Juneau Police Lt. Krag Campbell has been named Deputy Chief of Police starting Jan. 1. Campbell will also act as interim chief of police until Derek Bos, who was chosen as chief, takes over in February.
Since Chief Ed Mercer retired this summer, Juneau will have had three temporary chiefs until Bos begins in February. Campbell has been with the department since 2002 and was a finalist for the chief of police position. Incoming police leadership will inherit the department’s struggle to fill vacancies. There are 13 unfilled patrol officer positions alone.
KTOO’s Yvonne Krumrey spoke with Campbell about his promotion and how he hopes to increase staff retention.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Krag Campbell: I’ll be the deputy chief of police, who serves under the chief of police, is basically in charge of all of our operations for the department. So our patrol our investigations unit, but as well as our non-sworn side, or community service officers, our dispatchers, our records, or it all those people kind of funneling under lieutenants on our public safety manager under the deputy chief. So it really is kind of a deputy chiefs job to maintain those day to day operations, with the help of lieutenants, and then under the chief.
Yvonne Krumrey: And what does this role change mean to you?
Krag Campbell: It’s a progression in my career that I’ve always been excited about, when I became a detective, so I was, I don’t remember that was back in 2007, or something. And I really found that at that time, I felt like I had more voice, more people were willing to listen to you. Because of that position, even though a detective is the same rank as an officer, they just do things differently. But at that role, as long as you were willing to do some of the work, like, “Hey, this thing needs to be changed or improved upon.” If you were willing to be the driving force behind that work and get buy-in from people, you had a little more say in getting it done. And I really liked that.
I found I really enjoy things like process improvement and changing things and just challenging status quos and doing things differently. As long as they can be done better – ideally, that’s the ideal purpose.
I always felt like, “hey, I want to be in a role that supports our staff, as a high priority, just as much as we value other things,” you know? And I think traditionally, a lot of places don’t value their employees as much as they might value outputs and statistics and the things that the organization is trying to do. When places don’t put a whole lot of value on your employees, that can lead to lower morale, lower quality of work product. And for us, we can’t afford to have that as a police department. Because our work product is the service that we provide to our communities. And if we have officers that are getting burned out and not feeling valued, that’s going to come out when, you know, they’re talking to people on the street, and that creates friction between the community and officers just on day to day stuff, I just want to be able to put our staff up there as high priority.
And I was under training this past year. And what they said was really interesting: as a department, if you want your staff to be like, up here in their commitment to what you’re trying to do – and that could be your commitment to your committee engagement, your commitment to the organization, the brand, wherever it is – you need to commit to them to that same level. Because wherever your level of commitment is, is where their level of commitment to your organization will be. So if you are putting them down here, they’re gonna come right down here. They’re never gonna go up here. And that just in my mind, it rings so true. And it’s like, I want to bring them up here. So to me moving into the deputy chief spot, I believe, gives me that ability to do that at a very larger scale. And that’s what I’m excited about.
Yvonne Krumrey: Can I ask how has the department functioned with this rotating leadership?
Krag Campbell: One thing that’s great about the department is it’s like a well oiled machine. Things just run, because at the day to day operations, the chief doesn’t make those you know, long term, they help make decisions and keep you going on the path that the direction you’re trying to go. But we have had an acting chief, Lt. (Jeremy) Weske, he’s been doing a great job. He’s a great leader. So he’s been there to provide that. But we still are having this unknown, like, “What’s going to happen? Who’s gonna get this? What’s that going to look like?” I think for the most part, we are getting through it – we’re getting through it really well. But it will be nice to have those things kind of ironed out as we move forward. Chief Bos will be here in February, I’ll take over Jan. 1, and then we’ll just be continuing on to like, “Hey, what’s going to be our normal process moving forward?”
