Last summer, Gary Hampton was thinking about retiring after a 28-year career in law enforcement.
Suddenly, his phone rang.
At the time, Hampton was chief of police of Turlock, a small-town community of about 70,000. Hampton had been top cop there since 2006.
Now, he was being asked if he would be interested in returning to the agency where he spent a decade honing his law enforcement skills.
The Tracy Police Department wanted Hampton back – this time, to be its police chief.
In August 2011, Hampton accepted the job.
Now 50, Hampton is in the process of relocating to Tracy — a city of about 81,000 in Stanislaus County — after a decision he says wasn’t too difficult to make.
After all, he says, it’s always good for the ego to be recruited for such a job. More important, though, Hampton sees his homecoming as an opportunity to give back to a community that gave so much to him when he was developing his skills as a police officer.
“I’m not the same when I left Tracy, and it’s not the same organization when I left, but just like me, the core character of the department hasn’t changed a bit,” Hampton says.
He isn’t alone in returning to manage a police department where he once worked as a lower-ranking officer. In fact, Inglewood Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks soon will join him as a member of the unofficial “Homecoming Club” for police chiefs.
Seabrooks, chief of the Inglewood PD since 2007, will return in May as chief of the Santa Monica PD, where she spent 25 years as an officer, rising to the rank of captain. In doing so, Seabrooks will become the first woman to hold the position of chief of police of the Santa Monica PD, a department with nearly 450 employees and a budget of more than $70 million.
Seabrooks, a 30-year law enforcement veteran, served as interim chief in Santa Monica in 2006 during a brief transition period.
Hampton views his return to Tracy as a challenge made a little easier by some familiar faces. About two-thirds of the command staff and 40 percent of the entire department still are on board since when he left the Tracy PD in 2003, he figures.
Hampton, who grew up in Antioch, began his career in law enforcement as a reserve officer with the Antioch PD when he was 21.
After a year, he was hired on by the Pittsburg PD, where he spent a decade.
Hampton then joined the Tracy PD, where he rose to the rank of captain over a decade-long career with the agency that ended in 2003. Hampton feels he really developed as a law enforcement professional in Tracy, where he also forged deep ties to the community. He and his wife raised two daughters through elementary and junior high schools there.
Hampton left Tracy in 2003 to become police chief of Oakdale, a smaller town of around 20,000 in Stanislaus Country with 21 sworn officers. He left Oakdale in 2006 to become police chief of Turlock until deciding last year to return to the top post in Tracy.
““I felt I had done all I could as police chief of Turlock, accomplishing the goals I set out to achieve and was considering working in the private sector in the field of risk management when I was contacted about the chief position in Tracy,” Hampton says. “I knew the chief at the time was leaving, and saw (the job) mostly as an opportunity to give back to the community.’
Hampton says he’s remained close to a core of friends and neighbors in Tracy. Also making his homecoming smooth was the fact the he and the city manager share a vision for the police department and the community.
“When you get started running a new agency, there are long hours and lots of weekends spent working, but the relationships I have in the police department and city have really helped,” Hampton says.
The Tracy PD had 77 sworn officers when Hampton left in 2003, and grew to 94 before budget tightening reduced the ranks of sworn officers to its current 85. The city also has become more diverse, Hampton says.
Still, though, the Tracy PD – and Hampton — at heart are the same.
“I plan to finish my career in Tracy,” the returning police chief says. “I figure I have five to seven years left.”