PORT TOWNSEND — After nearly six years of steering the Port Townsend Police Department through dramatic reforms and restructuring, Chief Kristen Anderson resigned Tuesday.
Anderson, who has accepted a position with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Washington, D.C., will continue in Port Townsend until April 15.
There, she will supervise the case analysis unit, which provides support to the nation’s law enforcement agencies solving difficult cases of children in trouble.
“I am not getting a raise, but it’s something I’m pretty excited about,” Anderson said during an interview Tuesday.
“As long as I’ve been in law enforcement, children’s issues have been really important to me and I feel a very strong pull to be there.”
Deputy Chief Conner Daily will take over as acting police chief until City Manager David Timmons makes a new appointment.
The police force totals about 25, including patrol officers and support staff.
Timmons selected Anderson in 1999 as his first department head appointment.
She had started her law enforcement career in Lynnwood in 1993, and joined the Port Townsend department in August 1997.
Recalling bad old days
Anderson is leaving behind a much different Port Townsend Police Department.
“This was a very dysfunctional department when I first came here,” she recalled.
“The community did not support us. We didn’t have a good relationship with the community, we didn’t have a good relationship with the city government.
“We didn’t like each other.”
Daily attests to that.
“It was really ugly around here,” Daily said, “and she has done a wonderful job. We are completely 180 degrees than what we were, and that’s because of her.
“She has built a team of competent, community-spirited officers. She is creative, she is very sensitive to the needs of the community and she’s very sensitive to the needs of people who work here.”
Anderson, 37, managed to leave a strong impression outside the department as well.
“I’m very sorry to hear it,” Mayor Catharine Robinson said of Anderson’s resignation Tuesday.
Robinson added that she hopes the selection process would begin when Timmons returns to work next week.