Meet the new boss

Richard Perkins has been on the force for 22 years

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After the resignation of two chiefs in less than a year, the new head of the Henderson Police Department, Richard Perkins, said he is in a position to become a stabilizing force for his staff.

The last chief, Alan Kerstein, was on the job for seven months when he resigned in March. Kerstein had taken over after Michael Mayberry resigned in April 2005. Kerstein faced questions early in his tenure when he asked to have a patrol car pick him up at McCarran International Airport and when he had upgrades like a sunroof added to his own police-issue vehicle. He later paid for the upgrades and admitted asking for an airport pick-up was a mistake.

Perkins, who was promoted to chief from his position as deputy chief, said officers have likely felt some insecurity during all of the changes.

"They've felt more anxiety and more instability, so I think that my role is to provide stability for the department," Perkins said.

Neither residents nor officers need to prepare for sweeping changes based on having a new chief, Perkins said. In fact, he plans to continue many of the projects that were already in motion.

"The changes that I wanted to see in the department I voiced under previous chiefs and helped implement," Perkins said.

He said he looks forward to continuing the plan Kerstein had to create four substations based on geographical areas of the city. Each area will have a captain who controls that command. That way, officers assigned to the various substations will respond to incidents in only those areas of the city and will spend less time driving.

"It allows us to take what would seemingly be an overwhelmingly large challenge in one city and break it down into bite-sized pieces," Perkins said.

Perkins has been with the Henderson Police Department since 1984 and has served as a Nevada assemblyman since 1992, serving as Speaker of the Assembly since 2001.

His term expires in November and, barring a special meeting, the Assembly should not be back in session again during his term.

Balancing the two jobs has never been out of the ordinary, he said, especially since the Nevada Legislature is part time.

"Everybody has their day jobs anyway, so it's really not that much more difficult for me to balance than anybody else," Perkins said.

After he was elected there was some debate over whether Perkins should have been balancing his police duties with his public service, based on the Hatch Act, which forbids partisan political activity by government employees. But a judge eventually ruled that Perkins had not been in violation of the act.

Over the years, he has applied what he learned as a police officer to his work as an assemblyman, and vice-versa.

He said being a police officer is the best training possible for being a legislator.

"The decision-making model you go through in law enforcement is very well-used in the legislative setting, and being no-nonsense and having a tough-on-crime approach is always helpful in the legislative setting," Perkins said.

Being in the legislative setting, he met presidents, senators and other national figures. He said meeting them helped him to see them as regular people.

"They're just people, too. They put their pants on one leg at a time just like everybody else," Perkins said.

Seeing that helped his perspective about his police work.

"It doesn't matter who you are in life or what your station, everybody is really on equal footing," Perkins said.

Born in Boulder City and raised in Henderson, Perkins said being a local means people have never been shy about approaching him in the store or wherever and telling him their concerns, either to Perkins the assemblyman, or Perkins the police officer. He hopes that feedback will continue.

"Because I was born and raised here, I think I ended up arresting about five or six of my classmates in the first year," Perkins said.

Things are a bit different from when he joined the force as a patrol officer in 1984.

"When I hired on, we had about 40 police officers. We're now above 300," Perkins said.

But some things stay the same. Even in Nevada's second largest city, there is a small-town feeling, he said.

He and his wife, Terri, met through the Henderson Police Department. She was a dispatcher and he was a police officer.

"She used to tell me where to go and what to do," Perkins said.

Terri still works at the department as well, as an evidence custodian. They have five children.

Perkins' longtime colleague, Deputy Chief Jutta Chambers, said Perkins is very committed to his family and the Henderson Police Department. It's an exciting time for the department, Chambers said, especially with the new funding from the sales tax increase approved last year. The new funding will allow for 114 more police officers in Henderson.

"We've never been in this type of position in the history of the department," Chambers said.

More officers will mean being able to do more preventative work rather than always being reactive, Chambers said.

Perkins had at one point thrown his hat in the ring for this year's governor's race. That's out for now, but he said he might eventually seek political office.

"Right now I'm focused on police work. This is what I have on my plate right now, but I've always enjoyed the political arena. I've always enjoyed helping make decisions for our state, guiding it and crafting policies," Perkins said. "So, we'll see. You never know what life's turns are going to be. I always like to keep options open for the future, but I can't emphasize enough that right now my focus is this police department."