After a lengthy search and a change to the department’s command structure, the Dartmouth Police Department has found its second-in-command.

On August 5, the Select Board approved Police Chief Brian Levesque’s request to appoint Lt. Tony Vincent to Deputy Chief of Police. 

Vincent has been a Dartmouth police officer since 1994, serving over the years as a patrol officer, detective, field training officer, and, prior to being named Deputy Chief, a lieutenant. 

He recently received his PhD in educational leadership policy studies from UMass Dartmouth. 

He also served in the Air National Guard from 1987 to 1997, leaving with the rank of 1st Lt. as an intelligence officer. He has experience policing in Dartmouth, and abroad, having served as an international police officer twice across the world. He was first sent to war-torn Timor to help restore order and build up the island nation’s police department in 2000 to 2001, and he helped train new Iraqi police officers and protected high-profile military officials in Iraq in the mid-2000s. 

“I’ve served as a detective, I’ve served as a [field training officer], a sergeant, and a lieutenant. and I’m a family man,” Vincent said.

The appointment rounds out a three-person command structure, which includes Levesque and current Deputy Chief James Storey. The department had previously been run by a chief, deputy chief, and a police captain. 

When the previous captain, Mark Zielinski, retired at the end of June, Police Chief Brian Levesque struggled to fill the civil service position due to shortcomings in the state-mandated process.

Select Board members had praise for the choice of Deputy Chief, and noted it was a team effort by Levesque and his predecessor. 

“I think this all started with former chief Szala,” noted Select Board Chair Stanley Mickelson. “He had a goal in mind and a vision that he needed to have a team so it wasn’t just one man running the operation.”