FORKS — A Port Angeles native will fill the top position at the Forks Police Department starting Feb. 1.
Doug Price, 53, a retired State Patrol detective sergeant, was selected from a pool of 13 applicants.
His selection was announced to the City Council at its Monday meeting and to the community at the Forks Chamber of Commerce meeting Wednesday.
He will earn $72,000 annually in his new post.
Price will be a full-time chief, Mayor Bryon Monohon said.
The police chief position has been open for a year, since Monohon fired Forks Police Chief Mike Powell.
Lloyd Lee, the deputy chief, has been acting as chief since then.
“I never said it would be a short or easy process,” Monohon said of the time it took to find a new chief.
Price spent 25 years working for the State Patrol before retiring in 2005.
He and his wife, Teri, will move to Forks as soon as possible, he said.
A date for a swearing-in ceremony has not yet been set.
The city is double-checking to make sure that he doesn’t have to be recommissioned as a law enforcement officer since he retired in 2005, Monohon said.
Price said he has worked and lived in Forks before.
“I worked out in the Forks outpost and lived out here from 1993 to 1995,” he said.
Before joining the State Patrol, Price served three years as a military police officer in the Army, he said.
He said he applied for the job after prodding from several people in the community.
“I got some phone calls from people I’ve known for several years, asking if I would be interested, and after talking to Teri about it, we decided it would be a good idea,” he said.
He said he wasn’t yet sure what challenges he might face.
“I don’t know yet, honestly,” he said.
“You hear a lot of rumors, but until you take a job and look around, it is really hard to tell.”
He said his first goal was to create a true community Police Department.
“Community policing is soliciting the community input to address the community safety concerns and to use the input as the basis for decisions,” he said.
As a detective sergeant in the State Patrol, he spent many years on drug investigations and task forces, he said.
“Forks can expect some drug busts pretty quickly,” he said.
Forks’ isolation can make the small town conducive to drug trafficking.
He also spent time at the governor’s mansion while in the State Patrol.
Price was born and raised in Port Angeles, he said. He attended junior high at Crescent School.
He completed high school through a mail program after his father suffered a heart attack and stroke, and he and his brothers took over the family heating and air conditioning business.
At 18, he started felling timber for ITT Rayonier and decided to join the Army.
“One of the best occupations that came up after all the different tests that you take was to be a military police officer,” he said.
“I thought, ‘That sounds like fun. Let’s do that.’
“So that gave me the education that I needed, and after I got out, I was hired on immediately at the State Patrol.”
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
