Pasadena Police Swear In 5 New Officers, Promote 3 to Corporal

Pasadena City Clerk Mark Jomsky led the swearing in of five new Pasadena police officers Monday afternoon during a ceremony in the Public Library’s Donald R. Wright Auditorium which also saw three current officers promoted to the rank of corporal.

Chief of Police Phillip Sanchez said via Twitter that the event was “was well attended by elected, religious, community leaders.” The event was private and closed to the media.

“We had five new additions to the police department family,” Lt. Vasken Gourdikian said.

In an email, Gourdikian explained that two of the newly sworn officers come to Pasadenas as “lateral police officers, meaning that they were officers elsewhere before being hired by us.” One is lateral transfer from the Monrovia Police Department and the second is a lateral officer from the Sierra Madre Police Department, he wrote.

“The other three officers were recruited and sent to the Orange County Sheriff’s Academy and graduated in June of this year,” Gourdikian wrote.

Gourdikian said the Pasadena Police Departmeny currently has additional recruits training at the Academy.

“For the last year and a half or so we’ve been hiring in a very robust fashion. We continue to hire with the coming of the new fiscal year,” Gourdikian said. “We were authorized have [a departmental total of] 239 sworn positions with 10 ‘overhires’ so we are are still looking at candidates.”