Updated at 6:33 p.m.
Montpelier Police Chief Brian Peete is leaving for Kansas after more than two years in the role. His last day is expected to be Dec. 31.
Peete, 47, who became Montpelier’s first Black police chief in July 2020, has accepted a job as the new director of the Riley County Police Department in Manhattan, Kansas.
In a statement released Tuesday, Peete said he and his family had struggled with “a very tough decision” about whether to make the move. He praised Montpelier’s leadership as “the best I’ve ever worked with.”
“Obviously we’re really terribly sad to be losing him,” said City Manager William Fraser. “I think the department is unified behind him. It’s been a tough time for policing in general so I think he’s been a good leader for our department.”
Previously the chief of police of a department in New Mexico, Peete stepped into the Montpelier role in July 2020 when protests against police brutality and systemic racism were reverberating throughout the country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
He was the capital’s first police chief in the last 40 years to hail from outside the department. Peete replaced Tony Facos, who retired after 35 years in Montpelier, including 12 as chief.
Peete said the challenges he faced were mostly external. He cited overgeneralizations in attitudes toward policing and a high level of divisiveness that has crept into everyday life. That made it “extraordinarily difficult” to work on rebuilding trust and cooperation with some organizations and communities — most evident in what he called his “inability to to find a mutual ground” with the Montpelier School Board while trying to address school safety.
He described dropping his daughter off at school one morning while wearing his police uniform. The next day, he found parents were handing out petitions discussing how police should not be allowed on school grounds. The school board later voted to remove the district’s school resource officer.
The police department budget for fiscal year 2023 is $3.4 million. The chief draws an annual salary of nearly $113,000.
When Peete came on board, the department was one person shy of having a full roster of 17 people; it is now down to 12.
Fraser said he does not hold the chief responsible for the shortage. “It’s not so much the people that left,” he said. “It’s that we haven’t been able to find replacements just due to a shortage of officers nationally.”
Peete said staffing has been an issue everywhere. He noted that a Montpelier detective sergeant was hired last month as chief of the Norwich Police Department.
City Council member Conor Casey praised Peete, saying he was not afraid to reimagine the role of law enforcement in Montpelier and regularly went above and beyond. “When the police department has been understaffed, Chief has frequently picked up a patrol shift himself — that’s the kind of leader he is,” Casey said.
The only consolidated law enforcement agency in Kansas, the Riley County department is significantly larger than Montpelier’s and is authorized to employ about 222 full-time employees, 110 sworn officers and 112 civilian employees, according to its website.
One of the reasons he took the Kansas job, Peete said, is because he believes consolidated departments are the way to go. He also noted that he wants to be closer to extended family.
Originally from Chicago, Peete served in the U.S. Air Force and began his law enforcement career with the Chicago Police Department in several different roles. He then became chief of the police department in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in April 2018 and resigned in November 2019 after a dispute with city officials.
Peete said that the support he got from Fraser and the city council has “been unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”
“The decisions were based on what is right, not what’s popular or what’s politically first,” he said. “This is an exceptionally strong community and it will overcome its challenges.”