LAKEPORT, Calif. – A 21-year veteran of the Lakeport Police Department who has served as interim chief for the past seven months has been offered the post on a permanent basis.
Brad Rasmussen, 41, accepted the position this week.
He said City Manager Margaret Silveira asked to meet with him on Wednesday and offered him the job.
The Lakeport City Council had approved Silveira's decision to offer him the job, Rasmussen said.
“She's the appointing authority for this position,” said Rasmussen.
He explained that in Lakeport the council appoints three positions – city clerk, city attorney and city manager. The city manager then is in charge of appointing the department heads.
Rasmussen has held the chief's job on an interim basis since Oct. 15, 2010, after Chief Kevin Burke left to take the chief's post in Healdsburg.
He began his career with the department in December 1989, when he was hired as a reserve officer.
The following year, he was hired as a part-time officer and then was hired on in a full-time, permanent position in April of 1991. His assignments over the years included working in task force operations and patrol, and holding the patrol sergeant position.
Burke appointed Rasmussen – then a sergeant – to the lieutenant's spot in October 2006.
Rasmussen, who was an integral part of Burke's management team, now will head a department that, including himself, has nine full-time sworn officers, three part-time officers and two civilian employees.
In the budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year, which Rasmussen plans to present to the council next month, he said he'll ask for a 10th officer position – last Tuesday the council approved his grant application to help cover the position – and also will ask to fill the lieutenant's spot that he previously held.
At one point the department had 14 full-time officer positions, according to Rasmussen. Several of those positions have been cut over the last few years due to budget constraints.
In response, Rasmussen is building up his volunteer force, which now includes 10 members. “And we've got more coming, too,” he said.
The goal is to have volunteers be responsible for support duties in an effort to provide the same level of services as the department did when it had more staff.
Rasmussen said he'll be sworn in officially during a Lakeport City Council meeting in June. The specific meeting date hasn't yet been determined.
Rasmussen is the 24th police chief in the department's history, according to a Lakeport Police history on the agency's Web site, www.lakeportpolice.org.
The city, which incorporated in 1888, had 15 town marshals through 1927, at which time chiefs of police were appointed, the history – compiled for retired Police Chief Tom Engstrom, now a Lakeport City Council member – explained.
Engstrom, who served 11 years from 1994 to 2005, was the second-longest serving police chief, after his predecessor, James L. Campbell, who served for 15, from 1979 to 1994. The average time of service of the 23 police chiefs proceeding Rasmussen was three and a half years.
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