In just under a month, the Morgan Hill Police Department will
have two lieutenants on the job: Terrie Booten, promoted from
within on May 12 to head of field operations; and Joe G. Sampson,
42, from Allan Hancock Community College in Lompoc, who will lead
special operations.
In just under a month, the Morgan Hill Police Department will have two lieutenants on the job: Terrie Booten, promoted from within on May 12 to head of field operations; and Joe G. Sampson, 42, from Allan Hancock Community College in Lompoc, who will lead special operations.
Sampson will officially start work on Aug. 6, when he is sworn in during a ceremony at the Community Cultural Center.
“I’m very happy to have him aboard,” said Police Chief Jerry Galvin. “He will be an asset to our department and to the community.”
Galvin reorganized the department last year into three divisions – special operations (investigations), field operations (patrol) and support (the civilian side), and gave up one captain and one sergeant position to have the lieutenant positions.
Mary Kaye Fisher, director of human resources for the city, said the position of police lieutenant in Morgan Hill has a pay scale between $86,870 and $108,540, with room for a 2.5 percent performance pay addition.
Booten will command the day-to-day activities of the uniformed police officers on patrol. Sampson will work with the investigation unit and other special operations, including gang activities.
Sampson’s time on the gang investigation unit of the City of Orange Police Department is just one of the qualifications he brings to the position. Currently, he is serving as the police chief for the Lompoc Valley Center of Allan Hancock, a position he has held for four and a half years. His law enforcement career spans 13 years, as it is a second career for him.
Lompoc is a coastal community between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara.
“ I started as a high school teacher, in Spanish, bilingual education, and I coached girls volleyball for eight years,” Sampson said.
During his years in education, he met his wife, Cheryl. She will be teaching at San Martin/Gwinn Elementary this year, and their 10-year-old daughter, Saida, will attend the school.
Sampson said he stepped away from the educational field and into law enforcement to fulfill a long-time goal.
“It was one of those lifelong boyhood dreams,” he said. “I put it aside for a while but there continued to be this voice in the back of my head. This was something I really wanted to do.”
His biggest challenges in coming to Morgan Hill, Sampson said, are establishing his position and professional relationships.
“Like any new leader or someone in a new in a department or organization, one of the challenges is to establish the trust of your employees,” he said. “Another is demonstrating that you are fair and competent and will remain so in your dealings with others in the department. Also, right away I will have to work on familiarizing myself with the community, with the people, with the whole area.”
Having both the big city perspective, from his time in Orange, and the small town perspective, from his time at Lompoc, Sampson said he has experienced a wide variety of criminal situations.
“Here in this particular environment, which is an educational environment, we see a lot of thefts and burglaries,” he said. “We also have vandalism, to the campus and the community, and a certain amount of domestic boyfriend/girlfriend type of situations. We are on the lookout for anything that might disrupt the environment or classes.
“But certainly my experience in a big city, especially with the gang investigations unit, that kind of background, I saw how these kinds of situations impact the quality of life in the community. I hope to bring some of that experience to Morgan Hill and become a part of the solutions to those problems to increase the quality of life.”
What he looks forward to, in coming to Morgan Hill, Sampson said, is developing relationships.
Sampson also sees opportunity, when the job allows, to get involved in the community. He has been involved in a variety of community activities in Lompoc, including sitting on the board of the YMCA and participating in a leadership group for Lompoc Valley, equivalent to Leadership Morgan Hill.
“My involvement with the Police Assistance League, for kids in need of some guidance, has been very rewarding to me,” he said. “Involvement in the community is definitely part of how I see the role of any member of the police department. The community is who we serve, and if we are not involved, if we don’t know about the people in the community, we are missing a significant piece of the puzzle.”
