New Commanding Officer Joins Eastern District Police Station

After nearly 19 years with the Anne Arundel County Police Department, Captain Jon Mahaffee has seen it all. He has worked as a patrol officer, investigated fatal crashes, served as a public information officer and worked in the county’s training academy, among other roles.

Now, the Shipley’s Choice resident is the new commanding officer for the Eastern District Police Station.

Mahaffee was the Greater Severna Park Council’s guest speaker in August, weeks after taking over his new post. During the meeting, he shared his experience and his thoughts on public safety in Anne Arundel County.

“I have been fortunate in my career in the sense that I have a diverse background with a variety of things,” Mahaffee said. “It’s not just patrol or it’s not just SWAT or something like that, or something specialized like traffic, with the investigations and the fatal crashes in the detective unit …  (but also) learning how to run a district as the executive officer.”

As commanding officer of the Eastern District, Mahaffee said one challenge is getting “new school” and “old school” police officers on the same page. Both, he said, need to rely on the community to be their eyes and ears.

Mahaffee does not plan to “reinvent the wheel.” He believes the Eastern District has a fantastic group, including Lieutenant Tommy Pleasant.

“It’s a lot easier to take something that’s working and just me adapt to it by myself rather than take something that’s working and make 130 people change and do it my way,” Mahaffee said. “Obviously, there might be tweaks along the way. If something is not working then we work to fix it, but that’s how I generally operate.”

His focus is working with the community, addressing crime spikes and giving officers the support they need.

“I want them to feel empowered, like they actually have the autonomy to come up with a solution to the problem,” he said. “It doesn’t always have to be dictated. Sometimes when you give somebody the ability and the freedom, you might provide the parameters with which to do it in, but you give them the ability to solve that problem themselves, it goes a long way.

“I will have the officers’ back as long as they give me a reason to have their back,” he said. “We make a mistake, we fix it. Yeah, there are going to be some sort of consequences at times depending what it’s for, but we fix it, we move on, and we get better.”

Body cameras, he said, have allowed the police department to fix mistakes before they become bigger problems.

“For the first time ever, the whole profession, not just in our department, has the ability to call balls and strikes on themselves,” Mahaffee said. “Everybody has probably had that experience with a police officer at some point in time where they didn’t like how he or she talked to them. That’s the most common thing we get. And for the longest time, those types of issues would become that he said/she said battle and we can’t really prove it one way or another. But with a body camera, we can pull it up and see exactly what happened.”

Mahaffee talked about accountability and answered a question about school resource officers (SROs) being removed from schools to serve on patrol. SROs handle law enforcement matters in schools but also act as mentors, instructors and positive role models to students.

“As for school resource officers, that is not being cut,” Mahaffee said. “That was one area, it was discussed, but the decision was not to do it because it is such a highly visible spot that is important to have.”

Beyond his work with the Anne Arundel County Police Department, Mahaffee has coached youth hockey at the United States Naval Academy. Eastern District is the only one of the four Anne Arundel County districts that he had not previously served.

“The exciting thing for me is this kind of completes the full revolution as I will now have worked in every district and department, so that is cool,” Mahaffee said. “Not everyone gets a chance to say that.”