WASILLA — At least for the next six months, Wasilla will have a new head lawman.

Mayor Verne Rupright said Monday that Larry Dickerson will start as interim police chief on Nov. 4.

Rupright said Dickerson was hired through Prothman and Associates, a company that provides interim employees on a contract basis. The company’s website lists a half-dozen municipalities seeking interim police and fire chiefs or other upper-level managers for their public safety departments. “They sent us three names and we picked Mr. Dickerson,” Rupright said.

Wasilla will pay the company for Dickerson’s services. The company will be in charge of benefits. Rupright said that over six months, the money paid for Dickerson will be just $3,000 more than what the city has been paying Craig Robinson. Robinson stepped up to acting police chief after the departure of chief Angella Long, who was one of the first top-level administrators Rupright let go after taking office.

Rupright said that the police officers haven’t expressed any reservations about the plan and he went out of his way to talk to them about it. And the man Dickerson will displace seemed pleased with the idea when asked.

“It’s a good thing. It’s going to be good for the department,” Robinson said.

Rupright said that Robinson did a great job as chief but there was a conflict of interest issue at play since Robinson’s wife also works for the department.

“Even though I can waive it for a certain amount of time, I shouldn’t allow it to go on indefinitely,” Rupright said.

With Dickerson onboard, he said, Robinson will go back to the job he held prior to stepping in as chief.

“He’ll be a sergeant, but he’s gong to remain an integral part of this department,” Rupright said.

Dickerson, according to Rupright and a municipal website, was chief of the Lacey Police Department in Washington state from June 2002 until his retirement in March of 2005.

Rupright said Dickerson’s been doing the traveling police chief thing for a while now.

“We’re his fifth or sixth department he’s coming into as an interim,” he said.

Among Dickerson’s duties will be a general audit of the department, the search for his replacement and an effort to get the department certified with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc. If the department achieves accreditation, Rupright said, it would be one of the first, if not the first, to do so in the state. The accreditation makes the officers more valuable if they ever decide to try and sign on with a department elsewhere in the country.

Aside from those duties, Rupright said, Dickerson will also offer insight from outside the department.

“We get a fresh look, a fresh perspective here,” the mayor said.

And, he said, it shouldn’t be too terribly difficult for the new chief to learn the ropes.

“There’s really nothing unique to Alaska municipal policing,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.