The Jamestown Sun | Saturday, October 7, 2023
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| 2023 ANSWERING THE CALL | 1
ANSWERING THE CALL A SALUTE TO THE JAMESTOWN AREA FIRST RESPONDERS
John Rose works as a part-time police officer for the Jamestown Police Department. Masaki Ova / The Jamestown Sun
Working part time as Jamestown police officer fills void By Masaki Ova The Jamestown Sun
JAMESTOWN — For John Rose, working as a chief of police in Rugby, North Dakota, was going to be his last job in law enforcement, but when he moved to Jamestown he read a story about a shortage of police officers and reached out to the Jamestown Police Department. “I just basically volunteered myself and said, ‘Hey, I’m here, you are short, I’m still licensed, I’m old but I can still kind of function out there if you just need somebody out there to help out,’” he said. Rose and his youngest son moved to Jamestown earlier this year so he could be closer to his oldest son, who had moved here earlier. He said he has known Scott Edinger, Jamestown chief of police, for around seven to eight years through the Chiefs of Police Association of North Dakota. He currently works as a part-time police officer for the Jamestown Police Department and also as a brewer for Drift Prairie Brewing Co. He said working for the Jamestown Police Department made sense financially for him and it also allows him to work on the streets without dealing with the stress that comes from the administration side. “It has filled a little bit of the old void of being out on the street when it’s kind of fun,” he said. “I enjoy it. It’s rewarding.” Currently, Rose does security at Jamestown Municipal Court and patrols on the streets. “There are always holes that I can go out on the street and get that interaction (with other people),” he said. Rose brings more than 25 years of experience to the Jamestown Police Department
and has worked in patrol, investigations and administration. “I’ve shown over the years that I can make good decisions,” he said. “If younger officers have questions, (I’m) just another older, experienced officer from a little different era of law enforcement.” Rose, who is from Fergus Falls, Minnesota, decided to get into law enforcement when he was in his mid to late 20s. Before law enforcement, he said he wasn’t career focused. He spoke to an adviser at Fergus Falls Community College, who was also a police officer in Fergus Falls, about getting into law enforcement. He eventually completed a two-year degree and got licensed to work in law enforcement. Rose began his career in law enforcement in 1997 working in North Dakota as a police officer
in Napoleon before working for the Devils Lake Police Department from 1996 to about 2006. He was the chief of police in Cando before he took the same position in 2011 in Rugby. He said he wanted to get away from the administrative side of law enforcement. He said it was difficult to get his department fully staffed and he was working all the time. “Law enforcement administration is a different monster and you can get burnt out very easily especially when you are going through different officers,” he said. In Jamestown, Rose said law enforcement officers deal with the same things as smaller communities but it’s more frequent here because there are more people. In a smaller community like Rugby, it can be a little more challenging because services to help individuals are about an hour away. “So you didn’t have good mental health services, stuff like that,” he said. “Whereas here, some of that makes some of those calls a lot easier because the services are available and there are more people doing it here. In Rugby, some of that stuff I had to do by myself.” Rose said the most rewarding part of being in law enforcement is just being thanked. He said it’s rewarding when someone gets out of jail and thanks him for being arrested because that interaction may have led to the individual making changes to his or her life. He said right now it’s challenging to find people to work in law enforcement. He said there is a shortage of qualified people and they don’t want to do that type of service. “I have no clue why that is,” he said.
It has filled a little bit of the old void of being out on the street when it’s kind of fun. I enjoy it. It’s rewarding.
~JOHN ROSE
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