Vermilion police chief retires after 27 years on the force

VERMILION — It was the job he always wanted, and there he was, leaving it. The walls of his office were finally bare and Chris Hartung was just 90 minutes or so away from hanging up his bulletproof vest and changing out of his uniform. "There's Chief Hartung cake back there in the break room if you want some," he offered a guest Friday afternoon, his last day on the job at the Vermilion Police Department, and the 27th anniversary of his hiring. "It was also (former Police Chief's) Bob Kish's birthday. He always said I was his birthday present to himself because I'm so wonderful," he said, with a grin. "Duh." It was such an oft-quoted line it was brought up that night at the ceremony to officially hand office to the new Chief Scott Holmes and recognize others in the departments on their promotions. The ceremony started with a goodbye to Hartung, who had led the department since 2011. He refused offers of a retirement party, according to his friends and his wife, Judy. He had even refused the usual honors of a last call out, the ceremonial "end of watch" call of one's badge number followed by silence and a notification that they are "out of service." "I'm not good at selling myself, promoting myself, I don't know how to phrase it," he said, fumbling. "Look, (former Detective Sgt.) Steve Davis had it right. When his time came to retire, we're all back there eating and he was there and then he was just gone. We looked at the security cameras and he got in his vehicle and left. He did the Irish goodbye. I'm not good at saying goodbye." Hartung started with the department when Kish noticed him in the Sandusky Police Academy, where Kish was an instructor. Hartung was there under sponsorship of the Huron Police Department at the time. "Kish said 'Hey, didn't you take the (civil) service test for us?' And I said yeah, but you guys never called me.' So the next morning I go in and I get called into the office, and I'm sitting there — in this office I'm in right now — with Kish and Fred Barck, who was the lieutenant, and Barck goes 'Have you ever had a speeding ticket? From who?' And I said 'Yeah, from you.'" It was an interview. He got the job. He was 26. He spent three years as a patrolman until Sept. 11, 2001, when he was activated with the Ohio Army National Guard 323rd Military Police Company out of Toledo, the unit he'd served with since high school. He was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for a year. While he was there, the sergeant exam opened up in the department in Vermilion and he drove home twice — once to take the written exam, and once for the oral exam. When he came home for good in November 2002, he found out he was promoted. Hartung spent eight years as a sergeant before becoming chief in 2011 when Kish retired. He was 38. It was a quick climb, he knows. But he also knows there was no other job he ever wanted to do. Even as a kid, there were only two jobs he ever wanted to do: be a cop and be in the military. Service, it seems, is in his blood. His great-grandfather was a cop in the Sandusky Police Department. The names of three of his family members are etched into the Erie County Fire Fighter's Memorial, all killed in the line of duty more than 100 years ago. Hartung spent 13 years with the National Guard, serving on two state and two federal deployments. His son Daniel is in the U.S. Army, the eighth generation to serve in the military since the Civil War. "He's extremely intelligent, and people may or may not know this, but he's an extremely patriotic individual," said Erie County Sheriff Paul Sigsworth. "He greatly values public service and military service. He thinks very highly of military veterans. And he's a great family man. He constantly talks about doing things with his family.'' Sigsworth credits Hartung's leadership in keeping Vermilion as safe as it is. "Here's what I can tell you about Chris. I think he has an ideal personality to be a police chief and to be in law enforcement. I think his biggest asset is his sense of humor. He's always fun to be around, always. Most of the folks in the department now he either hired or mentored in his role as chief, and he had a large part in getting that project of that new station done," he said. Former Mayor Jim Forthofer worked with Hartung for 10 years, as a Council member and during two terms as mayor. Hartung was one of the best managers he'd ever worked with, he said. The police department's budget accounted for 62 percent of the city's finances, but Hartung would have it analyzed thoroughly "to the nth degree." He charmed people, attracting more attention than Forthofer would on their annual drives during the parades at the Woollybear and Fish Festivals, he said, laughing. Forthofer said he was mayor for two months when he got the call he dreaded: a 2 a.m. call of shots fired at a home on Highbridge Road. Hartung called him; they needed mutual aid called in. Forthofer said he immediately started coming up with all the contacts he knew in adjoining towns when Hartung gently told him "Mayor, all you have to do is say 'OK.'" "So I said 'OK' and he said 'Very good.' If you have good people you don't have to second guess they know what to do," he said. "I haven't gotten a lot of those middle of the night calls but when I do he always does his best Robin Williams 'Good morning Vietnam' impression and says 'if I'm not sleeping tonight, neither are you.' He's a heck of a guy and I've been lucky to work with him." Capt. James Graham started with the department two years after Hartung, but the pair hit it off immediately, developing a strong working relationship and an instant friendship. "I told my wife 'I just met the funniest guy I ever met in my life at work,'" Graham remembers. "Our wives met and their interests are the same, so it was nice, we have even vacationed together. We know each other's families. That's going to be one of the hardest things — I'm used to, when I'm stuck on a project, or need a break, I could just walk down the hallway and have a laugh from time to time. We used to call it 'administrative wanderings.'" Hartung's legacy to the department, Graham thinks, is his emphasis on education. All sergeants undergo supervisor training and education program (STEP) and police executive leadership college (PELC). All officers in the department completed crisis intervention team (CIT) training, which equips officers to respond to people in a mental health crisis, by recognizing signs of mental illness, reducing arrests by connecting with services. "He's highly intelligent but he doesn't flaunt that. We weren't afraid to be completely honest with each other, give each other honest to God criticism. Neither of us have any ego, like zero. I'd say 'I have this idea, or he'd say I am doing this' and we could say to the other 'that is an absolutely buffoonery idea. Have you thought about X, Y, Z because I can see where you are going with it. You are absolutely screwing this up.' It worked for us." At the ceremony to hand over the office he'd held so long, Hartung was called to the podium to make remarks. The man who is not good at selling himself asked Cindy Kish, his predecessor's widow, to come forward. "It is certain the world is a richer place for him having been in it and he will surely be missed," he said, reading off a proclamation honoring her husband, whom she buried in 2024. Hartung then thanked his wife, a "source of inspiration and joy to me," and his family and talked briefly about being a chief, with its incumbent intricacies. It is a 24-hour job, unrelenting, he said, but the chief "must remain a fixed point." Then he pivoted to Holmes, bestowing on him his confidence. "He is a better cop than I was or could be." At the close of the ceremony, the chief who longed for the 'Irish goodbye' had one last surprise: Holmes presented him a going-away gift, on behalf of the department: a street sign. It will mark the access road outside the new police station that Hartung oversaw but never got to work in, as it turned out. It will be named Hartung Way. Contact Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.