SACRAMENTO, California — Captain Timothy Albright has been named Elk Grove Police Department's newest police chief.
Albright has been with the police department since the department was formed in 2006. In fact, he helped it all get started.
"It was a whirlwind experience as you can imagine, and a little less than a year to put it together," Albright said. "As I think back on that time, there were no cars, no uniforms, no policies, no personnel. We had limited buildings but what we did have was a vision and we were provided the autonomy to really put something special together."
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Albright began his law enforcement career 25 years ago with the Placer County Sheriff's Department. He worked with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department as a deputy sheriff and sheriff's sergeant before working for the newly created Elk Grove Police Department in 2006.
He worked in various roles at the Elk Grove Department, from patrol sergeant, canine sergeant, detective sergeant, patrol watch commander, and operations division commander before being selected as chief.
"In my opinion, we do a really good job in engaging our community," Albright said. "I think there are more ways to do that. We've worked hard to understand the challenges of the families and really to equip our officers with a better understanding of dealing with somebody with a developmental disability. To really understand behaviors that would allow us to communicate effectively, but that just opens the door to more opportunities."
The Elk Grove Police Department has worked at building relationships with families and children with developmental disabilities.
Albright often visits "Visions in Motion Adult Day Program," which works with people with developmental disabilities.
"Every time I come here when life is busy when you're feeling stressed to be able to come here and be able to interact with amazing men and women who are part of this program it resets for me," Albright said.
He also addressed what's happened across the country and even locally with officers being killed in the line of duty.
Two years ago he wrote a heartfelt and honest letter on LinkedIn that went viral in memory of Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Robert French who was killed in the line of duty.
"That's what keeps me up at night," Albright said. "We have dedicated people who are part of this organization who pour into this community 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and it's not lost on me."
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He said it was powerful seeing the Elk Grove community show support the day of fallen Sacramento Police Officer Tara O'Sullivan's memorial service.
"What's unique in this community is that our folks care for our officers and we see that daily," Albright said. "I think back to Tara O'Sullivan's funeral recently and the family had the opportunity to travel through our town and when they did it was littered with blue ribbons and more importantly it was littered with our community members."
He says being a police chief was never part of his plan when he first started in law enforcement 25 years ago but today he's humble and grateful.
"My wife and I are raising three children in this community and everything about me is this community of Elk Grove and there's no other place I'd rather be," Albright said.
Albright will officially be sworn in on September 3.
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