Bethel Police Chief John Wallace told the village council Monday, May 14 that his department has been working with kids in local schools to promote police work to children.
“We’ve been participating in the Bethel schools career days, and in the case of the middle school some job shadowing,” said Chief Wallace. “We encourage the little kids to study hard, make their moms and dads proud of them and stay in good shape to become a cop. We had three students from the middle school shadow me, and it was odd that one girl had no desire to be a cop, but wanted to get into CSI. As luck would have it, that day I had to go to the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office to drop off evidence. She was able to talk to some of my friends there and find out how boring the CSI world truly is. That was pretty beneficial.”
In support of the department, councilwoman Donna Gunn requested that two aging cruisers be replaced soon, to avoid as much extra costs due to maintenance as possible. She also suggested purchasing an economy car to give officers and village employees a cheaper way to run long-range errands.
“We have two cruisers that are in really bad shape, getting really bad gas mileage and drinking oil and sounding terrible, requiring a lot of maintenance,” said Gunn. “If finance can look in the fund and see what can be appropriated, for at least one vehicle, and I suggest that, since there are a lot of trips made out of town, if the village could look into buying some kind of economy car. It would be a lot better on gas.”