Marlene Radzik Becomes Saline’s New Police Chief

Marlene Radzik is officially Saline’s brand new police chief. The City Council voted to approve her official succession of Jerrod Hart at the March 7 meeting.

“It feels wonderful. It’s an honor to serve the City of Saline and the community,” Radzik said.

Radzik has spent most of her law enforcement career in the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office, eventually becoming the commander of police services; one of the most senior deputies on the force, directing the operations of patrol units in the county. After being confirmed, Radzik said she plans on continuing her predecessor’s accreditation process and already has a candidate in mind to replace herself as deputy chief.

“I cannot speak more highly of Chief Radzik. We are extremely fortunate that we had such a depth of experience in our police department; that we could hire from within and follow our succession plan,” City Manager Colleen O’Toole said.

The Council spent a lot of the meeting talking about the new budget for the 2023 fiscal year. Radzik said that her big financial ask for the city in this budget will be the acquisition of body-worn cameras for her officers, for the sake of transparency. According to Radzik, Saline is still waiting to see if it will be awarded a funding grant to pay for those cameras.

Brian Marl said that the new chief is “not only a consummate professional, but comes to us with vast experience …. She is ready, she’s prepared and more importantly she has the right approach and she will do great things.”

Both Marl and O’Toole agreed with Radzik’s priorities for accreditation the police department and filling the now vacant role of deputy chief. Marl said that getting body worn cameras for police “is a priority” and agreed with O’Toole that it was doable. O’Toole added that the city is discussing the possibility of using bailout money funds from the American Rescue Plan to purchase body worn cameras.