Alexandria City Council changes rule on police officer residency requirements
This week, the Alexandria City Council changed a rule requiring its police officers live within city limits. As IPR’s Thomas Ouellette reports, that’s after years of the department disregarding the law.
Audio Transcript
Assistant Chief of Police James Huffman says the ordinance requiring local police officers to live within the city of Alexandria had been in place since he started working for the police department in the 1990’s.
A similar state law eventually changed, but the city-level law within Alexandria was never updated.
“The violations were for an ordinance that wasn’t valid anymore because of the state law change,” said Huffman. “If you stuck to the ordinance, you were in violation of state law. Or you could follow the state law and to be in violation of the city ordinance.”
Had the Alexandria Police Department followed the city law, Huffman says the agency would have an even more difficult time finding qualified candidates than it already is.
During the meeting, Police Chief Brian Holtzleiter commented on the growing difficulty of staffing the police department.
“For the first time, we’ve been unable to fill a spot,” he said. “At this point we’d be willing to consider someone from as far away as Alaska.”
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Thomas Ouellette is our reporter and producer. Contact him at thomas.ouellette@bsu.edu.
