Meredith Dominick came out of retirement to become Shippensburg Borough’s new chief of police.
Dominick beat out many other candidates for the position in Shippensburg due to her lengthy experience throughout her career in policing.
She served the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) in many different roles for 28 years before retiring. She was a lieutenant who supervised many different units in the MCPD when she chose to retire.
Her background includes serving as a former patrol officer, corporal of the Elder Abuse Unit, sergeant in the Collision Reconstruction Unit in the Traffic Division, certified instructor for the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commission, deputy commander for Lieutenant Field Services and administrative lieutenant chief for the Investigative Services Bureau.
Her experiences serving in many different roles for the MCPD played a big role in why she was hired by the Shippensburg Borough Council to be the new chief of police.
After retiring from the MCPD, she worked as both an instructor and former coordinator of the Administration of Justice program at Hagerstown Community College.
The next step in Dominick’s career was to become a chief of police, and when she was offered the opportunity to step into that position for the borough of Shippensburg, she could not say no.
Dominick has a passion for law enforcement that brought her back to policing. After retiring for a brief time, she made the decision to come back into her real passion — law enforcement — to pursue the one thing that she did not accomplish yet in her long career.
“I’ve been trying to be a [police] chief for a while. I think some of the things that scare people away is the fact that I’m a woman,” Dominick said. “I’m very fortunate that I feel Shippensburg wanted to take the risk with me.
“Don’t look at my sex, look at my qualifications,” she said. “Look at the things that I have done in my career, I’ve done everything except narcotics.”
Dominick stressed the importance of Shippensburg taking a chance on her. Not that long ago, women had a very small role in law enforcement. In the 1970s, women were considered the “kitty police” and dealt mostly with juveniles, Dominick said.
She worked her way up the ranks throughout her career, something that was made especially hard due to her gender.
Dominick hopes to keep Shippensburg a safe town while attempting to reduce the amount of crime that goes on.
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