Editorial
Front Page - Friday, May 14, 2010
Interim chief brings experience, perspective to the job
David Laprad
Mark Rawlston is the City of Chattanooga’s interim police chief. Mayor Ron Littlefield placed him in the position when the previous police chief, Freeman Cooper, retired in March.
- David Laprad
Probably the best-kept secret about the City of Chattanooga’s interim police chief, Mark Rawlston, is that he can’t keep a job. Even a brief glance at his 34 years of police work reveals a surprising amount of mobility.
Rawlston went to work as a dispatcher for the Soddy Daisy Police Department the day he turned 18. His reason for pursuing the position was simple: “I had friends who worked at the department. They said it was fun and I should try it out,” Rawlston says, seated at the same desk he occupied when he was deputy police chief under Freeman Cooper. Mayor Ron Littlefield made Rawlston interim chief when Cooper retired in March.
When Rawlston was 20, his chief at the time put him on
the streets as a patrolman. His department later promoted him to detective. Once Rawlston had six years of experience under his belt, he transferred to the Chattanooga Police Department.
Rawlston remained a patrolman, though, until the mid ‘80s, when he joined the mounted patrol. A black and white photo of him on the horse he rode occupies a shelf near his desk. “If you look closely, you can see a pair of antlers on the horse,” he says. “We’d put them on at Christmas.”
In 1988, Rawlston’s department promoted him to sergeant. After he ran the night shift for a year, he transferred to vice, which he says was “a lot of fun.”
“I enjoyed the years I spent with the vice unit because we got involved in everything you can imagine and several things you can’t,” he says. “One day, you might be working a gambling case, the next day, you might be having lunch with a pedophile. We went as low as negotiating to sell an 11-year-old so we could build a case against someone.”
Rawlston and his crew also worked some of the first child pornography cases in the area.
After a few years on vice, Rawlston served in a variety of capacities, including another stint on patrol, time with burglary robbery and four years with the homicide unit before being promoted to lieutenant and overseeing the Brainerd area for a year. He then took over the vice unit for five years. During this time, the department combined vice with narcotics and several other departments to form a special investigations unit.
A 1998 photo of Rawlston with three of his coworkers in vice sits on a shelf across the room from the picture of the horse. In the picture, the interim chief’s hair is noticeably longer than it is today. “Vice guys are a different cut of people,” he says without cracking a smile.
In 2001, the department promoted Rawlston to captain and put him in charge of half the city. Two years later, he took over Internal Affairs, which he ran for three years. From there, he became the deputy chief under Cooper.
Rawlston says his years of experience working a variety of beats serve him well in his present position, as they help him relate to the officers under him.
“I can understand why certain things can’t be done,” he says. “It also makes it hard for somebody to buffalo me as to why they can’t do something.”
As interim chief, Rawlston is doing pretty much what he did as deputy chief, only with more meetings and public appearances. The day-to-day running the department, the discussions about personnel and the wrestling matches with the budget all went through his office before.
Although Rawlston has more responsibility today than when he was a dispatcher in Soddy Daisy, a member of vice or the lieutenant in Brainerd, he says his friends were right: police work is fun.
“It comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility and a lot of freedom,” he says. “You have to realize the responsibility you have to the public, your coworkers and yourself, but you also have to do your job with minimum supervision because you’re out there answering calls and making decisions on your own. If you can do both of those things, you’ll have a rewarding experience.”
Rawlston is also responsible to his family, which includes
his wife of 25 years, Gloria,
and their 7-year-old daughter. However, he balks when asked which is tougher: police work
or marriage.
“People talk about how marriage is tough, but mine hasn’t been,” he says. “I can’t recall a single argument in nearly 26 years. Part of the reason is her father was a major with the highway patrol, so she understands what we do.”
Rawlston’s daughter might or might not understand the ins and outs of his job, but she supports him all the same: pinned to the wall alongside his desk is a piece of art that reads “I (heart) you Daddy – have a great day.”
Rawlston’s work history does reveal a surprising amount of mobility, but it’s all of the upward variety. Will the trend continue, resulting in Littlefield making Rawlston’s assignment as interim police chief permanent? Rawlston isn’t making any bets one way or the other, not because he’s worried his old buddies from vice will find out, but because he wants to focus on the tasks at hand.
“What the mayor does to fill this position is entirely his prerogative,” Rawlston says. “My understanding of the city charter is that the city council has to confirm the interim position within 90 days. I don’t know if that means the city council has to confirm somebody as interim police chief or name somebody as chief. All I know is the mayor put me in this seat to run the department, and that’s what I’m going to do as long as I’m sitting here.”
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