The Village of Gratis made a bit of Preble County history during its Thursday, Aug. 22, council meeting, when Assistant Police Chief Tonina Lamanna was promoted to Chief of the Gratis Police Department. During the meeting, Lamanna was pinned by her father, Giovanni Lamanna, making her promotion to Chief Lamanna official.
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
GRATIS — The Village of Gratis made a bit of Preble County history during its Thursday, Aug. 22, council meeting, when Assistant Police Chief Tonina Lamanna was promoted to Chief of the Gratis Police Department.
“Chief Lamanna just received a well-deserved promotion, and this village really appreciates the effort that she puts into her job. She wants to better the village. she wants to be very involved. in the community. And then the fact that she may be the first female police chief in Preble County is just, it’s awesome. It’s history. So we’re very proud of her,” Gratis Mayor Kathy Lewis said following the meeting.
According to a bio read by Lewis, during the meeting, Lamanna has been in police work since 1998 where she started her career in a small village. Many years later after working for a large city she comes to Gratis bringing experience, training and expertise.
“She has been everything from a patrol officer, K-9 officer, school resource officer, supervisor and worked numerous times in the undercover unit. She currently has started a K-9 program with the Village of Gratis. She writes grants to assist with funding the police department with equipment. She is in charge of training, property room record keeping, and is currently preparing to start an Explorers program for Gratis,” Lewis noted. “She currently runs her own business as a dog groomer/trainer, teaches at Butler Tech, teaches dance to youth, volunteers for a local fire department working an arson dog and has accepted the position of Police Chief for Gratis. She soon will go before a board to become a master trainer for the International Police Work Dog Association. She currently holds a trainer status in arson and narcotics. She is a member of the National Association of Arson investigators, the International association of arson investigators, and Fraternal Order of Police 117. Tonina was accepted into a prestigious leadership school; Certified Law Enforcement Executive Program (CLEE) which will begin in December 2024. She currently holds an Associates Degree in Early Childhood Education, a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and a Master’s Degree in Education with a minor in Criminal Justice.”
During the meeting, Lamanna was pinned by her father, Giovanni Lamanna, making her promotion to Chief Lamanna official.
On Friday, Aug. 30, Lamanna, who had to leave the Aug. 22 meeting early, shared more about herself and her goals for the GPD.
She joined the Gratis Police Department in late 2023, aims to start the Explorer program to engage young people in police work and increase police visibility in the community to rebuild trust. She also plans to improve the police department’s infrastructure and communication. Despite challenges like the recurring failure of a police levy, she emphasized the importance of community partnerships and open communication. She shared her motivation for entering law enforcement, overcoming skepticism, and her career journey from small villages to large cities.
Gratis PD currently has five officers, with two in the process of joining.
“It’s a great feeling,” Lamanna said of possibly being the first female police chief in the county. “It’s wonderful seeing women in law enforcement merging into the administrative and chief roles and to get more authority there. Just being females in law enforcement is a tough job because it is a male dominated field, but getting females to, you know, go up the ranks and emerge, that is just a great feeling. And to represent Gratis, on my behalf, I’m honored.”
“I can tell you that my mission is, basically, is to start an Explorer program, which I’m in the process of doing, getting young people involved in police work. And hopefully, you know, they’ll be interested enough to want to go to the police academy, and in the end, maybe they’ll come back home basically to Gratis and want to be a police officer here and do really good things in their community,” she said.
“Gratis is a growing place, and obviously, like you heard with the stabbing I had the other day, crime does happen,” Chief Lamanna continued. “You know, it’s starting to grow more and more. My second goal would be more visibility in the village with officers, so planning on putting more officers on the street, so the citizens and the residents of Gratis will actually see more police officers, and not to say, ‘hey, we never see cops.’
“I want to be able to build community relations, build the trust between police and the community, because I think over the years, that’s kind of gone away, so I want to build that trust again,” she added. “And those are my goals overall. I can’t put timeframes on those, but those are my goals, and just to make Gratis a really good community, because I’ve pretty much loved it since day one, when I started. And I just want to fulfill a happy career in Gratis as the chief.”
As far as getting a future police operations levy passed, communication will be the beginning.
“What I’m planning on doing, with the help of the village council, is getting the word out, basically. So if I don’t put on the levy this year, because it needs a break from being on the ballot every single year because it’s going to fail. Once I get the trust with the community, and they see how I’m trying to build the community with the citizens, hopefully they will end up trusting us a little more, feel confident that we are growing. Having police seen and more visible, they might feel more, I guess, confident that they will be able to have an officer respond from Gratis versus using the Sheriff’s Office, because I think that’s where the problem is — miscommunication. We’ve never even had phone lines that were working or anything within the police department.”
Lamanna said she is working on policies and building the department — and even actual construction inside the department — “to make it look more like a police department versus their house.”
“I’ve already got citizens coming in to talk to me freely. So being open, talking to citizens, getting out of your car, having that communication with people, you know, you’ve got to be able to get out of that cruiser and walk around and talk to people, listen to what citizens and residents have to say, because if you don’t have that trust, they’re not going to ever come to you for anything. And that’s the first and foremost goal. I want to build that.”
Why did Lamanna decide on law enforcement as a career?
“I was influenced when I was still going through school — high school, grade school — I saw a canine officer years ago. That is such an awesome job. And I just fell in love with that,” she shared. “So I went through a couple citizens’ police academies because I wasn’t old enough. When I went to my first police academy, I wasn’t even old enough to go through the academy, so one of the commanders had to fight for me so I could actually sit for the state test, because I wasn’t even 21 at the time. And then, the second part of that is, I was always told, ‘you’re only four-foot-11, you’ll never make it as a cop, you can’t do that job.’ Well, that’s the one thing you never tell me, — don’t tell me I can’t do the job, because I’m going to go out and do it.
“I take on challenges, and I face them on, head on, and I jump in with both feet,” she added.
Reach Eddie Mowen Jr. at 937-683-4061 and follow on X @emowenjr.
