The Marana Town Council unanimously approved Terry Tometich as its police chief on Tuesday, making permanent a post he has held on an interim basis since May.
"We're happy to have you here," Mayor Ed Honea told Tometich after the vote, which was met with a round of applause from the 30 or so in attendance at Tuesday's council meeting.
Tometich, 62, was named interim chief after Richard Vidaurri announced his retirement in April. Tometich took over day-to-day control of the Marana Police Department around June 1 and quickly began to implement changes he says were necessary to improve morale and increase contact with Marana citizens.
Tometich switched the department from a four-day, 10-hour work week to a more standard five-day, eight-hour plan, which he said would lead to a safer town by putting more officers on the streets between the critical hours of 2 p.m. and 10 p.m.
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He also stressed the importance of interacting with the public, he said, and as a result the department increased its number of citizen contacts 93.9 percent from 427 in April to 809 in June.
"It's very important to make contact with people, even if you just stop in a business to talk to someone," Tometich said.
Even more dramatic than the increase in public interaction has been the upswell in traffic citations and warnings issued by Marana police since Tometich's arrival.
Marana police issued just 24 tickets and 58 warnings in May, while in June those numbers skyrocketed to 583 citations and 812 warnings.
Also increasing: Marana police issued three DUI citations in May and 24 in June.
Tometich did not mandate the massive increase in citations and warnings, he said, but rather it was the byproduct of his officers "going back to work" after what Tometich feels was a long period of disinterest among officers to put in the extra effort to interact with the public.
"It wasn't that they were out there looking for these things, they were just doing their job," Tometich said.
Councilwoman Roxanne Ziegler said Tometich's work has improved the atmosphere within the police department.
"It's like night and day," she said. "We've seen results since the day he's walked in. Morale was so low … now they're happy, and they're doing their jobs."
Increased police activity in Marana
Documented Month citizen contacts Traffic citations Warnings
April 427 3 2
May 468 24 58
June 809 583 812
July 807 448 621
SOURCE: Town of Marana
