Current Clinton Township Police Chief Dina Caringi, left, poses for a picture with Clinton Township Police Capt. Preston Susalla. Susalla will take over as chief of the department next June.
By: Nick Powers | C&G Newspapers | Published October 11, 2024
CLINTON TOWNSHIP — Clinton Township Police Chief Dina Carnigi said she has accomplished what she set out to do, but that it is time to move on and pass the torch.
“You want to come in, you want to make it better than when you found it,” Caringi said. “You set goals, you reach those goals and, with the support of everybody, we’re there. Now, it’s time for me to step aside and let the next generation reach their goals. That’s how we continue to grow and go from good to great.”
That torch will be passed to Clinton Township Police Capt. Preston Susalla, who will take over for Caringi in June 2025. Susalla has been at the Clinton Township Police Department for 22 years. He has spent most of his law enforcement career with the department, other than a few months with the Royal Oak Police Department. In that time, Susalla has assisted with the department’s public relations, field training and training units, the crisis negotiation team, the bike patrol unit, the mobile field force and the traffic bureau. He also worked with the department’s Alert Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate (ALICE) training initiative, and the Skills Mastery and Resilience Training (SMART) Moves programs.
“I’m excited for the opportunity,” Susalla said. “I’m looking forward to what the future holds. We have a great department. We have a great community with a lot of community support, which is awesome, and we have a lot of support from our township board.”
Caringi said Susalla’s variety of experience will be good for his role as chief.
“He has a lot of great leadership qualities and a lot of experience that’s going to really take this place even further,” Caringi said.
Susalla also serves as the department’s manager for the accreditation process. This ranges from making sure the department is meeting its policies and procedures to ensuring its building is up to standards. He said the two-year process was “a lot of work.”
“We literally took every policy and procedure we have and updated everything,” he said. “It took a lot of time doing that. We have a lot of policies and procedures. On top of that, we had to add a lot of policies and procedures that we didn’t have that were required to be accredited.”
Keeping the accreditation status is one of Susalla’s main goals as chief. The department will get its status assessed in three years.
“Once you achieve that accreditation, it doesn’t stop,” Susalla said. “You have to maintain that every year. You have to show proof that you’re doing and meeting those standards, so that’s something I want to continue.”
He also wants to improve upon the department’s community outreach initiatives.
Caringi, a Chippewa Valley graduate, took over as police chief under difficult circumstances. Clinton Township Police Chief Fred Posavetz died of complications from COVID-19 in 2021.
“It was a very difficult transition for me, taking over the way I did,” Caringi said.
She has made sure the department got everything done, from the parking lot renovations to updating technology. Among the biggest goals she achieved was getting the department accredited on Sept. 11, 2024. She said getting accredited had a lot to do with getting the department where it needed to be.
“It wasn’t just me; I had a lot of support through all this change, and I feel like we were progressive,” she said. “I had a lot of support from my three captains and my command staff to get that buy-in that you need. Change is difficult for anywhere and for police is even more difficult. Reform is just a fancy way of saying change. We’ve got to change with the times and be progressive and we were just a little bit behind with that.”
Susalla said he didn’t initially see himself as a police chief, but later on things started to fall into place.
“It was always something that was in the back of my mind of, ‘Hey, it would be awesome to have that opportunity,’” he said. “But not knowing if you get that opportunity is one thing and then knowing this is something that could be a possibility, that’s where it became real.”
Caringi said she wanted to make sure there was a seamless transition. With Susalla moving internally in the department, it will cause vacancies that need to be filled. The November election could also cause changes in the township’s government.
Asked why she planned to depart in June, Carnigi said, “June was my hire date when I started with Detroit police.”
When she leaves, Caringi will have spent 30 years in law enforcement. She’s been with the Clinton Township Police Department for 25 years and spent five years at the beginning of her career with the Detroit Police Department. She was sworn in as the township’s chief in 2021.
Caringi currently works part-time as a certified assessor for MCO Inc. She hopes to become a facilitator with the company, but she said this comes with time and additional training.
“I really like the concept of assessment centers, I’ve been through three myself for different promotions,” she said. “It’s a nice hands-on way of assessing someone’s leadership ability, decision-making, problem-solving and interpersonal skills. It kind of offers that as opposed to traditional multiple choice written tests.”
She said she doesn’t have any interest in seeking a police chief position at another department.
“I think I’m more behind the scenes now,” Caringi said. “Being involved in promotional processes and maybe even getting into teaching. I’ve been looking into that too.”
Caringi called being chief for the township “the greatest honor” of her career. She said a mentor told her she could complain that things should be different, or she could try to get a seat at the table and make things different.
“That was always kind of my driving force to do that as a woman in law enforcement especially, and I accomplished that,” Caringi said. “I feel very honored and blessed to have done that and to know the people I have throughout my career.”
“I give my praise to Chief Caringi,” Susalla said. “She really led a lot of progressive change at the department and has really set a nice foundation for this place moving forward. I definitely want to pick up where she left off.”