Terrebonne safety director trading post for the college classroom

After taking on the job of public safety director just seven months ago to help revamp Terrebonne Parish’s safety operations, Ralph Mitchell is retiring from the position – but on a positive note.

“I don’t have any problems with the job,” Mitchell said. “It’s just a time consuming job, and the oil spill magnified things. So I want to take some time off with my family to do some of the things I haven’t been able to do.”

One of those things, Mitchell said, is to get his master’s degree in adult education from Northwestern State University.

When Mitchell first took the job, he had high hopes to begin erasing old problems within the parish by upgrading and making changes within the police and fire departments.

“We’re going to move forward and make sure [bad] things don’t happen again,” Mitchell had said when he took the job.

And now, he has no doubt Terrebonne Parish will continue to move forward in his absence, as long as the public is able to trust.

“Building public confidence in all of our agencies is important, and still is important, so [the parish] will have to continue to work on public images,” he said.

Mitchell’s main focus was on the Houma Police and fire departments and the Office of Emergency Preparedness. Mitchell is pleased with the current hurricane plan that took over three months, and hired a lot of new staff members over the last six months.

“We also started a comprehensive building campaign for the fire department to refurbish buildings to get them up to standard,” he said. “With the police dept, we changed a lot of procedures in terms of public information and operations, expanded narcotics taskforce section, so we made some movement there, and consolidated some positions to save money in the budget.”

The Houma Police Department is also in the process of becoming accredited, thanks to Mitchell.

Overall, the retiring safety director isn’t disappointed with the strides he’s made over his short stint on the job.

“There’s nothing really that I’m saying ‘Man, I needed to get this done,'” he said. “I don’t think things are that bad, the public doesn’t need to worry because the issues we had are very old in all the departments. Things have been recognized and addressed, and it takes time to build back that trust that’s been eroding.”