Texan named new Wasilla police chief

WASILLA — The city’s newest police chief said he was looking for a change of pace when he applied to take the reigns at the department.

“Just in discussions with my wife, it was more the decision that … if I’m going to be a chief it needs to be someplace that’s outside of this pace here,” the soon-to-be Wasilla Police Chief, Mike Hughes, said.

Hughes comes to Wasilla from Saginaw, Texas, where he works as chief of the services division for the Saginaw Police Department. The division oversees things like dispatch, the department’s jail and the detectives’ division. Prior to that, he said, he oversaw the operations division, which is Saginaw’s way of describing the patrol division. He has 20 years of experience in law enforcement.

Hughes said he likes his job now and has a great boss. But Saginaw is a suburb of Fort Worth. There are 22,000 people in a city that is just 7.5 square miles.

“And that’s nighttime population. Daytime population you’ve got thousands of cars coming through here all the time,” he said.

So Wasilla — population 7,000 in 13.4 square miles, according to the city website — will certainly be different. Though, at least in some respects, maybe kind of similar.

“Quite a few cars go through Wasilla,” Hughes said.

He was speaking by phone from Saginaw where, he said, temperatures were in the mid-80s. When he came to interview in Wasilla it was actually colder in Texas than it was here. The interior of Texas, Hughes said, is prone to some wild weather swings.

“But it probably doesn’t stay cold as long here as it does in Wasilla,” he said.

When he’s not working, Hughes says he spends a lot of his spare time as a teacher and as a student.

“I teach at the colleges here and keep occupied with that,” he said. “I was working on my Ph.D., but that’s probably going to take a back seat for quite awhile.”

The doctorate — criminology — would require more time than he can dedicate once he becomes chief, he said.

Hughes said he does a little bit of fishing in his off time and enjoys some outdoors activities. But he isn’t a hunter. Not yet at least. Hunting laws in Texas are tricky to navigate and he never felt a desire sort them out for himself.

So far, Hughes said, he doesn’t have a grand master plan for the Wasilla Police Department. He wants to get on the ground first.

“It’s really bad practice for any chief to come in and have assumptions or make any pre-judgments before actually getting there and seeing it firsthand,” he said.

Toward that, his first goal will be to meet his staff and get to know the issues they face and the ins and outs of Alaska law enforcement.

“There’s going to be some of the issues that are dissimilar. But that’s where I have to get in and see the inner workings of the department,” he said. “As it stands now I’m still looking at it as an outsider.”

He said he plans to move here in mid-May. The city, in announcing Hughes had been hired, put his start date in the same general time frame. Hughes said he, his wife and his children plan to have a maybe a couple of weeks’ lag time between finishing up in Texas and starting in Wasilla. Actually, maybe two weeks is a bit of a liberal estimate.

“I don’t want to languish too long. I don’t have the personality to sit still too long,” he said.

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