New Marco Island police chief hopes to regain trust of community after recent trouble

There’s a new chief taking over the Marco Island Police Department and she knows there’s a lot of work to do.

She wants to regain the community’s trust after recent trouble in the department.

In the small town of Marco Island, Tracy Frazzano is the first female police chief. Her first message to you: “Give us that chance. Believe in us because we are going to do good things.”

Frazzano knows she’s taking a police department with a troubled reputation. Among the issues, she’ll have to clean up? They range form officers having sex on duty to allegations of discrimination by the former chief.

“There are a lot of good people here,” she said. “Don’t judge us by a few bad apples.”

On the job for less than two weeks, and juggling the threat of a hurricane, right now, Frazzano is just listening and learning; getting to know the people she will serve and represent.

“I’m very much a team player. I’ve come from team sports my whole life and I know to be successful, we need to have buy-in from anyone on the team and in police work, you need to have the buy-in from the community.”

She knows it will take time, but already feels support from her community.

“Everyday trust is a very important factor. It can be broken very easily, so my goal is, every day, to garner more trust,” she said.

How she’ll do that? Hold everyone accountable: leadership from top to bottom.

Frazzano says she wants to continue building trust on Marco Island by getting to know as many people as she can.

Anyone interested can meet her at Coffee with a Cop at Ne-Ne’s Kitchen on Wednesday, Sept. 18 from 8-10 a.m.