Longo named police chief

The Coeur d’Alene City Council unanimously voted Tuesday night to hire State Police Capt. Wayne Longo as the new police chief.

Longo, a 53-year-old Coeur d’Alene resident, was chosen from 47 applicants. Other finalists for the position included Omaha, Neb., Deputy Police Chief Eric Buske and Coeur d’Alene Police Capt. Steve Childers.

“I’m extremely honored and humbled,” Longo said late Tuesday. “Obviously, there’s a sense of sadness as well.”

He was busy calling his ISP colleagues Tuesday to share the news. More than a few tears were shed, Longo said.

“Eventually we all have to leave,” he said. “I thought it would be kind of nice to leave the agency with a sense of sadness and go out at the top of where I possibly could be.”

Mayor Sandi Bloem said the city will begin negotiating his salary and start date. The position pays $72,500 to $102,000 annually.

Longo will replace retiring Police Chief Wendy Carpenter.

“He’s extremely professional with 32 years experience,” Bloem said. “He’s absolutely a team player.”

Bloem said if Longo makes changes to the department, it will be in a collaborative, not controlling, manner.

The New York native moved to Idaho in 1975 to work with the state police in Lewiston. He was transferred to Coeur d’Alene a year later.

He has been captain of the patrol division since 2002. Prior to that, he worked for 24 years as an ISP drug detective.

After studying police science in community college, Longo earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is married with two children.

Kootenai County Sheriff Rocky Watson said it was a good selection and called Longo a “very professional man and very qualified.”

Watson said he had no reservations about either local finalist for the job. Longo and Childers would take the Police Department in different directions, but neither direction would be wrong, the sheriff said.

Watson said he valued Longo’s assistance with the investigation of the Groene-McKenzie family murders at Wolf Lodge Bay in 2005 and with other multi-agency investigations. That kind of cooperation between law enforcement agencies is critical, he added.

“In North Idaho, every agency is understaffed,” the sheriff said. “If one department sneezes, the other catches a cold.”

Longo said he wasn’t planning to leave ISP, but then the police chief position opened.

“I wanted to stay in the area,” he said. “I’m going to live and die in Coeur d’Alene. It’s my home.”

He said he was still in shock after receiving the news Tuesday, but that he’s excited about the challenges facing the police department, including those brought on by growth in the area.