Retirement will be bittersweet for Prior Lake chief
By Pat Pheifer, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
O'Rourke, 65, knows it will be bittersweet when he hangs up his shield for the last time come January.
"If I could go back to just pushing a squad car around for another year on day watch -- because I can't stay up late anymore -- I think I would do that," he said. "I still really like the job. I like the true-life whodunit."
Policing was a far different world for the first 221/2 years of his career than for the last 17 as chief of a well-heeled outer-ring suburb.
O'Rourke was the fourth generation in his family to join the
He earned the trust and confidence of his superiors as well as the officers in the trenches and, as he said in 1997, he saw "some of the absolute worst things that human beings can do to each other" but also was "associated with some of the happiest moments."
He worked inside
When
"He, in fact, told me one time that he thought there was a wall between the administration and the troops and he wasn't convinced that I was all the way over on the administration wall," O'Rourke remembered. "I said, 'Chief, I knew in 1985 when I first got promoted that, because of my rank, I could [simply] give orders. But I also knew that if I got them to want to do the job, I'd get a much better product.'"
Good fit for
In 1997, he answered an ad seeking a police chief in
"I didn't even know where
He said he was impressed from the first interview when he sat down with 15 to 20 members of the community. He started
Since then, O'Rourke has earned the trust and confidence of the community.
"It's fun sometimes to see the chief wearing a police uniform, driving the department Harley, driving a squad sometimes, being a police officer," said
"I think his leadership fit," Haugen said. "He can interact with any group of people, tremendously eloquent speaking and he can call a spade a spade. He's a good person."
During O'Rourke's tenure,
Still the same crimes
He's still all about making sure his officers do the best job they can do.
"The same crimes happen in
But come
___
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