Council confirms appointment of new police chief

Published 1:30 am Monday, March 2, 2026

The Homer City Council passed a resolution at their last meeting on Feb. 23 confirming the appointment of Officer Michael Scanlon as the new chief of police for the Homer Police Department. Scanlon’s appointment will take effect upon current Chief Mark Robl’s retirement, no later than March 19.

Both Robl and Scanlon were present during the council’s Committee of the Whole meeting on Feb. 23.

“As you know, I’ve been here a long time, and I’m looking forward to retiring next month,” Robl told the council. “I’d really like to thank the city and our citizens for the opportunity to serve for so many years. It really has been enjoyable. For a young kid that grew up in Wisconsin and moved to Alaska, I really have lived my dreams.”

Robl said that he and his wife plan on staying in Homer after retiring and his goals are to spend more time with his family and more time on his boat, in the wilderness, and catching up on building projects and deferred maintenance around his home.

In his introduction of Scanlon to the council, Robl said that the incoming chief has “an excellent record and an excellent background” for taking over and “carrying on the tradition we’ve tried to establish” with HPD.

Resolution 26-017, sponsored by city manager Melissa Jacobsen, states that Scanlon meets the qualifications to serve the City of Homer in the capacity of police chief.

Scanlon previously served in the Bellingham Police Department in Washington for nearly 29 years, having been hired there in January 1993 and retiring in December 2021. He was a patrol officer from 1993 to 1997 and served as a crime prevention officer from about 1998 to 1999. He was promoted in 2000 to the Crime Scene Investigation unit.

“At Bellingham, that was like a grade 30 detective program, but you were uniformed. You got a lot of extra training and you did all the primary crime scenes — fingerprints, photographs, evidence collection, all that good stuff,” he said.

Scanlon worked with Bellingham CSI until 2007, at which time he became a master patrol officer, where he was responsible for training new officers, acted as the acting sergeant when necessary and performed other duties as assigned. He was later promoted to sergeant in 2010.

“One of the best jobs in the police department, a wonderful job,” he said. “At BPD, every sergeant is basically owned by patrol, and then you’re loaned out to different divisions in the department, and you do three-year hitches in these different divisions. So I did my three years in patrol, and then I did three years … as detective sergeant of the Family Crimes Unit, which is now called SVU, and the Major Crimes Unit. I did those, and then I came back out and did patrol again.”

Scanlon also ran the BPD field training officer program and later served as the motorcycle traffic sergeant.

After his retirement in 2021, Scanlon got his commercial driver’s license.

“I drove a dump truck for a while. Quite interesting,” he said.

He moved to Homer with his family in October 2023 and joined HPD in July 2025.

“It just happened to line up that Homer had an opening, and I was still interested in law enforcement, and all this good stuff just happened,” he said.

Council member Donna Aderhold expressed appreciation for Scanlon sharing his background and said that it “bodes really well” for the future of HPD.

“I’ll tell you that, you know, all police departments have a reputation,” Scanlon said. “Homer’s is one of the best. It truly is. And that comes from people outside of the organization, so that’s what you want to hear, and that’s what we’re going to keep up.”

Mayor Rachel Lord offered congratulations to Scanlon as the incoming chief and thanked Jacobsen for leading the hiring process.

Resolution 26-017 was passed as part of the Feb. 23 consent agenda; no council discussion was held on the item during the regular meeting.

Find the Feb. 23 Committee of the Whole recording in full at www.cityofhomer-ak.gov/citycouncil/city-council-committee-whole-323.

Find Resolution 26-017 and the regular meeting recording in full at www.cityofhomer-ak.gov/citycouncil/city-council-regular-meeting-357.