As we first reported earlier this month, Perry Police Chief Dan Brickner plans to retire in February and it’s up to Mayor Jay Pattee to decide who will fill his spot.

We spoke with the Chief to find out more about what exactly he does as the head of the department.

“What separates it from the officers and that kind of thing is not only do you deal with the personnel issues and community issues but you deal with them on a much broader basis.  You look at them both the short term and long term and what needs to be done to help make the community safer, what needs to be done to make the department one that can meet those needs.  There’s just a lot of day-to-day stuff” says Brickner.

So what qualities does Brickner think it takes to make a good Chief?

“First and foremost you have to have ethics.  You have to be able to understand what’s right and wrong regardless of if it’s a person or people that you like or don’t think so highly of, they need to be treated the same way.  You need to be able to separate what might be normal feelings from that and you have to look at things objectively” says Brickner.

Though the decision is up to the Mayor, Pattee says he plans to get the council’s blessing before filling the Chief position.  Regardless of what happens, the department is in need of two officer positions to fill both Brickner’s spot next year and the vacancy left when Officer Rod Pavelka left Perry for the Guthrie Center Police Department last month.