Westerville gathers to send off police chief Joe Morbitzer
With his arm around his fiancee, Joe Morbitzer walked slowly between the two rows of Westerville police officers and firefighters who stood and saluted.
Shortly after he reached the end, Morbitzer, the city’s nowformer police chief, turned and yelled through the bitter cold, “Thank you, everyone!”
Just after 3 p.m. Friday, it was over — Morbitzer had finished his 32-year career at the Westerville Police Department.
On Monday, he will start his new job as superintendent of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Attorney General Dave Yost appointed Morbitzer to lead BCI earlier this month.
“When you have a department our size, we see each other every day, so it becomes family,” Morbitzer said of the Westerville department. “It’s like if your kid moves out and goes to college. It’s kind of the same thing. You’re moving on to a different part of your life.”
Morbitzer’s walk-out ceremony followed a retirement party at the city’s historic Everal Barn, during which members of the central Ohio lawenforcement community, city leaders and other residents gathered to bid Morbitzer farewell.
There was a formidable line during much of the two-hour event as people waited their turn to greet the former chief. Some asked for pictures or brought gifts, including one woman who brought a gray fleece blanket with the Westerville police department logo stitched on it.
Morbitzer, now 59, joined the department in 1986 as a patrolman and climbed the ranks until he was elevated to chief in 2005.
“Joe, you leaving is central Ohio’s loss but the state of Ohio’s gain,” Bruce Pijanowski, police chief for the city of Delaware, said in front of the crowd of roughly 50 as a slideshow with photographs of Morbitzer throughout his career played from a projector.
The photographs included a portrait of Morbitzer as a young officer and one of him sitting atop a dunk tank at the police department’s Cops & Kids Day. That event is just one example of how Morbitzer worked to integrate the police department into the community, said Sharon D’angelo, who spent 14 years as a records technician for the department.
“I see a lot of cities where it’s the police department and the city. There’s no interaction between them,” D’angelo said. “He really encouraged the community and the police to come together.”
Mortbitzer also worked to connect the Westerville police department with the rest of central Ohio law enforcement, said Charles “Cappy” Chandler, who is serving as acting police chief on a three-month rotation with Holly Murchland. Both were assistant chiefs.
“He’s brought agencies together. I think there’s a lot better cooperation than years ago,” said Chandler, an 18-year veteran of the department. That sentiment
was evident throughout the celebration Friday.
Department badges from throughout the area could be seen on attendees’ sleeves— from Dublin to Genoa Township to Gahanna to the State Highway Patrol. “He’s just a person who can bring people together to cooperate and work toward a common goal,” Chandler said, noting that will serve Morbitzer well in his new job.
Morbitzer also is the kind of leader who trusts the people he works with, a quality that gained added importance after Westerville police Officers Eric Joering and Anthony Morelli were killed in the line of duty last February, Chandler said.
“The best thing about Chief during that time was he let everybody do their job,” Chandler said. “He put trust in us, the command staff, to get things done. He believed in people.”
Morbitzer’s absence will be felt across the department and the community, Chandler said.
“When you replace someone who is a great leader, you can’t expect somebody to come in and fill that person’s shoes,” he said. “You hope you get someone in the door who blazes their own trail.”