The best part of being a small town police chief?
“You know people,” says Frank Koss, Hinesburg’s recently retired chief of police. “It’s not like large cities where you never see anybody twice. In a small town, you get to know the people in it.”
Chief since 2012, Koss announced his retirement in January. A community selection committee chose Officer Anthony Cambridge as his successor.
Friday, June 10, was the last day on the job for Koss. At 3 p.m., the Shelburne Communications Center, which dispatches calls for Hinesburg police and fire services, made a special radio call that Koss took at the police station: “We would like to thank you for 13 years of service to Hinesburg on your last day. Hope you enjoy your retirement going forward. Shelburne would like to say good luck,” the dispatcher said. “Copy that,” Koss replied over the airwaves. Hinesburg Fire Department shared a video clip of the exchange posted on Facebook by Shelburne Communications Center that day.
Koss plans to remain in Hinesburg with his wife Deb. They moved to the town after his 24 years as a California Highway Patrol officer, which he boils down to “chasing speed and drunk drivers,” noting that “you never got involved with people.” He crossed the country in 2006 and became an officer in Hinesburg a year later, describing it as “a completely different job.”
Koss earned a reputation beyond Hinesburg in 2015 when he spoke out following a fatal car crash in which a speeding teen hit a bicyclist, killing them both. In a letter to the Hinesburg Record at the time, Koss condemned the teen’s actions and made an appeal to all drivers, especially young ones: “Realize that your actions can have devastating consequences and drive like you care and respect others just like others should be toward you."
His decision to take the speeding issue to the community in the wake of that tragedy caught the eye of Yankee magazine, which ran a full-length feature article on Koss, the deaths, and the repercussions in the community. That piece, published in September 2016, also includes then-officer Cambridge, describing him as “a former high-school social-studies teacher with the gentlest manner you’re likely ever to encounter in a cop.”
Three years later, Cambridge now has taken the reins from Koss. In his interview with Yankee, Koss praised Cambridge as well-suited for the Hinesburg police force: “He talks to people. He relates, he cares. It’s a lot like the way I do policing. It’s a perfect fit for this town.”
Cambridge earned his Bachelor of Arts from William Patterson University in Wayne, N.J., and taught high school Haledon, N.J. before joining the Hinesburg Police Department in 2013. He eventually became the police liaison to Champlain Valley Union High School as the school’s Student Resource Officer.
“Hinesburg was always what I was looking for,” Cambridge said in an interview. “It reminded me a lot of where I had come from in New Jersey with the rolling hills and nice people.”
Cambridge shares Koss’ concern for safety on the road. He cites traffic as one of his central concerns for the community: “First on my agenda is trying to reduce speed in the village itself,” he said.
Cambridge also he plans to uphold the Hinesburg department’s community-minded policing as chief. “We have a great department with a great group of people and I think what we’ve been doing really works well,” he said, “so there aren’t a whole lot of changes internally that I want to make.”
