Brownstown Police Department adds officer

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BROWNSTOWN

After bouncing between a law enforcement job and working for a potato chip company, Jessiah Watts is where he always wanted to be.

The 27-year-old North Vernon native was working as a reserve officer with the North Vernon Police Department and Mikesells Potato Chip Co. earlier this year when he learned of an opening at the Brownstown Police Department.

He had worked with Brownstown Officer Jordan Hawn at the Jennings County Jail, and he saw on the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy website that the department was hiring an officer.

“I began asking Jordan, ‘Hey, how is it? What’s this department like?’ and he just had nothing but good things to say about it, and I was like, ‘Well, I want to put my application in,’” Watts said.

He did and then went through agility testing and the interview process.

When he received the call asking if he would accept the job, he said his response was “absolutely.”

“In a sense, just the fact that I was going to become a full-time police officer was just overwhelming,” he said. “Honestly, I couldn’t even express my emotions. I was just overwhelmed. I went to the wife, told her, told the kids. We all got excited. It was just amazing. The feeling was awesome.”

Then came the dreadful moment when he had to tell his Mikesells boss he had a new job. The owner of the route is his cousin.

“It was rough in a sense, but he knew what I was trying to do, so he was kind of expecting it,” Watts said.

Watts started Nov. 1 and completed his 40-hour prebasic training. It wasn’t until Nov. 19 that he was sworn in at the beginning of a Brownstown Town Council meeting.

James Watts, who is his great-grandfather but he considers his father since he adopted him, held the Bible during the swearing-in ceremony.

“I was just very, very, very thankful that my dad and my mom could be there because they are elderly, and I was just so glad for (James) to be there and be proud because he himself was once a deputy,” Jessiah said. “Back in the ‘70s, he was a deputy for the Jennings County Sheriff’s Department.”

Growing up, James was one of Jessiah’s influences in going into law enforcement someday.

“He has always been a great influence for me, always strict, which was good,” Jessiah said. “I wouldn’t be where I’m at now if it wasn’t for him. He’s 90, and for him to be able to be there was just awesome.”

Nick Megel, Jessiah’s brother-in-law who is a North Vernon Police Department officer and another law enforcement influence, was there along with Jessiah’s wife, Shannon, children, Koltin and Karmandy, and sister.

Jessiah now has arrest powers and can patrol the town until he goes to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in Plainfield early next year.

His hiring puts the department at six full-time officers and one part-timer.

Chief Tom Hanner said he’s happy to have Jessiah on board.

“A majority of our department is the younger new generation, and we need that,” Hanner said. “We need that younger, proactive element, and we need to find candidates who want to be proactive and really want to be a law enforcement officer. We have individuals who apply and make it through aptitude and agility, you know you’re looking at an individual who wants to do this.”

Jessiah graduated from Jennings County High School in 2010. He said he then worked at several factories and realized it wasn’t for him.

“I delivered potato chips in Columbus for Mikesell’s, and then I decided I wanted to go ahead and continue what I wanted to pursue — law enforcement,” he said. “As a kid, I knew I wanted to be a police officer.”

In 2016, he started working at the Jennings County Jail. He went from being a jail officer to a supervisor position as a corporal to overseeing a work crew.

“Initially, it was exciting,” Jessiah said. “It was more kind of what I imagined. Even though I was just working in the jail, it was definitely stressful because once I got in a supervisor position, I had people under me and had to make sure the jail ran OK on the weekends when there was nobody else there but us. I definitely realized it was going to be more stressful than I thought, especially once I got into a road position.”

He left there at the start of this year, became a reserve officer in North Vernon and went back to his potato chip route.

“From the jail, I was able to learn mentally the criminal side — how they thought, how they worked and what their actions were,” he said. “Now in the field out on the road, it’s a little more unpredictable because they are not confined, so they are more apt to run, fight, the flee or fight kind of thing. But being able to deal with the public and strangers was definitely a lot easier on the road because of working in the jail.”

As a reserve officer, he said he put in about 30 hours a week so he could get experience under his belt and be more appealing when he applied for a police officer job.

All of his experience paid off when it came to applying at Brownstown.

“I love small communities, which Brownstown seems very close and tight, which is awesome,” he said. “It also seems very pro-police, so I’m very excited to be able to meet everybody and help serve the community.”

His son plays baseball in Brownstown, and he said he has heard good things about the school system, so he and his family may consider moving from North Vernon to Brownstown.

“My wife and my kids have been big supporters of this whole journey,” he said. “Originally, I was going to join the military. I had two knee surgeries and got turned down, but they just kept pursuing me saying, ‘Hey, just keep with it,’ so they’ve been big supporters the whole way.”

[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Watts file” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]

Name: Jessiah Watts

Age: 27

Hometown: North Vernon

Residence: North Vernon

Education: Jennings County High School (2010)

Occupation: Officer with the Brownstown Police Department

Family: Wife, Shannon; son, Koltin; daughter, Karmandy

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