Matt Brown’s service to Port Orchard as chief of police is set to continue into at least 2027.
Brown has served as the city’s police chief since 2019, but his initial employment contract expired in May of this year. A two-month extension was approved by the Port Orchard City Council, and July 23, a newly negotiated contract was unanimously agreed upon.
The three-year contract will go into effect July 28 and includes up to two possible one-year extensions, meaning Brown could serve as chief in the new agreement into 2029.
The council’s praises of Brown’s work in Port Orchard were innumerable, officials thanking the chief for his work in the local community and his efforts to remain transparent in difficult times for the police department.
“He’s steered the department through COVID and numerous other challenges and has done so professionally and has been very invested in the community,” Councilman Jay Rosapepe said.
Councilman Eric Worden also offered his compliments to Brown for addressing the challenges in recruiting and retaining police staff. “He has extremely high standards in who he’s willing to bring on, which makes hiring even more challenging, and with saying that, he has done a phenomenal job staffing back up our police force,” he said.
Brown said he was humbled by the compliments of the city’s elected officials, adding that while he had put his name into the ring for positions such as police chief in Lakewood during his initial contract, he is not actively searching for different employment opportunities and looks forward to strengthening his roots in the Port Orchard.
“I’ve got an excellent work-life balance with the team we’ve built here,” he said. “I enjoy working for this community, so I have no intentions of going anywhere.”
The chief also provided an update on the everlasting search for new staff. Six officers – three in field training, two in the academy and a lateral officer from the east coast, are set to be added to the force upon their completion of training. Of course, with that wait comes a difficult but pleasant problem of training backlog.
“The issue we were running into was getting a bunch of really good candidates in a short amount of time,” Brown said. “We have only so many people that are trained up to train them, so we’re just waiting.”
