Police Chief: Officers taking transition course for new handguns, radar trailer ordered

During a Feb. 26 chat session, Tahlequah Police Chief Nate King updated the public on call numbers for the month.

Officers have logged 4,117 calls for service; close to 1,500 building checks; 300 citizen stops; 1,173 traffic stops; 23 theft reports; five burglaries; 42 vehicle crashes; and 50 arrests for the month of February.

“This month we’ve started; our new handguns came in and it requires a transition course to be able to carry those. [Those] have some optics on the top of them for officers so we’ve been putting shifts through that transition course,” King said.

Additionally, King said he will ask the Tahlequah City Council, during a March 4 meeting, to take action on the promotion of Det. Josh Girdner to Training Lieutenant.

“We’ve ordered our radar trailer, which for those of you who live in neighborhoods and call us from time-to-time about speeders, that’ll really help us collect data and hopefully buffer some of that traffic, some of that speed,” he said.

The chief shared his Thought for the Day; the lack of tolerance for an opinion that varies from another.

“Basically, if someone disagrees with us, they are our enemy and that just simply can’t be true. Even within this department, there are so many difference of opinions, difference of beliefs,” King said.

He added that he’d have a “broken department” if his officers and administrators didn’t co-exist or get along due to a difference of opinion.

“I see it more and more in our society that someone disagrees with you, they are your enemy and I just think we need to be mindful of respecting the opinion of others,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we have to agree with it, but we do have show have to show some common human decency to people.”