Gordon Young, Police Chief

Since he was a kid, Gordon Young knew he wanted to be in law enforcement. He saw his dad and grandfather in the profession and seemed destined to follow in their footsteps. After getting his start in his home state of Michigan, he eventually found his way to River Falls in 2015 as the City’s new Police Chief. 

On this episode of the Kinni Cast, Chief Young talks about his introduction to River Falls a decade ago, shares how the new police station has been a major upgrade for the department, discusses why he’s passionate about mental health, and much more.  

Learn more about the City of River Falls at www.rfcity.org. Follow the City of River Falls on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Transcript

Tyler Mason:

Hi, River Falls. Welcome back to another episode of the Kinni Cast. My name is Tyler Mason. I'm the Communications Coordinator here with the city, and I'm excited to be joined today by Chief Young. Chief Gordon Young, who's been a police chief here in town for a while now. We're going to get into his background and talk about some public safety things here in River Falls. Chief, how are you doing today?

Chief Gordon Young:

Great, thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Tyler Mason:

Absolutely. Well, yeah. Let's maybe start with you a little bit. How did you first get into law enforcement? And maybe was there a 'why' for you as well?

Chief Gordon Young:

Well, the why for me was God's will for me and what he wanted for in my life. That's what got me into public service and just the need to help others. What was fortunate for me also is that I come from a law enforcement family. My father retired as a deputy chief, and my grandfather retired as a lieutenant. They both worked for the same agency in the same metropolitan area where I came from, and now even my son is in college looking to get a degree in fisheries and forestry to go into the DNR. It's kind of a family tradition also that we were called to do, but it is helping others.

Tyler Mason:

As a kid, seeing your dad and grandpa, was that just kind of stuck with you as something that maybe when you grew up that was what you wanted to do?

Chief Gordon Young:

Yes. This is what we spoke of at the dinner tables, hearing the stories, all the excitement that they had, and it was something that I knew that I wanted to pursue as a young child.

Tyler Mason:

Sure. That's cool. Well, it's been about 10 years now since you took on the role of police chief here in River Falls. What were your early impressions of the community when you moved here and when you took the job? And then also what was your thought on just the department when you first started?

Chief Gordon Young:

I was invited for the interview and it was right after Bacon Bash, so I was, from what I had heard, I had missed out on a good festival. But I came to the interview five days prior to the actual interview date, and I just wanted to make sure, I have a wife and three kids and wanted to make sure that if I wanted to move them 10, 11 hours away from where we were living that it was the right place. And so I actually interviewed the residents here for those five days to see what their thought was for the community and even do my own investigative work. And I was just amazed. Obviously River Falls is a very beautiful location. I enjoy the outdoors. I like fishing and hunting, and to have a trout stream running right through the middle of the city worked out very well for me. But what really caught me was the community itself and the responses I would get from people about it. Just ask 'em about the community. A majority of them said that they went to the university here. They didn't grow up in River Falls, but they fell in love with the city when they went to the university. And then a lot of them found their spouses at the university also or in the area, and they both decided to stay here in the area because they loved it so much. And also it was nice to be close to the Twin Cities, have the airport nearby, but also the professional teams, football, baseball, basketball. And I'm a big sports fan, so it's nice to be close to the cities.

Tyler Mason:

Did you adopt any of the Minnesota teams or Wisconsin teams?

Chief Gordon Young:

Yeah, the Wisconsin teams or team. It's the Green Bay Packers, but I still root for the Tigers, the Pistons and the Red Wings of the Detroit teams. But when I do go to Twins game, I do root for the Twins, but haven't been to a Vikings game.

Tyler Mason:

As far as the department itself, when you first joined or when you interviewed, I guess, what were your thoughts of it, where the department was and maybe your visions for what you could do as the chief?

Chief Gordon Young:

I was really pleased with Roger Leque's decisions on staffing. All the right people were there, and that's what makes our agency is the people, not so much the building, because if that was the case, then I wouldn't have taken the position back in the old PD. And that I was told at the time to put some money into the CIP as soon as I was given the position, because there were thoughts of one day, somewhat in the future, near future, that they would build a new police agency. But it was fantastic. I was warmly greeted, which I was nervous about. Obviously coming from a different state into a new area, I had no connections to River Falls, although I do have family outside of Wausau and Stevens Point, so I was familiar with Wisconsin growing up. My grandfather and grandmother, we still had the family farm in our family outside of Wausau. So every summer I would come up and bale hay. So I knew what hard work meant and I knew what farming was about. It was a lot of work.

Tyler Mason:

Yeah. I can only imagine from everything I understand about it. Let's maybe talk about the department itself and just kind of how it's structured, maybe what a typical day -- not that there probably is one looks like, but just kind of take people inside of how the department here at River Falls is structured and how it operates on a day-to-day basis.

Chief Gordon Young:

So we have presently 28 sworn officer positions, and we're looking for one more candidate. So if anybody out there's listening to this and looking for a new career or looking for an exciting career, then please visit our website and apply for the position. So also, we have three civilian positions and they manage the day-to-day operations with all of our paperwork, phone calls, reporting system. We have a lot of internal reports, but also everything from the state to the federal government requires reporting to. So they keep busy all day long, extremely busy. We also have 15 reserve officers that assist us, and they're non-sworn position. They're civilians and everything from retirees to college students looking to get into the field. And we've actually hired quite a few of our reserve officers as full-time patrol officers. So it's really a good stepping stone for people. And with that, also with our officers, we have several specialized areas that they can go into.

So we have an investigations division, and we have a sergeant that leads that as well as two investigators, which are patrol officers. They just have a different assignment. And then also we have two school resource officers, and that's their full-time assignment. And then in the summertime they'll come back to patrol. But then also with that too, our officers have many different abilities to do additional assignments. We have our ERU, like a SWAT team, if that's an interest of yours. Also, we have a position for drug investigations. So if someone has an interest for that too, we have people that know defensive tactics that teach our staff all the skills they need to be on the road, as well as also for range and shooting proficiencies. We have an honor guard program, so I'm sure if you've seen one of our parades, you've seen our honor guard unit marching in the parade, and they also do funerals and school events and so forth. So we have a lot of activities for everyone to do.

Tyler Mason:

Yeah, I've gotten to see a little bit of the inner workings, but I think maybe people listening might not know how things go.

Chief Gordon Young:

And just to get back to your original question, that there is no typical day. You're absolutely right. Our calls for service or their proactive policing is what dictates the day. So it's more so for myself and the deputy chief that have more standardized days, but that's one of the areas that's exciting for law enforcement. I can tell you when I started, I never imagined I would want to work in an office behind a desk all day just because most officers get into law enforcement to be on the road to help people. And that's something even that at times, there's boredom, obviously, if there's not much going on, and we do have a safe community, but it's nice.

Tyler Mason:

Was that a transition for you to get adjusted to that change of pace, I guess when you took over as chief?

Chief Gordon Young:

Prior to, I was with an agency in Michigan, the Royal Oak Police Department, and I had started off as a patrol officer and worked my way up to the deputy chief there. So for five years prior to I was kind of doing the same position as the chief of police. But it was a much larger organization.

Tyler Mason:

Well, one of the things you alluded to earlier was the new police station. I think it was just a few years ago that you guys moved into that station. That was the old newspaper office. We had previous episodes of the podcast where we talked about the library and the fire station renovations that are coming up, but this one is now we're seeing the fruits of that labor. Tell me a little bit about how much that space changed just the way the department operates and the work that you're able to do.

Chief Gordon Young:

We're blessed to have it. It's a night and day difference. We went from having a moldy flooded basement. Every time it rained, the basement flooded. And that's where our emergency operation center was for the city. Very few windows, no public restrooms in the lobby. And then we went to a complete just 180 degrees to a modern police agency.

And just a small story, when I found out about the building being available originally I had, and I believe it was about $8 million to build from scratch or a brand new building. And one day Scot comes into my office, Scot Simpson, and he says, 'Hey, I found your building.' And I was like, 'What do you mean you found my building? We haven't built it yet.' And he is like, 'Come for a car ride with me.' And so the River Falls Journal at the time had owned the building and they were selling it, and the price just had a price reduction of $500,000. So it was one and a half million for I believe just over 20,000 square feet. You just walked into the front doors and we looked inside and just the light alone, it was blinding. They had really windows all the way up to the ceiling. They were at least 18, 19 feet tall and just a wide open area where everyone could just be spread out versus the old agency. It was just a maze going through here to find people's offices. And we had no idea if there were officers in the building or if there were sergeants in the building because there was different wings that they were in. So this has been wonderful to have. And with the budget I had, I didn't get the full $8 million, just to let you know. We purchased it for a million and a half, and then I received $3 million to renovate it. So it saved the community three and a half million dollars to purchase this. And the renovations were what our agency really needed to be a modern police department. And number one was putting public restrooms in at the front, so they had someplace to go. But also the multiple meeting rooms, we put in a large training room, emergency operations center. We actually put a garage in where we could stick our entire fleet. We could only stick a few of our vehicles in the old building. And as you know, the Wisconsin winters are cold and snowy.

Tyler Mason:

It takes a toll on those cars.

Chief Gordon Young:

Yes, it does. And I remember having to respond to some calls when I first got here and having to shovel the snow off the car before you could actually make it to the car. So it's nice having that ability with no snow on cars. Another good addition that we put on and are fortunate to have is it's called Milo, and it's a training simulator. So we put all of our officers through the simulator throughout the year, but especially the new officers, a lot of the officers are just before they get the position, they're used to texting their friends versus actually communicating. So we make sure that we set our expectations for them. And it's a movie screen and it goes about 180 degrees around the officer, and different scenarios are played, and depending on how the officer reacts, the training officer that's running the simulator can change the program to make it easier or harder on them. So what we want to show them is that as they use verbal skills and starting with their presence, that deescalation begins and shows them actually how to deescalate scenes, just using your voice. And we were actually the first agency in western Wisconsin to get this. And since we've had it, we opened it up to all law enforcement agencies in Pierce and St. Croix County. It's really neat. But also, we put in a really nice forensic child interview room, a modern evidence room where we can even put in refrigerated or evidence that needs to be frozen into this room. We have a in-house vehicle processing room where we can tow a vehicle that needs to be searched thoroughly into our agency versus doing it on the road. Because typically when that happens, it's either a tsunami outside, just pouring rain, or it's about 30 degrees below. So it's nice we can bring it into a controlled environment and get to it when we have time to get to it. Especially it depends on the call load and it's under video and audio surveillance, which is really nice. Also, one thing that we didn't have is actual restrooms in our locker rooms before we had to go down a hallway and through a little maze to use the restroom, but now modern conveniences put 'em together. So it's really, really a great facility. But I'd like to remind the community though too that the patrol officer's office has never changed. So their office is their patrol cars, and I know there was a lot of concern from some of the local businesses and residents that were downtown that really enjoyed having us down there that they wouldn't see us anymore. And just had to remind them that most of the officers that you see, they're on patrol and they're still going to be downtown. And it has worked out that way.

Tyler Mason:

Yeah, the building is great. You mentioned the simulator. I've gotten to see that in action too, and just seems like all around it's been a game changer for the department, so it's been great to see. When you look at just the community in general, what are some of the biggest public safety challenges that River Falls faces today?

Chief Gordon Young:

The biggest challenge that we've faced, especially in the last two years is finding staff. We have been short staffed for about two years, and many businesses that I hear the business owners talk of that there's just no employees that want to work, especially when law enforcement, it is a dangerous field. But throw on it too that you have, you're working every weekend or you're working every night, you're working overnight, you're working holidays. You may or may not get the vacation that you want depending, especially if they on a vacation during River Falls Days or Bacon Bash or there's some big event happening, you may not get that time off. If you're working in the private sector, you may have a better opportunity for that. So we presently, as I mentioned earlier, that we have one open position, but we currently have four officers, which is a record for us, in the police academy right now. They'll graduate next Friday, and then we will have at least one or two officers going to the police academy in January.

So we're finally getting caught up. But yet, that's really when the hard work begins, especially for the staff that's been here working the road now, they're going to be, since they were shorthanded, they're working many hours on overtime now they're going to be having to train six brand new officers. And this is coming off of training five officers within the past year. So we've had a big turnover due to multiple reasons, some finding different positions throughout the state, different states or even just getting on the profession. Totally. So it has been a challenge. It's not just us, it's all agencies in pretty much our area, if not the entire nation.

Tyler Mason:

When we look at some of the things that the police department handles or works with, I know mental health is something that is widely talked about these days, and it's something that's been a big focus for you personally. Can you share a little bit about why that's an important part of your work?

Chief Gordon Young:

Yes, and the first part I'll speak about is, or just dive into, is the chapter 51 mercy detentions. People that are in crisis, they're having a mental health breakdown. That really caught my attention when I came here. The agency that I came from in Michigan, we had a hospital right in our community that would help people with mental health issues. And basically we would transport them five minutes and it would get them the help that they needed. And coming to Wisconsin, it is not the case here. I can't go to Allina hospital and drop a patient off for treatment. They don't have the staff, and by law, they cannot do it. It needs to be in a locked facility. And unfortunately for the River Falls area is that we have to go all the way to Oshkosh. So officers are transporting in good weather, four to four and a half hours one way to get the patient there, and the patient's in handcuffs too during this process in the back seat, a hard seat that was not designed for comfort.

And it quite frankly is inhumane how we in Wisconsin have to treat people that are having a mental health issue. We wouldn't treat somebody like that that's having a heart attack or broken arm, but yet we're forced to do that. And that's something that since pretty much the day I got here, I've been fighting to change with the state. So I was fortunately placed on the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association board of Directors, and as part of that, I was given my own subcommittee on Chapter 51, how we can make the system better in Wisconsin. So since that placement, I've been meeting with the administrators at Winnebago Mental Health Institute in Oshkosh and formed a really tight relationship with them. And we're making small changes right now to help the process for law enforcement and for patients, but we're also looking to change state law, whereas the legislature will make it so that basically doctors and nurses can chapter a patient and get them help versus law enforcement. I think the professionals that do the job that know what they're doing in terms of mental health and how to treat them should be the ones taking them into custody.

And so we're hoping to follow a similar model that's in Arizona, and they have regional hospitals in their state versus just one singular hospital that entire state has to go to since it makes sense. And what would be nice then is that we have crisis responders, which St. Croix County and also Pierce County have adopted where mental health professionals are now joining us on our calls. So we're slowly trying to change the system. And in Arizona, they have only 0.5% of their calls require law enforcement. So I couldn't imagine a day and time where people that need mental health are getting it from professionals where law enforcement is not.

Tyler Mason:

Does it seem like just a focus on mental health, whether it's within policing or elsewhere, has it changed quite a bit during your tenure, do you think?

Chief Gordon Young:

Yes, it has. From when I started, you went to a critical incident and quite frankly, traumatized. The leaders back then, it was no discussion of it, no talking of it, just get into your patrol car and answer another call because they're stacked up. Just get going. And law enforcement has realized that that is not right because officers do have issues with just dealing with a lot of the incidents that they're involved with. And a recent 2025 study showed that on average every year, 57 officers are murdered by suspects each year, while on average 184 officers take their own lives. So that's letting us know that we need to do something and to help our staff.

So we did change that in River Falls. So now we have therapists that come into our agency every quarter, and the officers are mandated from me down to speak with a therapist for one hour every quarter minimum. And then also our city recognized that we need more help in our employee assistance program. So we have many more office visits to a licensed therapist if that's something that we need for continued help. But even on critical incidents, we have an incident, we have it debriefed with a therapist, a licensed therapist will come in, and it's just those staff that were involved in it. I'm not in it unless I was there. Our deputy chief isn't in it or Sergeants. It's just those people that they can share their feelings, their emotions and thoughts to help them process it with somebody that knows how to help them out. And also the city realized that time off is good for law enforcement, and so we have a generous PTO policy with time off so that they can just refresh themselves too. So it's really changed from where I came from that we actually talk about what's going on. We're not shameful to say that, Hey, I've got an issue and I need help.

Tyler Mason:

Yeah, I think that's great and great direction to heading into and kudos to you and the rest of the staff there for implementing those changes. And I'm sure it's done a lot of good for the officers too. Yeah. That's great.

Chief Gordon Young:

Yeah. Thank you.

Tyler Mason:

A few left here for you, Chief, just when you think generally speaking about police work and people listening to this that maybe something they don't know about police work, what is something that people might be surprised to find out?

Chief Gordon Young:

That officers go above and beyond and many, many kind and generous offerings that they do go unnoticed and that's the way they want it. I just found out just from others speaking that aren't in law enforcement from community members, that if I'm out at an event or just out at lunch, that people come to me and thank me for what our officers have done. And many of them I've never known about because the officers won't speak of it, but they're so generous. They'll even fix their personal vehicles in the community. Some are mechanics and they know how to fix cars. So whether on duty or off duty, they'll come back and repair their vehicles for them. They'll buy them food and not just a dinner, but a whole family groceries for their houses. They'll pay for clothing, shoes, and they've even paid for gas and even hotel rooms out of their own pockets that people that are just struggling, and especially if it's time of day that Our Neighbor's Place isn't open at this time or other agencies can't help them out, the officers will pay with their own money to make sure that that they're safe and out of the elements. And that's just simply amazing.

Tyler Mason:

Yeah, that really is.

Chief Gordon Young:

So we're very fortunate in River Falls to have the staff that we do.

Tyler Mason:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the last one here, and then we're going to let you off the hook. This is the question that everyone gets asked on the podcast. What impact do you hope your work will have on the people of River Falls?

Chief Gordon Young:

For me personally, as we protect the lives and property of our community and to fulfill our mission statement, to protect with courage and to serve with compassion, that's something that we speak highly of in our department and amongst our officers. What I would love is that there's a day that our residents don't worry about crime, that they don't need to because there is no crime, that we do such a good job in doing our proactive policing that we can stop it. But that's one of the reasons too, that I chose River Falls to come to is it's part of the crime and the good job that they have been doing. I had heard from others that they let their kids run around the city and with no parental supervision, give 'em a bike, just let 'em go. And the city I came from, that was not the case. And here in River Falls with my three kids when they were growing up, I let them take their bikes and just go wander off with their friends in the city and didn't have to worry about them. And so that's the community that I wanted to live in and raise my kids in, and I found it, and I hope others will experience the same that I have. And so that's what we strive every day to make sure that we give their community the protection that they deserve.

Tyler Mason:

Awesome. Well, we're going to let you go with that. Chief Gordon Young with the River Falls Police Department, I appreciate you being on the Kinni Cast today, and keep up the great work.

Chief Gordon Young:

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it, Tyler.

Tyler Mason:

And to everyone listening to this episode of the Kinni Cast, thank you for tuning in. And if you don't already subscribe, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all the episodes are also at the River Falls city website at rfcity.org. Until next time, have a great day, River Falls.