New officer arrives in Moorcroft

Jake Miller started his introductory ride along with Moorcroft Police Chief Bill Bryant on June 28 and is now working alongside his new crew at the department and looking forward to meeting his neighbors.

Miller, who had lived and worked in the Casper area most recently, is “literally from all over” Wyoming, working in the coal mines, oil fields and road construction among other jobs for several years before beginning his career in law enforcement four years ago. Since then, he has been a deputy sheriff, a park ranger and a police officer in another community.

He says that at that time he was heavily into Jujitsu and Judo. Many of his training partners were police personnel.

“I kept asking questions and one of them finally said ‘Jake, you’re obviously curious, why don’t you just go do it?’ So I did,” he says. He says he has been happy with his choice ever since, particularly the “human interaction”.

When Miller was seeking a place to call home, he sought a chief who demonstrated similar qualities to a lieutenant with whom he’d worked well previously, “I saw many of the same qualities in Bill so I figured it might be a good direction to go.”

Miller had the opportunity to help a young person find the right path when the youth began getting into trouble repeatedly a while back, he explains.

“I took him out lifting [weights] with me. After a couple months of that, the kid disappeared for a couple months and I didn’t hear anything from him. Then he came knocking on my door – at home.”

That young man had looked Miller up not to cause trouble, but to tell this cop that he had gotten into rehab, cleaned up and made efforts to return to high school to complete his education. The teen was back into school sports and asked Miller to attend his football “home games”. The officer missed only one game that season due to a wreck he had to work.

This experience touched Miller and he hopes to bring the same attitude to Moorcroft, “[making] a difference in young people’s lives”.

Miller’s wife will be joining him after her nursing internship in Casper.