Kentucky State Police Post 15’s new commander, Captain Jennifer Sandlin, has made history for the second time in her career.
Sandlin was the first female commander at Hazard State Police Post, and, as of Aug. 1, she is the first female commander at the Columbia State Police Post 15.
Sandlin said she knew from an early age that she wanted to work in law enforcement in some capacity.
“Growing up, when I was a teenager, I was always a lifeguard. There was that part of me that wanted to be protective of people and help them and look out for people,” she said.
In high school, Sandlin began reading books written by American crime writer Patricia Cornwell, whose novels center on forensic science. At the same time, her sister was attending Eastern Kentucky University, which was the only school in the state that offered a forensic science program. Already considering EKU, the availability of her desired degree made the decision an easy one.
“I did my internship at Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in Nashville and then they had an interim position open up in evidence receiving so I applied for it and started working there. While I was doing my internship, I realized that the work could be a little bit monotonous if you were strictly in the lab,” said Sandlin.
Her fiancé was in the state police academy and she began looking at other options.
“I applied for the state police academy. I had always had respect for the state police. They had high visibility in eastern Kentucky, where I’m from,” she said.
She continued her career mainly in Pikeville in eastern Kentucky. Being a native of Hazard, she transferred there as Post Commander in 2017.
“After the flood in 2022, it was a tough thing to be around and it was going to be a very long recovery for the area. The area around my house was hit pretty hard. My house was not, but a lot were. The roads were tore up, the hills were sliding off,” she said.
“The plan all along was to move to Wayne County, so we just moved that timeline up.”
Sandlin says one of things she is most proud of in her tenure as a captain is helping start the first sworn female trooper retreat.
“We started it in 2022. That was the very first one. It was me and I had a female lieutenant at the time. We got permission from command staff, and they were supportive of us doing it,” she said.
“We made an agenda and got all the speakers. There’s just not a whole lot of female troopers and we are real spread out. It’s rare for there to even be two at a post,” she said.
“Policing is just different for females, it is. It’s going to be. We are different from men and it’s a male dominated field. So we started that retreat just to try to get us together,” she said.
Sandlin said they had participants who had 26 years of experience and some who had just graduated the academy.
“A lot of them had never met,” she said. “Some worked in the west and some worked in the east, and they had never crossed paths, so we wanted to bridge that and get everybody introduced to everybody and just have a place where we can share ideas and help each other.”
Sandlin considers organizing the retreats one of the most positive things she has been able to do.
Sandlin also helped launch another program that during her tenure at Pikeville post. The Angel Initiative offers assistance for people with substance abuse disorders. If someone goes to any state police post and says they want to go to treatment, KSP will take them in and start making phone calls to get them help.
Partnerships were created in communities with drug treatment centers to help streamline the process.
“This is voluntary, if in the middle of it, they change their mind, they are free to walk out,” she said.
As she begins her third week at Columbia post, Sandlin said she is trying to get used to having 11 counties to cover.
“Just trying to figure out the needs in all those areas is a little bit overwhelming, so I rely on the people here who are from here and have been here for awhile. I am fortunate that the supervisors and the troopers are all pretty much from here,” she said.
Sandlin is well aware of recent fatalities and that is something she is already addressing.
“That is something that we have already been in discussions about. Trying to drill down: is there a certain causation?” said Sandlin.
While working in Hazard, she worked with highway safety and they discovered that Perry County had the highest number of unbelted fatalities in the state. With this information, a partnership was formed with the health department, hospital, and schools.
“We wanted to focus on education and then we would do child safety seat training with the health department and get the troopers trained through a program that they had. It wasn’t just about going out there and just flooding with tickets, even though we were doing enforcement as well. But we really wanted to focus on making the community safer,” she said.
That is one example of her leadership and how she wants to focus on the needs of the communities she serves and what she and her troopers can do to make them safer for everyone.
Sandlin is happy to be at Columbia post and looks forward to meeting more people and forming relationships.
“Everybody’s been so welcoming,” said Sandlin. “Every state police post operates a little bit differently based on the counties they cover and the community. This county, especially Adair County, has reached out to me to welcome me. I’ve had some meet and greets and people have offered their information if I ever need them.”
By Amy Pike
amy@adairvoice.com
