Brooklet City Council recently hired Michelle Reolegio as Brooklet’s chief of police, confirming her in that role after she served as interim chief for two-and-a-half months.

Reolegio has served with the Brooklet Police Department for two years and three months. She joined it as an officer on Oct. 17, 2022, and was soon promoted to sergeant. Now 51, she previously retired from the Chatham County Police Department, based in Savannah, with the rank of corporal after 25 years service.

Brooklet’s interim City Manager Carter Crawford had asked Reolegio to serve as interim chief of police when the retirement of previous Chief Gary Roberts took effect Oct. 31, 2024.

During the mayor and council’s Jan. 16 meeting, Crawford recommended Reolegio for the permanent job and said she would need to complete some training for her certification. Councilman Keith Roughton made the motion to hire her, and Councilman Brad Anderson seconded. The vote was unanimous, and Mayor Nicky Gwinnett said, “Congratulations.”

In fact, Chief Reolegio has long been a Georgia Peace Officer Standards & Training Council certified officer. What the city manager was referring to was two weeks of “chief’s school,” offered by the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police in Duluth, which Reolegio said she is scheduled to attend in June.

“I’m excited,” she said of her appointment as chief. “I hope to get our Police Department back up to par, get us some good equipment in here, some new equipment, new people.”

Brooklet’s population was 2,063 as of a July 1, 2023 U.S. Census Bureau estimate, which if both were accurate indicated 21.5% growth in just over three years since the April 2020 census. A couple more residential subdivisions have since been announced for development in the city limits.

As of mid-January, the Brooklet Police Department consisted of Reolegio and just two other officers.

“So we’ve got some recruiting to do,” she said, and the Statesboro Herald asked how many officers the department should have.

“Before we had four, but because of how our city’s growing, we should probably have between six and eight,” Reolegio said.

As she acknowledged, an expansion like that would require further support from Brooklet’s mayor and council on behalf of the taxpayers. But more immediately, the new chief was working on recruiting one replacement officer.

Among Brooklet’s current officers, Officer Nickki Garman, also previously from the Chatham County Police, has experience in the detective side of police work, as does Reolegio herself, she said.

The department is radar certified and already “up to par” on patrol cars, but has “a ways to go,” with some types of equipment, according to the new chief.  “But hopefully, with some time, we’ll get there,” she said.

Originally from Savannah, Reolegio had worked with now-retired Chief Roberts when they were both with what was then the Savannah Metro Police, and he recruited her to work for Brooklet. The former chief also knew her father, who was also a police officer, she noted.