Gulf Stream Police Chief Edward Allen gave the Town Commission no details on why he is leaving the job, but Mayor Scott Morgan called it a retirement and praised Allen’s integrity. Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
By Steve Plunkett
Gulf Stream is losing its longest tenured employee, Police Chief Edward Allen, who has served on the town’s police force since 1988.
“Effective Jan. 31 … I will be leaving my position here as the police chief,” he announced at the Town Commission’s December meeting without offering details on why.
Mayor Scott Morgan labeled it a retirement.
“You have been with this town for many, many years — decades — and, at least as long as I’ve been on this commission, you have led what is really one of the finest police departments on the barrier island and, frankly, beyond that,” Morgan said. “I want to say that you’ve brought honesty, integrity to your position. Now you’ve instilled that in your officers and have made them what is a very special police department to our very special town.
“I think I speak for everyone here in congratulating you,” the mayor said of Allen’s “well deserved” retirement after almost 35 years working for the town, “thanking you for your many years of service.”
Allen, 63, joined the Gulf Stream Police Department on June 10, 1988, when he was 29 years old. He was promoted to chief on Dec. 9, 2016, after his predecessor, Garrett Ward, resigned for health reasons.
Allen supervised a police captain, two sergeants and 10 officers.
He started his police career in 1981 in Boynton Beach, where he was born and raised, and moved to the Ocean Ridge police force in 1986.
For years he also served as Santa Claus at Ocean Ridge’s holiday party. His father, Ed Sr., was chief of the Boynton Beach Fire Department.
Allen’s departure is coming only four months after the Sept. 30 retirement of Town Clerk Rita Taylor, then Gulf Stream’s second-longest tenured employee. Taylor worked for the town for 32 years and nine months.
In other business at the Dec. 9 meeting:
-- Commissioners were told that a 25-foot live oak tree would be planted outside Town Hall, replacing the green buttonwood tree blown over by Hurricane Ian-related wind in late September.
-- Town Manager Greg Dunham reminded commissioners that construction is restricted but not prohibited in Gulf Stream for the six-month winter season, and there is a lengthy list of exemptions. “Every year … around Dec. 1 the staff deals with construction exemption requests on a daily basis basically,” he said, noting that two noisy projects were nearing completion.
-- An informational session with a security camera industry representative was scheduled for the commission’s Jan. 13 meeting. The subject: the possibility of getting live feeds of nonresidents driving into town from citizens’ security cameras. Resident Beau Delafield, who twice has lost vehicles to thefts, and Civic Association President Curtiss Roach asked commissioners to investigate.
-- A new guardhouse at Place Au Soleil was approved.
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