T-R PHOTO BY JAKE RYDER Grundy Center Police Chief Alyssa Twyford, pictured, was officially confirmed for her new position in August and had previously served as the interim chief for most of 2023.

GRUNDY CENTER — As Grundy Center’s newest chief of police, Alissa Twyford aims to bring the most out of the small town department.

Twyford had served as interim police chief since Kyle Waugh stepped down from the role earlier this year and was confirmed as permanent chief at the August meeting of the Grundy Center City Council. Waugh remains on staff as the department captain.

Twyford, originally from Indianola, worked for six years in Grundy Center before moving out to the state of Nevada in May of 2021 to take a position with the Clark County Park Police. She returned to the area in March 2022, shortly around the time of Doug Frost’s retirement as chief.

The connections Twyford made while she was in Grundy Center, including meeting her husband Jesse — the two were married in August 2022 — brought her back to the area.

Now as chief, she hopes to keep GCPD on T.R.A.C., an acronym she uses for managing the department that stands for Training, Recruitment/Retention, Accountability and Community.

Training reflects taking whatever opportunities available to the officers, to become more well-rounded officers after graduating from the academy.

Twyford is using connections with Hawkeye Community College’s regional law enforcement academy to create some opportunities for officers to audit classes at the academy as refreshers or take advantage of virtual reality training available at the school.

“We’re a small agency with a small training budget,” Twyford said. “But we need to start working on that stuff a little more.”

Recruitment and retention is probably the biggest piece of the puzzle for small-town departments like Grundy Center, which currently has four of its five active positions filled between Twyford, Waugh and officers Jessica Bradley and Brandon Bunkers, recent graduates from the law enforcement academy.

While retirements and officers moving on to different or more high-profile positions is common, Twyford believes that GCPD is nearing a hire on the lone open position and is working with the current hires to make sure they’re doing work that they find rewarding.

“What motivates them to continue coming to work beyond patrol?” Twyford asked. “What makes them tick?”

She is also grateful for the work of her three reserve officers.

“Those guys are a huge help to us,” Twyford said. “They’ll come in for Felix Grundy [Festival] or if we have vacations they’ll try to help fill that in, too.”

That ties in with the accountability point of emphasis.

“Accountability to the department, accountability to yourself, accountability to the community,” Twyford said. “Are we doing the bare minimum when we respond to calls or are we doing reports the correct way and doing what we’re supposed to be doing?”

“I won’t ask them to do anything I won’t do myself, I go out and do traffic stops like my guys, but I’m really leaning on them to do more direct patrol, where every intersection in town gets a little time, even if it’s 5-10 minutes sitting there, it makes a difference.”

Ultimately, Twyford feels even something as simple as a clean workspace makes a difference.

“We had a departmental project a couple weeks ago because the squad cars were pretty bad, and we cleaned every square inch of those cars.” Twyford said. “If you have a messy office or a messy squad car, that changes your mindset. … I’m trying to turn that corner of, ‘Oh, we’re just a small town police department, we can do whatever,’ – we’re still cops. We need to do what we’re supposed to be doing.”

And in a community like Grundy Center, that means offering a hand to the community in need: Twyford said a large majority of the calls her staff responds to are related to mental health or substance abuse issues.

“I don’t want us clearing calls right after we’re responding. I want to make sure people are in a good place when we leave a call,” Twyford said. “When people are calling us, they’re not having a good day anyway. … But ‘to serve and protect’, the serve is huge for the department. We need to take that extra step.”

And officers shouldn’t just show up when people are having a bad day, Twyford added.

“It’s easy to make those connections with the community. ll you have to do is get out of the car,” she said. “You go to soccer games, football games, community events, you hand out your stickers to the kids, talk to the parents, talk to the kids. You have to take off that cop hat for a second and engage with the people.”