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Franklin City Manager Rosylen Oglesby formally introduced Robert Porti at the Monday, June 9, City Council meeting as the newly appointed chief of the Franklin Police Department (FPD).

It is among Oglesby’s duties to appoint the city’s police chief, and noting that the city just went through the process to interview for the position, she thanked the City Council for responding to a survey that city staff used to help develop questions for the job candidates.

“Out of that pool of candidates, your former deputy police chief was picked to rise up to be the chief of Franklin (Police Department),” she said.

Keeping her own comments short since Porti is already well known in the community, she then gave him an opportunity for comment.

“It’s been 15 years, this year, since I started here,” Porti said. “I can’t tell you I’ll do 15 more, but I look forward to the years I do have coming forward.

“I do recognize it is an honor to have been selected, and I thank you for that, and I do want you to know that I consider it a privilege to work with the staff that we have,” he continued. “We have a tremendous group of people in our police department, our communications center and animal control division.

“We do have some challenges to face ahead, but I know that together we’ll be able to get through everything and move the city and the department forward,” he said.

He was greeted at that point in the council meeting by a standing ovation from many in attendance.

After the meeting, Porti shared further comments in an interview.

He has been involved in municipal policing for 30 years. 

Just prior to coming to Franklin, he served as chief of the nearby Windsor Police Department from 2005-10.

“When I was hired there, they had gotten rid of the two officers that they had, and they hired me to rebuild the police department,” he said, noting he was the only officer on duty at the time. “I was tasked with creating a full-service police department. So over the course of the five years with the sheriff’s office’s help in Isle of Wight County, they would fill our patrol shifts when I didn’t have anybody working, but we were able to build it up to a 24/7 coverage, full-service department within the five years I was there.”

Porti affirmed that working in Windsor was good preparation for his time in Franklin in terms of the administrative part of policing.

He joined the FPD in early 2010, serving as deputy chief under Chief Phil Hardison for 10 years. 

After Hardison retired, Porti was interim chief from January-August 2019 before returning to his role as deputy chief under Chief Steve Patterson for the next five years.

Patterson retired Jan. 1 of this year, and Porti has served as interim chief from then until his recent appointment.

Porti said that to be appointed as the Franklin Police chief is special to him.

“I’ve been here, like I said, for 15 years, interim twice, but the last time that the chief’s position came open, I wasn’t in a position that I really wanted to be the chief,” he said. “I was happy being second-in-command. But to be able to have another opportunity and to be successful in obtaining it, this city, the city government, our department, they’ve been tremendous to me personally.”

He noted that he is not from Tidewater. He is originally from the Pittsburgh area, so most of his family is up north, but he came to Franklin with his immediate family.

“In 2022, my wife passed away,” he said. He expressed gratitude for the support he received not just from the people in the FPD but from other department heads and people in city government and from those in the community.

“Having the support that we had from our church and the people in the community meant a lot to me,” he said. “And in return, I want them to understand that I do appreciate that, and I’ll give them back everything I can give them because they’ve given me so much good in the past.”

Porti noted that the FPD seeks to be very active in the community with community policing, and Patterson helped lead this effort during his time as chief. 

“And post-COVID, we’re trying to get out of the reactionary policing back to a more proactive policing,” Porti said. “During the COVID time frame especially, a lot of the younger officers we have, all they’ve ever known is post-COVID policing where they weren’t encouraged to get out and talk to people as much because getting out and talking to people was bad during that time frame.

“I’m trying to get our officers to get out and get involved in things rather than just wait for a call to come in and go answer the call,” he continued. “I want them to get out and talk to people, find out, ‘What can we do in your community? What kind of problems are you having? How can we help?’ And even if it’s not something that is our responsibility to help with, put people in touch with the people whose responsibility it may be to help with.”

He has two key goals he hopes to achieve during his time as chief.

“Step one is accreditation,” he said. “We’ve been working on that for the last couple years. I’ve been overseeing that in the department. We started it with Chief Patterson. He put me in charge of that program. We’ve had our mock assessment, and we’re getting ready for our on-site assessment. (Assessors will) be here July 15.”

Porti noted that his second key goal is “developing our succession plan a little bit better, getting all of our employees educated, ready to move up (and) take my place one day when I’m gone.”