GOVERNMENT
Guess who’s back? City’s first police chief wants to be top cop in Pinal — after three forced resignations
BY MONICA D. SPENCER
F
Arthur yielded this and a dozen pages of human resources documents. A similar request to the city of Maricopa was met with a devasting answer for any journalist: all files were destroyed. “The city of Maricopa is no longer in possession of your desired record. All records pertaining to the individual in question have met retention and are no longer in the city’s databases,” said Maricopa Records Administrator Andy Juarez. Meanwhile, the Maricopa Fraternal Order of Police vetoed providing InMaricopa a statement about Melvin or even explaining what a vote of no confidence means for a police union. One of its leaders said Melvin was forced to resign from MPD after the vote. Calls to the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Police Department’s public information desk consistently went unanswered. His eyes wandered Another of Malvin’s controversies began at the end of his five-year tenure with SRPMIC PD in 2016. The tribe placed Melvin on administrative leave in May that year for two weeks before he was forced to resign as chief of police. One former Salt River officer told the Casa Grande Dispatch it was due to Melvin’s “constant wandering eye for police chief jobs in larger cities.” He doesn’t dispute that. “I became a finalist for the Phoenix Police Department’s police chief position and it came out in the paper,” Melvin said. “They saw that as not being loyal to their particular agency and said let’s agree to separate.”
“Our first police station was a giant manufactured building,” he recalled. “We didn’t have any radio systems, uniforms, badges, patches. We had to develop all that stuff, the designs and police cars. Seeing how it’s grown is absolutely awesome.” During his five years at MPD, Melvin not only helped build the department from the ground up but also worked as the city’s public safety director and assistant city manager for a time. He was named “Maricopa Man of the Year” by a local business in 2008 and accepted the role of national president for the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives in 2010. With these and additional experiences under his belt, Melvin said he feels he’s ready to tackle the top cop position in the county. “I always say it’s an honor to serve and I really believe the sheriff’s job is to make sure deputies, professional staff and detention officers have the resources to serve and protect,” Melvin said. He made enemies. Now, no one’s talking There’s another side to his story. Unsavory rumors flit around — Melvin’s strained relationships with city leaders, or how he skipped town and left his department stranded during Hurricane Harvey as a police chief in Port Arthur, Texas. The Port Arthur Police Association did not return multiple requests for comment on the hurricane issue, nor the 42-page statement it sent to the city manager about Melvin’s unacceptable job performance. A Freedom of Information Act request to the city of Port
OR AS LONG AS HE COULD remember, Patrick Melvin knew what he wanted to do in life. “This is going to sound kind of funny, but I was a cop kid,” he said. “I always wanted to be a cop.” It was the structure, the uniformity, the rigidity, and the call to protect and serve that drew him to policework. Some of his personality traits in early childhood foreshadowed this. “My older brother makes fun of me because he says, ‘I knew you were going to be a cop. You used to tattletale all the time,’” Melvin said with a laugh. “I hate that he tells that story, but I was always drawn to it, and he knew.” That passion led to nearly four decades in the profession, growing from a 1985 police recruit with the Phoenix Police Department to Maricopa’s first police chief and a string of other leadership roles in Arizona and Texas. Now, he’s vying for his bigger post yet: Pinal County sheriff. “I feel I still have a lot to give to the com- munity in the area of law enforcement,” he said. “I feel I have the opportunity to elevate the profes- sionalism of law enforcement in our county.” Melvin, a 59-year-old Democrat who lives in Cobblestone Farms, won his party’s nomination uncontested and faces Ross Teeple (R-Cactus Forest) in the Nov. 5 general election. But first, a quick intro After serving more than two decades with Phoenix PD, Melvin made a bold move: build a brand-new Maricopa Police Department from scratch in 2006. He was the first hire and bore badge No. 001 on his chest.
InMaricopa.com | October 2024
October 2024 | InMaricopa.com
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