Resigning Beloit Police Chief hopes to leave a lasting legacy

BELOIT, Wis. (WTVO) — Resigning Beloit Police Chief Andre Sayles is beginning a new journey in his career, but hopes his tenure has left a lasting legacy.

Sayles feels the city helped him grow in his career, starting out as a patrol officer.

“It was my first law enforcement job,” Sayles explained. “It’s been a city that I’ve been able to see grow over the last 20 and a half years.”

Sayles said the time spent in Beloit serving the community made the decision even harder.

“That was a very tough decision for me to make in regards to being recruited,” said Sayles. “To go to a new police department, it took me about five months to actually make the decision.”

One memory from his time in the police academy helped Sayles make his decision.

“I actually found one of my notepads and it talked about how one day I wanted to work at a very large police department, and the police department was going to be very large,” Sayles continued. “We have over a thousand men and women who serve in that police department. So it was a goal that I set for myself that I wrote down, and I’m going to accomplish here pretty soon.”

Sayles is proud of his efforts to make every voice heard.

“We really diversified our police department, not just based on people’s skin tone, but diverse thoughts, diverse backgrounds, diverse upbringings, socioeconomic backgrounds,” said Sayles. “We’ve been able to really put women into law enforcement.”

The resigning chief hopes to have left a lasting legacy and impact on the community.

“I poured so much into this community. Hopefully, those relationships remain, and they continue to grow and blossom,” Sayles said. “All I can do is plant seeds. I think planting those seeds has helped not just the police department, but the community of Beloit as a whole.”

Sayles said his next position will be announced when the department makes an official statement within the coming days.