This week the Burlington City Council voted to formally approve Jon Murad as the city’s regular police chief — he no longer serves as ‘acting’ chief, a title he had for three years due to opposition from city councilors.

Chief Murad appeared on Wednesday morning’s episode “The Morning Drive” radio show to discuss how it felt to become chief after years of being in a state of job-status limbo.

Three years as ‘interim’ chief

Murad said while he’s been dedicated to his work regardless of title, it is nice to finally have the role be formalized and official.

Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad

“I think that three years as the ‘acting’ chief may actually be a national record. But I’ve been doing the work all along,” Murad said.  “It’s never been about me or the permanence of the role. It’s always been about the work and about the people.”

He talked about how for the past three years, those who work at the department have had their work cut out for them. He talked about coming to work the next morning.

“There were a lot of congratulations. The men and women of the department have worked incredibly hard for three years, I’d like to think that they’ve seen me working hard with them, and so there was a sense of shared forward momentum for us,” Murad said.

He shared more about the support that he gets from within the department.

“We have faced this together for three years, we’re facing it together today, and I know that I will be here tomorrow, and I hope that you will be here too. And I promise that we will have more people beside us,” Murad said.

64 officers active, more to come

He said there are four new officers coming on board at the Burlington Police Department, as well as CSOs (community service officers) and CSLs (community service liaisons).

He said these unarmed responders to calls can be helpful, both as positions that supplement the work of the currently understaffed department’s regular officer core, as well as a stepping stone for those who are interested in police work but haven’t decided for sure to become officers.

“Two of the four [recently commissioned officers] had been CSOs before, and that is a terrific way they get to learn the city, they get to learn the department, they get to understand the radio and the streets,” Murad said. “… It’s a way to test out the department and our culture and the family that we have inside.”

Hiring new officers can be tricky; it requires inexperienced recruits to obtain close to a year or hundreds of hours of training. Murad said that attracting current officers from other departments is always preferable to training a new one from scratch.

Callers support the new chief

A member of the public who called in was pleased with the development.

“I would just like to say that for once, for once in the past year or two, our city council did something right,” she said. “And I wanted to congratulate the chief on going from becoming the acting chief to becoming the real chief, he deserves it.”

Another caller expressed frustration that it took the City Council so long to make this move.

“I think they’ve got their head somewhere where no one can see it,” the caller said.

Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.