NORWICH – It was a surprise to the vice chairman of the Chenango County Safety & Rules Committee to learn this morning that Sheriff Thomas Loughren had accepted a job on an Indian reservation in southern Florida.
“Oh really?” asked Janice O’Shea, R-Coventry.
Other county supervisors were seemingly also left out in the dark about the longtime Sheriff’s plans to move on. He was scheduled to return to work on May 23 after vacationing for a month in Florida.
City of Norwich Supervisor Linda E. Natoli and Town of Guilford Supervisor Robert Briggs said they had “overheard” that Loughren would be leaving, but didn’t know any of the details.
“I thought that he would be going sooner or later. It was just a feeling that I had, that he had been thinking more toward retirement,” said Briggs.
Calls to Loughren’s new post as police chief of the Miccosukee Police Department were routed to an extension, and an answering machine picked up. They were not returned. Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, confirmed that Loughren had accepted his new position on Monday.
Because the reservation contracts for services for law enforcement and operates its own police force, Darling said she didn’t know whether it was an issue for them to have hired someone already employed elsewhere.
“We provide the money; they do their own hiring,” she said.
Loughren previously worked for the Miccosukee Police Department/ U.S. Bureau of the Interior in Miami, Fla. from 1983 to 1989.
Chairman of the Chenango County Board of Supervisors Richard B. Decker, R-N. Norwich, said this morning that he had heard “a few rumors” about Loughren, but didn’t know the details, either. Decker said he would be meeting with him as soon as he gets back.
“He told me in late April when he left that he wanted to talk to me when he came back,” Decker said. “I assumed that that was what it was about.”
Briggs said the Sheriff leaves behind “a well-oiled” department, one that is “well taken care of” with a staff that is “well trained.” Though he couldn’t confirm that 23-year veteran Undersheriff Ernie Cutting would assume command of the department, Briggs said this morning that Cutting would be his guess.
