After 7 months, Neely resigns as Miller police chief, cites lack of support

By: 
Steve Chapman

The city of Miller is in need of a new chief of police. Levi Neely, who became the city’s top cop back in September of 2018, has resigned after about seven months on the job. His last day was Friday, Feb. 22.
Neely said the reason he was leaving was because he felt the city council wouldn’t let him run the department.
“They had a falling out that happened back in 2016 with the Bruce brothers,” he said. “With that being said, they were worried about that happening again, I believe, so … there were too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Usually when you hire a police chief, you are going to let him run the police department. That’s why you hired him.”
Neely also said the council was constantly questioning his actions as chief.
“They’re here and (saying), ‘Why did you do this?’ or ‘Why did you do it that way?’” he said. “And again, that’s where it goes back to, if you have a police chief … he’s over the police department. You’ve got to let him do his job.”
Though his tenure as Miller’s police chief didn’t go the way he’d hoped, Neely said he was proud of what he accomplished as chief. Among these, he said, was moving the police chief’s office to city hall and getting the department a software management system and backup server to preserve department records.
“Basically, we were just putting all of our reports on a file on the computer when I first started,” he said. There was no server to back it up or anything like that. Once those (reports) were gone, they were gone. So, my main … concern when I first got here was, ‘Where can I put my incident and office reports?’ We (took care of) that, and then we slowly started getting the police department moved up here.”
More importantly, Neely said he and Daniels created standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the department, based on SOPs for the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office.
“The mayor is great,” he said. “She is a hard-working woman. I mean, she will … bust a** every time she’s here. She got SOPs ready for us; she got this police department going.”
Stacy Daniels, Miller mayor, said she was disappointed with Neely’s decision to resign, and many in the community felt the same way. During the town meeting on Thursday, Feb. 21, she asked him to consider staying on as police chief.
“In my opinion, Chief Neely has been a fantastic chief for our community,” she said. “Several community members have expressed to me they really like him, felt he was very fair, and are sorry he is leaving. I listened to the community; that is the reason I asked him to consider rescinding his resignation.”
For his part, Neely said his decision to resign was a difficult one because of the relationships he has with several people in the community.
“My own grandfather graduated from Miller,” he said. “I have a lot of relatives (and) friends… who (live) here. I like the people, and I like the community.”
However, Neely said the number of people who wanted him to stay took him by surprise.
“When I put in my resignation letter, I didn’t think I had (a lot of) support when I put it in,” he said, “but now, with these last couple of weeks … I’ve had people come in and say, ‘Why are you leaving? We like you so much.’ They just didn’t show it here like they did in Verona, but now that I’ve put in my resignation letter and officially resigned, I’ve had a lot more people coming in here and say, ‘Hey, can we sit down and talk? What’s going on? What do we not know?’”
Neely said he would spend his last day thanking members of the community for supporting him while he was police chief. He is now with the Aurora Police Department as a patrolman. While it is technically a step back for him, he said he has a good relationship with Richard Witthuhn, chief of Aurora PD, and he was looking forward to his new job.
The Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office will handle law enforcement duties in Miller until the city hires a new chief of police.
 

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