ATHOL — Russell T. Kleber is back home in central Massachusetts.
Following six years as an FBI supervisory special agent, the Worcester native was sworn in as the Athol police chief, with dozens of his brothers and sisters in blue looking on in Memorial Hall on Tuesday. Scores of friends, community members and officers from neighboring departments were on hand as Kleber took the reins from retiring Chief Timothy Anderson.
“I’m incredibly humbled,” Kleber told the crowd after being sworn in. “I’m going to be here for you and I promise to use everything I have and put in all of my time, effort and energy to be the best chief of police I can be and give to you what you need.”
Kebler, accompanied to Memorial Hall by his family, also stressed the importance of unity in the law enforcement community following the killing of five officers in Dallas last week.
The chief of police is not a state Civil Service position in Athol, and Kleber was hired by Town Manager Shaun Suhoski, who remarked that Memorial Hall on Tuesday had “more brass than the Air Force Band’s tribute to John Philip Sousa.”
Kleber, who was sworn in by Town Clerk Nancy Burnham, said he was born in Worcester and attended high school in Sutton. He said he has returned to central Massachusetts because it is home to him.
“I’m looking to enhance the department and just give everything I have — everything I’ve done over the past 30 years — and try to build the department from within,” he said before the formal swearing-in ceremony. He also praised outgoing Chief Anderson. “He just introduced me to his wife and I just said to her, ‘I want to thank your husband for the way he set up the department and left the department to me. He couldn’t have done any better.’”
Kleber, who began his new post on Monday, has 29 years of experience in law enforcement, serving as a police officer in Charlton from 1987 to 1992, when he switched to Auburn and specialized in crisis intervention and domestic abuse. He began working as a special agent for the FBI in 1996, working in Providence, R.I., and Boston before heading to the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Va., in 2010. He said he taught new recruits and executive-level police officers from around the world.
Kleber also has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Westfield State University and a master’s degree from Anna Maria College.
State Rep. Susannah M. Whipps Lee, an Athol native, thanked Anderson and the town’s police officers for their service to the community and congratulated Anderson on his retirement.