives us two very experienced officers for the price of one new full-timer.
In addition, we have part-time officers Alex Boyle, Kalvin Hinrickson and Cain Junkman currently on board. All of these officers have many years of service and experience. We will also be searching for more certified part-time officers. It’s very hard to find full-time officers, but easier to find those that want to supplement their full-time work with more hours.
By us hiring them as part-timers, it’s a win-win for both of us. We have been using part-time officers only for the last three months and it has worked out well. Also three of the current officers live within six miles of city limits or less. This makes responding quicker if needed.
I have received many questions during the process of why not do “this”. So here are the reasons we finally decided to go this way.
One option was to go with Monona County Sheriff’s department and just go “county wide.” This was not a perfect option for a couple of reasons. First was timing. With the change of leadership there, they have many changes and moving parts already. The timing of adding Mapleton onto them would have been hard for them to cover everything well. We also struggled with the price of the proposal they gave us. We have a great working relationship with the county and this will make it even stronger.
The second option was to merge departments with another city. We looked deeply into this but once again the timing did not work. The other city was also an hour away so it would have made things difficult from a staffing point of view. We want to thank that department for the hours they spent into looking into this option.
One of our major factors was making sure we can cover the school. We had around 60 police calls to the school during the last school year. We need to make sure we were ready to handle any calls there as they are starting up again soon. We are working on joint plans with the school about how we can provide better preventative measures there.
This was a long process and we looked into every possible direction. In the end, we are very pleased with the direction we are able to go.
All of the current officers know the people and the area very well. They also understand policing a small town. We have complete faith in Ehlers and Bellis in leading this team and making sure we have as much coverage as possible and needed.
