Attracted by small-town vibe, two new officers join the Gig Harbor police force

Officer Ennis Roberson was a big-city cop for nearly 20 years. Now he’s ready for a small-town beat.

Officer Kelsey Burgin-Dove drove state Route 16 on her way home from her job as a Washington State Trooper for three years. Along the way, she met a lot of Gig Harbor cops. Now she’s one of them.

Roberson, 50, and Burgin-Dove, 29, are the latest recruits to join the Gig Harbor Police Department. The new hires bring the number of police officers in the Gig Harbor department to 20.

Roberson spent nearly 20 years with the Seattle Police Department, and he says he had grown jaded by big-city policing.

“I came to Gig Harbor because I wanted to experience real community policing,” he told The Gateway the other month. “I want to be able to get out of my car, walk around and meet people. I couldn’t do that in Seattle, where it was just racing from one call after another.”

Roberson, who goes by “Jody,” grew up in Patterson, New Jersey. He joined the Army at an early age, he said, “just to get out of New Jersey.” While serving at Ford Ord, California, he studied criminal justice at UC Santa Cruz. Before joining the Seattle force, he was with the Seaside, California police department.

He and his wife, Bercy, have a son, Ennis IV, who is a freshman at Washington State University, and a daughter, Taliya, who is a student at the University of Washington.

Roberson is the second officer from Seattle to join the Gig Harbor department in recent years. Officer Mark Burns transferred in December 2020.

Kelsey Burgin-Dove is a Montana native who worked as a personal trainer before joining the Washington State Patrol.

A friend who was a state trooper invited her on a ride-along, she said, and “on the first ride I did, I absolutely loved it.”

She worked out of the Tacoma district, patrolling Interstate 5 and other highways, but she lived in Gig Harbor, so SR 16 was on her route home.

“I would always run into the Gig Harbor guys on the way home, and sometimes I’d stop to help out with accidents,” she said. “I developed a lot of respect for them, and I already lived in Gig Harbor, so it seemed like a natural thing for me.”

Like Roberson, she was attracted by the idea of working in a smaller community she could get to know.

“I like the idea of being in more a community setting,” she said. “You don’t get that opportunity as a state trooper, where you’re always on a highway somewhere.”

Burgin-Dove and her husband, Austin, live in Gig Harbor with two dogs. He works for a company that maintains ATM machines.