New Duluth police chief's first task: Hiring a lot of officers

DULUTH - In 24 years with the Duluth Police Department, Mike Ceynowa has gone from working patrol in Lincoln Park to, most recently, briefly serving as deputy chief of patrol. In between, he has worked in the Violent Crimes Unit, Crime Scene Investigations and as Professional Standards Lieutenant.

Just more than a week ago, the 48-year-old Fridley native was sworn in as police chief.

Ceynowa replaces Mike Tusken, a Duluth native who was with the department for 30 years — six as chief.

Ceynowa's most significant challenge right now, he said, is staffing. Ideally there would be 158 sworn officers, but the department — which has a budget of $26 million — is short about 25.

Q. You've said that stabilizing the department is your first goal. What are other things on your to-do list?

A. I think the way I have phrased it best finally is "recruit, retain, rebuild." We need to recruit high-quality people to come and work here. We need to recruit, internally, people who want to take on leadership roles, who want to take on investigative roles. That's going to be a slow, incremental process because of our staffing crisis. But as we have those opportunities, we want to know we have people there because successorship in all of these roles is important. We want to be able to continue to develop, because retaining people is very important. And lastly, rebuild relationships with different community organizations that we haven't been able to see face-to-face over the last couple of years [and] work on building our relationships with partner agencies.

Q. What does your ideal police officer candidate look like and has that changed in the past 10 years?

A. I don't know if that ideal candidate is different than what it was 10 years ago. We want people — and you've heard Chief Tusken say this, and I've said it — we want people with character. We can teach people what our policies are, what our tactics are, what are procedures are — but I can't train character. I can't teach you how to be a decent and calm person under stress. My ideal candidate is somebody who comes in with some life experience, whether those are personal ones or professional ones, that helped to shape them. Somebody who is open to different experiences, different people, to people who have different life experiences than their own. Because at the end of the day, this job involves dealing with people — oftentimes at their worst moments and most challenging times of their lives, but also a lot of joyous times, too.

Q. You've talked about building community trust in the Police Department. How will you do that?

A. It's going to where the people are. It's going to these groups, meeting them where they want to meet, and having honest, open communications. Be willing to sit there and have people not be really happy with you. But say, "You know? Here are some realities. Here's some things we can do as a police organization. Here's some things that are going to be much more difficult to try to get to. And here's some of the things that we probably cannot change." You know, those are the conversations that need to be had and that I've already started to have.

Q. How will you measure success in this role?

A. I'd like to get back to a place where people are leaving here because they're retiring. They've reached their right age and are heading out. Success also looks to me like every member of this department knows that they're valued, regardless of whether they carry a badge and a gun. And that when I walk out the door, the next person in feels confident and comfortable to take on the role. Ideally, I want to see people clamoring for it.