Ex-chief training to join HPD class

The wife of former Montgomery County, Md., Police Chief Charles Moose says her husband is definitely joining next month's recruit class for the Honolulu Police Department.

Sandy Herman Moose said her husband has ordered his recruit uniform and continues to work out daily to prepare his 52-year-old body for the physical rigors of the Honolulu Police Academy training, which begins its next recruit class May 1.

"He's in good shape; he started a yoga and Pilates class with me," Sandy Moose said yesterday during a phone interview from the couple's Ewa Beach home. "He used to be a bodybuilder and still does the traditional training ... weightlifting and running."

Moose, also a former police chief of Portland, Ore., gained national prominence during the investigation of the 2002 sniper shootings in the Washington, D.C., area. He resigned in 2003.

Sandy Moose said her husband was out of town and unavailable for comment.

In a Star-Bulletin article Sunday about his Honolulu ambitions, an HPD officer confirmed Moose's interest but said the former police chief had been going back and forth on whether to actually join.

Not so, says his wife. Moose never wavered in his decision to join, she said.

Sandy Moose said her husband is "excited to be able to make a change" in the community again by being involved in police work.

And, she said, the fact that he might be pounding the pavement in Hawaii does not hurt, either.

She said Honolulu has the problems of "any major metropolitan area ... but this is still paradise and there is less violent crime," she said. "Who doesn't love paradise?"

Sandy Moose said both of them have tried to integrate into the community since buying a home in Ewa Beach in 2003.

While she has taken hula classes, he joined the Hawaii Air National Guard's 154th Security Forces Squadron last December, transferring from the Maryland National Guard.