FARGO - Fargo's police chief is shifting responsibilities among his leadership by promoting the leader of its Street Crimes Unit to an open deputy chief position and by making other changes.
Chief David Todd said he's promoting Lt. Ross Renner, who leads the Street Crimes Unit and the Red River Valley SWAT team, to fill the deputy chief position Todd vacated when he was hired as police chief.
Renner will be in charge of the field services division, which encompasses the patrol, traffic, school resources and cultural liaison officers.
Todd said Lt. Joel Vettel, who also applied for the chief's job, will leave the investigative division to go into the patrol division after having had his duties extended there a year or two longer than an ordinary rotation.
"Just to provide some stability for the department as we transitioned into a new chief," Todd said.
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Rotations typically occur around the first of the year and happen once every four or so years for sergeants and lieutenants unless there's a specific need in a department, Todd said.
"As 2016 came up here, it was time to make these changes," he said.
Lt. Mike Mitchell, the department's public information officer, is moving into a patrol position and his duties as PIO will be taken over by Deputy Chief Joe Anderson. Todd said Mitchell was originally assigned as the department's spokesman on a temporary basis
Todd said all of the people he is rotating bring some level of experience to their new tasks, having previously worked in some capacity in divisions such as narcotics or investigations.
While some police departments have standard rotation policies in place to avoid corruption, Todd said neither that nor complacency is a concern.
"With rotation comes new ideas," he said. "At some point, you've got to let someone else try it."
