Kevin Raney has been named the city of Garden Grove's 11th chief of police.
Currently the deputy police chief, Raney will replace Chief Joseph Polisar,
whose retirement becomes effective in December.
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“It's an honor for me to serve as police chief for the city
and the department that I've spent my entire working career in,” says Raney in a department-issued statement. “The kind of relationship the department
shares with the community, the quality of its service, and the amazing
employees that work so hard at making it the best, are what make this new
assignment more of a reward than a job.”
He began his career with Garden Grove PD in 1976 as a police
cadet, then became an officer two years later. In 1986, he was promoted to sergeant, in 1991 to lieutenant, and later
to captain in 2002. Raney was
named the department's deputy chief in 2005.
“Kevin has literally grown up in the department since
starting as a cadet at age 19,” Garden Grove City Manager Matt Fertal says in the release. “He's
worked his way through the ranks, been a part of the department's many
successes as well as challenges, and come away with the kind of experience,
insight, and understanding that only a Police Chief can provide.”
Raney is credited in the statement with initiating the 1998 opening of the department's Juvenile Justice Center, which works with the school district and other agencies to identify at-risk children as early as possible.
But Raney singled out as “one of the most interesting periods in my early career” his working the foot detail as a sergeant in Buena Clinton, from 1987 to about
1989.
“Buena Clinton was the complete opposite of what you see today,” he says in the statement, which mentions Raney and his wife Donna have two sons, both cops. Bill Raney is a sergeant with the Irvine Police Department, while John Raney is an officer
on the Garden Grove force.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.