Mr. Frost teared up at the sight of his supportive fellow officers and the look of pride of his family — wife Janine and sons Eddie, Garett and Kyle — in the audience at the special Town Board meeting on Wednesday.

“I would like to thank everyone that showed up here today to support this promotion. I look forward to working with you guys all closely — I probably supervised most of you throughout my time,” Mr. Frost said to the officers in the room. “I’ll do the best I can and I’m sure I’ll do well.”

The promotion by the Town Board followed the approval of Chief David Hegermiller’s retirement, who served in the role for the last 23 years and worked in the department for a total of 42 years.

Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard wished Mr. Hegermiller luck on his retirement and praised the former chief on how he led the department during “uncharted territory” at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. This included Mr. Hegermiller’s effort to schedule vaccinations for first responders.

“I think the Riverhead Police Department — I don’t mean to insult any of our other agencies that are here — is one of the finest police departments around, and that credit goes right to the top, and it should,” Mr. Hubbard said. “[Mr. Hegermiller] really ran the town for quite a time, along with running the police department, and I will forever be grateful for him getting us through COVID.”

Mr. Hegermiller was not present at the special town board meeting for his retirement. The former chief has not responded to multiple requests for an interview.

The vote to appoint Mr. Frost to chief was unanimous between Mr. Hubbard, Councilwoman Joann Waski and Coucilwoman Denise Merrifield, with council members Robert Kern and Kenneth Rothwell absent.

“It’s been long time coming,” Mr. Hubbard said to the new police chief. “You’ve been a dedicated member of our department for 31 years and you’ve always worked your hardest at doing your job, and many of the men and women have worked directly underneath you were so ecstatic when they knew we were making you the next chief of police.”

Along with the town board, Ms. Waski congratulated Mr. Frost as well and encouraged him to “savor this moment.”

“I am part of the police family in more ways than than one and I know that you’re going to do exceptional things, and you are going to be the leader that you’ve proven to be in the past,” Ms. Waski said. “I have never seen the morale that’s in this room like it is today.”

Mr. Frost, 54, joined the Riverhead Police Department right out of the police academy in June 1994 and held various sergeant roles throughout his three-decades-long career. He was promoted to detective sergeant in 2015 and held that position until he became a lieutenant in 2021. The new chief has lived in Wading River for the last 36 years.

He has charged the Police Athletic League in Riverhead for the past two years, which is a nonprofit organization that provides youth sports programs throughout Suffolk County. He is also the head of the Juvenile Aid Bureau, where all youths who have committed a crime under the age of 16 are processed. This sector of the police department is also for the Youth Court, a voluntary alternative to the traditional juvenile justice system designed for first time offenders ages 16 and under.

At Thursday afternoon’s town board meeting, Mr. Frost discussed his longterm visions and plans for the police department, which currently has 96 officers.

Some of the changes he envisions includes strengthening community relations, addressing quality of life issues in the downtown area, partnering with other local law enforcement agencies, reviewing police staffing to get the number of officers up to 100, grant opportunities to assist the police department with equipment purchases and technological advances.

Mr. Frost is interested in installing additional cameras to key spots throughout Riverhead Town, obtaining fixed/mobile license plate readers and looking into IT programs and training that would aid officers in data analysis.

“I hope to be a fair but firm leader… if you respect others, it goes a long way,” Mr. Frost said. “I just want to be community-minded, I’m looking for technology advances because being a detective sergeant — investigation wise — [proper technology] is huge.”

In terms of building relationships with the public, Mr. Hubbard said Mr. Frost will be hosting three meet-and-greets at the Riverhead Senior Center, at Riverhead Town Hall and Riley Avenue Elementary School in early September for community members to come out and get to know their new police chief.

“It’s an honor for this,” Mr. Frost said. “This is such a tremendous responsibility that I take very seriously.”

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Chief Hegermiller did not respond to a request for comment this week, but Mr. Hubbard said the veteran lawman told him, “’It’s been 42 years and it’s time.’”

Mr. Hubbard said the Town Board decided to hire from within.

“In a retirement like this, we always lose institutional knowledge and that’s something that’s hard to replace with somebody new coming from the outside,” the supervisor said. “But because we’re promoting from within, we won’t lose as much as we would if we hired someone from the outside. So it’s not as big a hit as it would be, but still, there’s stuff he ran across in 42 years the next person coming in may have never seen. So it’s important when you lose someone like that to try to fill it as best you can, and I think we’re doing that by hiring from within.”

Mr. Hubbard — who served for years as a Riverhead police officer and later detective — hailed Mr. Hegermiller’s oversight of the department since he took the helm as Chief in 2022, after joining the department in 1981.

“I would match ours up against any police department in Suffolk County. We’re just as good, if not better, and a lot of that credit has to go to him because he’s the chief of the department,” Mr. Hubbard said, noting Riverhead’s “extremely high” closure-rate-by-arrest record.

The supervisor said that Lt. Frost will be appointed at a special Town Board meeting next Wednesday at 4 p.m. at Riverhead Town Hall.

“We’ll accept the chief’s resignation and appoint Lt. Frost,” he said, calling Mr. Frost “more than qualified,” for the job, having served for more than 30 years on the force.

Mr. Hegermiller, the highest paid employee in the town in recent years with a current salary of $225,637, got an 8.5% raise last December and signed a new contract that ran through the end of this year. It was not clear why the chief decided to retire now.

Mr. Frost did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on his upcoming appointment.

Mr. Hubbard said that Captain Richard Smith was also considered, but he had told Town Board members that he plans to retire in the near future and “we don’t want to have to do this twice if we don’t have to.”

News of the chief’s retirement was first reported by Riverhead Local.

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Chief Hegermiller, who has been working without a contract since 2022, saw his base salary increase to $225,637 from $207,673, which includes a retroactive 6% raise for 2023 and an additional 2.5% raise for 2024, according to a copy of the contract. As in 2022, Mr. Hegermiller is the highest-paid employee of the Town of Riverhead, officials said. 

Five new officers were recently hired as part of the town’s 2024 budget, bringing the number of new officers added to the department in the past year and a half to 12, Town Supervisor Yvette Aguiar said in an interview Tuesday. Riverhead police officers also received a 6% pay bump in 2023 and a 2.5% raise for 2024 in their new contract.

Chief Hegermiller, 65, will also receive a longevity bonus of 16% of his salary for serving in the department for 40 years. He was hired as a police officer in 1981 and reached his 40-year mark in 2021. As the town’s designated Federal Emergency Management Agency representative, he also receives an annual stipend of $6,000. He did not respond to News-Review requests for comment on the new deal. 

The contract requires the chief to submit a town safety plan and determine the viability of creating a police substation for the downtown area.

Ms. Aguiar said that she had earlier approached Town Board members about considering the creation a downtown substation. The department currently operates out of a building on Howell Avenue.

Police “substations do work,” she said. “We’re not talking about just having police standing there holding their guns. We’re talking about community-friendly.”

The supervisor said that the safety plan and recommendations on a downtown substation must be completed by June 2024.

“If you lose your kid, lose your dog, you can come in” to the downtown station being considered, she said. “Just the presence of that office [would be] highly effective against quality of life crimes. You want to make it community policing, where they are walking around, and the officer is watching a concert with the people.” 

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