OROVILLE – Former Oroville Police Chief Mike Langford wants to start a law enforcement training service, sharing his knowledge with police departments who can’t afford the cost or the time away from their communities by coming to them instead.

Langford has nearly 30 years in law enforcement. He joined the military when he was 17 years old.

“I kind of had a plan to make the military a career, I was a combat scout in reconnaissance. I wanted to switch over to military police, but that career path was closed to me at the time so I decided to pursue a civilian law enforcement career,” said Langford.

His first law enforcement job was in Granger, Washington when he was 26 years old, just about to turn 27. He worked in the city of 2300 for a couple of years.

He said he met Don Lane, also a former Oroville Police Chief, when he was doing his Oral Boards at Granger. In 2000 he worked for Oroville and went to the police academy in 2002. He put in several years as a Chelan County Deputy and then returned to Oroville as the police chief. He decided it was time to try something new and let the city know he was not going to be the chief anymore, but he and his family had decided they liked it in Oroville and wanted to stay.

“I’m pretty proud of what we have done the last four years and I had planned on sticking around a couple of more years. When I got Gary (Hirst) back to take the sergeant’s job I knew he wasn’t going anywhere,” said Langford, referring to Oroville’s new police chief.

“If Gary wants it, he’s got a bright future in Oroville, it will be a learning curve for him.”

The chief says since he and his family are staying, he’ll only be a phone call away from Chief Hirst if he needs advice and he promised him he wasn’t going to move for a while.

The former chief says his wife Bonny likes it here and she likes being a teacher at Oroville Elementary where she has worked the last couple of years.

“And, my daughter Ava wants to graduate from here. She’s into so many things at school,” he said.

Langford said that small departments like Oroville’s find it hard to send officers to required training, not only for the cost of the training but for the cost of traveling and staying where the training is taught. He also said it is hard to cover shifts while one, two or more officers have to be out of the community to get their training.

Langford said he will partner with someone or form his own training company which will teach firearms, defensive tactics, first aid and other law enforcement courses.

“For a small police force that is often hard to find close by. We will be able to go to them,” he said. “Oroville contracted with a training course and it was too expensive and it was too time intensive and it was too far to travel to get our officers there,” he said

Langford said since he retired from the OPD he has been doing some consulting and he has had inquiries about taking on some private investigation from a different agency.

“It is too soon for me to step back in and I don’t want to do that full-time. And I wouldn’t just take on any case; it would have to interest me to do it,” he said.

Langford said for now he was enjoying having some time off although he hasn’t fully retired from law enforcement yet. His goal to form a law enforcement training business will be in the future.

“It won’t be too quick and I don’t see it being financially solvent for a couple of years,” he said. “I haven’t really retired; I did some executive protection work on the west side recently. I hadn’t done anything like that since I was in the military when I was very young.”

Lanford said some of the executive protection work he did was actually “boring” while some was more interesting.

He said his next steps include a three-week Christmas cruise with the family.

“I plan on staying active in the community, I was the law enforcement representative for the Oroville CARES Coalition. I hope to stay on as a parent if that is available, especially with a daughter. I plan on joining the American Legion now that I have more time. I also plan to join the chamber of commerce in the near future. I want to see Oroville prosper,” he said.

“As someone who is going to remain in Oroville, I want to be a part of that. I just want to find ways to stay active in the community. I think the community, as a whole, has been very supportive. I want to stay involved in National Night Out and with Trunk or Treat, just not as chief of police.