![]() About four years after he began, he landed the job as the department’s public information officer. The way Hampton did patrol, he said, officers worked different sectors on different nights, so they got to know the whole city. He began on the midnight shift, which he ended up doing three separate times and is still his favorite. Wideman moved to the police division in 1994, taking his seniority and pay grade with him under city policy. Promotions and advancement also seemed to be happening more quickly on the police side, he said. “I just saw the guys on the other side - the police - and that just became something that attracted me,” Wideman said. But after six years of doing that, Wideman eyed a career move. He went to the Fire Academy in 1988 and became a medic firefighter, trained on everything from advanced life support to cardiac drugs. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do after graduation.” ![]() He got into public safety work even before that - at age 16 - when his father hooked him up with the man who led a volunteer rescue squad in Hampton. Wideman attended the Thomas Eaton Middle School and Bethel High School, where he graduated in 1987. Jimmie Wideman Jr looks on to the crowd after being sworn in as the newest Hampton police chief at the Hampton Police Division Academy in Hampton, Virginia, on July 28, 2023. “My Daddy moved us here from the Bronx” when young Jimmie was about nine years old. Wideman is the oldest of five children - four boys and one girl - who grew up in the Briarfield Terrace area of Hampton, not far from the Newport News line. If he “has to chew somebody out about something,” the councilman said, “he also puts his arm around them when it’s done, and says, ‘All right, this is what we’re going to do going forward.’ He doesn’t leave them out in the cold … He does it like a brother.” He shows them what he wants done, and then he expects them to do it. He does his job, and he expects everybody else to do theirs. “They’re talking about how great it is to have a working police chief,” Hobbs said of other officers. Hampton City Councilman Billy Hobbs - who urged Bunting to call Wideman as soon as Talbot left - said Wideman is “exactly what we needed, right in time.” “Jimmie grew up with Hampton PD, so he knows everything about what’s up,” the detective said. “We need their eyes and ears out there, and they need to trust us,” he said.Īnd in making such a pitch, Rodey said, it’s great to have someone who intuitively knows what makes Hampton tick. Wideman is also going out to meet community groups, urging them to help police solve crimes, something Rodey said is urgently needed in Hampton. He’s going out to crime scenes and going out to the field stations and meeting patrol officers at lineups. He’s not hiding in his office, behind his desk. “He has his ranks that report to him on something that comes up … But he’s a cop’s cop. ![]() “Wideman, he’s not about that,” Rodey said of the long staff meetings. The lengthy daily staff meetings and long emails to supervisors, he said, have been scrapped in favor of a more hands-on approach. Retired homicide detective Steve Rodey, who worked with Wideman for decades before retiring last year, keeps in touch with many officers still in the department.Īnd from everything he’s heard, Rodey said, Wideman is vastly improving morale. The city’s 26 slayings so far this year are two higher than all of 2022 - and only seven shy of the all-time high of 33 set in 2021. He’s at the helm of a busy police force with about 400 people, including 274 sworn officers.Īside from morale issues and officer attrition that have become commonplace in larger departments, Hampton has had a challenging year with homicides. They were not going to wait forever for me … And I figured now would be the time to see if I can be what was necessary to get (the police division) healthy.” The event took place at the Hampton Police Division’s Training Academy on July 28, 2023. Jimmie Wideman Jr., right, is sworn in by Chief Judge Michael Gaten as the city’s newest police chief Friday. But when Talbot left Hampton abruptly in April to become Norfolk’s chief of police, Hampton City Manager Mary Bunting wasted no time reaching out to Wideman to offer him the job. Wideman applied for the Hampton chief’s opening two years ago, and was runner up to Mark Talbot, an outsider hired from Pennsylvania. “It gave me a chance to step back away from just Hampton life … and broadened my knowledge base about crime fighting.” “It gave me a different perspective,” he said of the Air Force gig. E-Pilot Evening Edition Home Page Close Menu
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