I want to take a moment to introduce myself to all of you. I was recently promoted to Captian by Chief Koval and I have now taken over as the West District Captain as of January 1, 2017. I am replacing Capt. Vic Wahl who was also promoted to Asst. Chief in charge of Investigative Services. I wish him the very best of luck in his new assignment!
I am a Madison native and grew up on the east side so I have a vested interest in the safety of this city. I am in my 28th year with MPD and have worked in a number of different assignments including; 9 years in patrol, 14 years or so as a Detective, working mainly person crimes and drug investigations, and my last 4 years as a Lieutenant. I have been a SWAT team member and commander, a firearms instructor, member of the Fire Investigation Team, the Special Events Team, the Cold Case Team and the Officer Involved Critical Incident Team.
As a Lieutenant, I was the Officer in Charge of 3rd shift for a year, the commander of the Professional Standards and Internal Affairs Unit for 2 years and was the Lt. of Investigative Services last year.
I am very excited to be assigned to the West District, I have a lot of learning to do and people to meet. I have spent the past couple of weeks meeting the West District Alders, community leaders and have spent some time visiting some of the businesses, shopping centers and malls in the district. I have attended a number of community meetings and am excited to hear about the Urban League's plan for the job training center in the old Griffs building near Elver Park. I think this will prove to be a fantastic resource!
We will be prioritzing community engagement in the West District this year. We will do our best to ensure officers are attending community meetings and neighborhood events. I would ask that if you would like an officer to attend a meeting or event, please let us know several days ahead of time and if you are looking for information, please let us know what topic you will be asking about.
I am amazed at the support and engagment the West Side currently has with the MPD and I hope to continue to strengthen that all important bond, to assist us in better policing our community.
I hope you all realize how lucky you are to have the high quality of officers you have working not only in the west district, but city wide as well. Our officers are highly educated, they have a a great deal of life experience and many of them are deeply involved in our community, volunteering, mentoring and coaching. The MPD are all people just like you who all want the same things for our community. We want to feel safe in our homes and feel safe in allowing our children to play outside. We want to see our youth succeed in school and life and grow up to be our future leaders. We look forward to working with all of you to achieve these goals.
I am new to blogging/social media use, and hope to learn more about it in the coming year. We also recently learned to use Twitter so stay tuned for some interesting Tweets! I am excited to meet as many of you as I can in the coming year!
Captain Cory Nelson
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