PEORIA Peoria s police chief is stepping down next month, but is proud of the work he s done to improve community relations and help with officer wellness.
A third-generation police officer, Loren Marion, III, will leave the force on Jan. 22, 2021, marking the first time in 41 years that a Marion his father, Loren Marion, Jr., served for 30 years isn t in uniform.
The chief said he looks at two main areas as high points of his nearly three years as chief. First was improving community relations, long seen as a focus point for the department. One of the things that I learned as a young patrol officer was that you should treat people in the way that you would want to be treated, said the 26-year veteran. I think we managed to push that down to the officers. I wanted to build on our community policing.
1470 & 100.3 WMBD/ Mike Sabol
PEORIA, Ill. Just after his two-year anniversary of being named Peoria Chief of Police, Loren Marion announced on Monday he will be stepping down effective Jan. 22, 2021.
“This is something my wife and I actually started talking about back in January, and we wanted to see what this year looked like, and we discussed it and prayed about it, and we both came to the conclusion that, you know what, right now’s a good time to pass the baton, per se,” he said.
“There’s a couple dates I wanted to hit, but I definitely did not want to leave when things were at a high, meaning civil unrest and pandemic stuff, so I at least wanted to work through that.”