Healdsburg police chief to retire next year

Sonoma County’s most tenured police chief is retiring early next year after more than a decade at the helm of the Healdsburg Police Department, where he has navigated the agency through a series of natural disasters and a summer of tense community dialogue about the department’s mission and role.

Chief Kevin Burke, 54, will retire in May, an announcement he made public to the Healdsburg City Council on Nov. 2, the day after his 10-year work anniversary.

While he has long-envisioned departing from the agency when he hit the decennial milestone, Burke is sticking around longer to wrap up work on a proposal he launched this summer for a bilingual, licensed clinical social worker to help his officers with calls involving people with drug and mental health issues.

“I wanted to get it as far along as I could before leaving,” Burke said of the position, which was backed by the City Council and posted to the city’s job board last month. “I want to stay long enough so that it’s up and running.”

Burke, the longest-serving active chief in Sonoma County, was hired to lead the Healdsburg Police Department in 2010, after serving as the police chief in Lakeport for four years.

Before that, he spent a decade at the Los Angeles Police Department, where he rose to the rank of sergeant.

His passion for police work and his father’s advice to find a career that he enjoyed led him to leave his job as a prosecutor at the Orange County District Attorney’s Office to work as a police officer full time in 1996.

“It was fast paced and exciting,” said Burke, who was a reserve officer for the Los Angeles Police Department for several years before making the career change. “I decided to leave law behind and start a career as a police officer and never looked back.”

In Healdsburg, Burke has had to navigate a series of natural emergencies ― ranging from floods that swept through the city in December 2014 to the Kincade fire, which encroached on the city’s eastern flank last fall and forced the evacuation of its 11,000 residents.

The back-to-back emergencies were a dramatic change from his first four years in the leadership position, when the city’s emergency operations center was dormant.

“We now have more experience in that area and now we understand what some of our challenges and vulnerabilities are,” Burke said.

Healdsburg Vice Mayor Shaun McCaffery, the longest-serving member of the City Council, with eight years of experience, commended Burke’s response to local protests against police brutality this summer, which followed a broader nationwide reckoning over the deaths of Black men and women at the hands of police.

McCaffery, who participated in the local protests, recalled watching as the city’s officers stayed ahead of the crowds to close off roads and ensure marchers were safe from oncoming traffic.

“You can’t really pigeonhole him as somebody who is strictly defined by his law enforcement career,” McCaffery said. “He has this ability to sense what’s going on ... in our social system and really work to make a difference in a positive way.”

Burke said the period led to a reevaluation of the way the department went about its work, including his request for a clinical social worker to aid officers with tense situations in the field.

More details about how the city will go about selecting a new chief will likely be available early next year, when the new city manager steps in to the job, he said.

Burke’s successor will have to navigate the challenges that come with recruiting and retaining officers, a situation exasperated by a decline in the number people seeking out jobs in law enforcement, Burke said.

Continuing to build trust within Healdsburg’s Latino community and keeping pace with the growing size of the city, which has a number of development projects underway, will be another hurdle, he said.

The agency currently has 18 sworn officer positions, two more than when he was hired a decade ago.

“The city is changing,” Burke said. “I just want to make sure we have enough resources and staffing to continue making the city one of the safest places in Sonoma County.”

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.