Village’s new police chief vows turnaround after turmoil
Mostly volunteer force has had no schedules to date.
The new NEW HOLLAND — chief sat at his desk, a worn-out and nearly obsolete police radio squawking from the shelf behind him, and said the almost-all-volunteer, part-time department he now oversees has nowhere to go but up.
“Nobody respects us. Nobody trusts us. We’re going to change that,” Christopher Mosley said. “I’m trying to do the best I can with a (bad) situation.”
Mosley took the job two weeks ago despite months of turmoil in the Pickaway County village of New Holland, turmoil that has seen the former police chief, a former police captain and Mayor Clair “Butch” Betzko all criminally charged.
Nevertheless, Mosley sought and was given the dual role of New Holland’s village administrator — a job for which he is paid $49,000 a year — and police chief — for which he is paid nothing — because he said he thinks he can make a real difference.
Mosley has worn a police uniform since 2008, most recently as a sergeant with Piketon in Pike County, and he already is making big changes.
He has fired some officers, and others have quit. He has four officers who have up-to-date certifications, and he is making sure that all proper paperwork is filed with the state.
Although his paid hours during the day are devoted to learning and carrying out the village administrator’s duties, the 36-year-old Mosley is spending his nights — away from his wife and young son — volunteering to renovate a former classroom in the old school that is now the New Holland Community Center so he can move police operations into it to make the offices more professional, secure and efficient.
The village of about 800 people pays for a total of only 16 hours each week for police coverage. Everything else is time donated by the officers, and it was basically just whenever they wanted to show up, Mosley said. That will end Saturday. That’s when, he said, he will roll out his first schedule so that everyone knows when an officer is on duty and who it is.
“This is 1970s policing here,” he said, pointing to the racks of paper reports in a moldy room of the Village Hall basement that serves as the patrol room. “We’re going to seek grants and donations and make this a respectable department this village can be proud of.”
Pickaway County Sheriff Robert Radcliff met with Mosley last week and said it was a productive meeting, one in which Mosley sought advice on how the two departments can work together.
“He seems eager to do the right thing,” Radcliff said of Mosley.
Betzko had continually pledged his support for former Police Chief William “Jason” Lawless, who quit in July, even after the chief had been charged with criminal trespassing for refusing to leave the property of a woman who had frequently criticized the police department. Asked about Mosley on Thursday, Betzko pointed out that the Village Council, not the mayor, had hired him, but he said the two are getting along “fine.”
Betzko seemed frustrated, and unconcerned about the direction Mosley wants to take the village, noting: “I may not even be here much longer. I don’t have to do this.”
The mayor has faced his own trouble. A village officer in July charged him with obstructing official business and complicity to commit forgery on a state document. Betzko pleaded not guilty in municipal court, but the case has been transferred to Pickaway County Common Pleas Court for consideration by a grand jury.
Among the other recent troubles in the village were allegations that the police department was running a speed trap and that officers were harassing residents.
Mosley said that if residents just give him a chance, they’ll see that he can turn the department around.
“It says right on our car, ‘To protect and serve.’ The ‘serve’ part is most important,” he said. “If 80-yearold Mrs. Smith on the corner wants us to come in and fix her VCR, then we’ll come in and fix her VCR, and no officer had better complain about it.”