By Zach Spicer | The Tribune

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CROTHERSVILLE — Three recent occasions left their mark on a Jackson County native.

On April 5, the Crothersville Town Council unanimously approved the hiring of Mark Reynolds Jr. as the fifth Crothersville Police Department officer.

Then April 8, he placed his left hand on a Bible held by his wife, Tori Reynolds, and raised his right hand as he was sworn in. Also there were several family members, friends and fellow CPD personnel.

Finally, on April 18, he worked his first shift.

“From what I’ve seen, it’s a great small community with a lot of great people, and I’m just really looking forward to getting down here and meeting them and getting to know them and just serving the needs of the community,” said Reynolds, 29, a Brownstown native who lives in Norman.

Reynolds graduated from Brownstown Central High School in 2011 and then worked at Walmart Distribution Center in Seymour for a couple of years until he was convinced to give law enforcement a try.

One of his friends, Kevin Settle, was at Vincennes University studying law enforcement, and another friend, Levi Caudill, had started working at the Jackson County Jail in Brownstown.

Reynolds enrolled at Vincennes in 2013 and received an associate degree in law enforcement in 2015.

“In classes at VU, I fell in love with it,” he said of law enforcement. “I was like, ‘Man, I love this. This is the right fit for me.’”

While there, he was on the track and field team, which led to an opportunity to continue the sport while working toward a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice at St. Joseph’s College.

When he received his degree in 2017, Reynolds was in the final graduating class at the Rensselaer college because it closed for financial reasons.

After graduation, he returned to his hometown to work at the jail as a jail officer. He was responsible for the daily safety and security of the jail, sheriff’s department and courthouse.

“I’d say it was really a good experience because I had to do interaction,” Reynolds said. “I had to learn how to interact with people, and it’s learning how to talk to and treat people and just getting to know a lot of people. In that job, you meet a lot of people and just get to learn a little bit about them and just get to know them.”

All along, his goal was to become a police officer with a local agency.

“It was a very short time for me at the jail and I started riding along with deputies and it was like, ‘Man, I definitely made the right choice. This is a career I’m going to retire doing,’” Reynolds said.

Over the years, he applied for jobs with local police departments. In the fall of 2019, he became a reserve officer with the Brownstown Police Department. He later was one of the final two candidates for a full-time officer opening with the sheriff’s department.

Even though he wasn’t chosen, Reynolds stayed positive, and that paid off when he was told by Caudill, who now is an officer in Crothersville, that the department was looking to hire a fifth officer.

He applied, went through the hiring process and was chosen. He said that was surreal and meant a lot.

“It has been a long goal for me,” Reynolds said. “I’ve been trying to become a police officer since 2013, so nearly a decade, and it was a relief and actually took awhile to sink in that it finally happened for me because there have been days where I sometimes wondered whether it was ever going to happen for me or not.”

When the moment finally came at the town council meeting, Reynolds said he was a nervous wreck until it was approved.

“Man, that was one of the most exciting moments of my life,” he said. “I competed for national championships in college and I had great success as an athlete, and I’d still say that moment was the second-best day of my life outside of my wedding day.”

Then three days later having his family, friends and new co-workers there as he took the oath of office was special.

“It was just as full as it was for the town board meeting with everyone coming down,” Reynolds said of the meeting room at the town hall. “My family has been really supportive of it, and it has been huge for me. In the times where I wasn’t hired or offered the job or where I didn’t pass physical agility, they were still there with a lot of support for me, and it has meant a lot to me.”

Reynolds completed the 40-hour prebasic training when he was a reserve officer, so he’s now doing field training with the Crothersville officers. Later this year, he hopes to go to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in Plainfield for 16 weeks of training to become a certified police officer.

“I’m ready to go there and learn what they have on training and get down in the details of what I can learn at the academy about becoming the best officer I can be,” he said.

Reynolds is excited for the opportunity to serve and protect the people of Crothersville.

“I want to be able to build positive relationships within the community and be a good role model for the younger individuals in this community and someone that the community of Crothersville can be like, ‘This is a great guy for our kids to look up to and a good role model,’” he said. “That’s just what I try to be.”