The man offered the Tonganoxie police chief job last Tuesday may not wear a red cape or have an “S” on his chest, but his experience and list of accomplishments were surely outside the expectations of Tonganoxie City Council members when they started the search for Chief Ken Carpenter’s successor.

The search netted a man with experience on all levels of law enforcement, from the street-level view of a patrolman to that from behind the desk as one of the top administrators in the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. The list of his multiple awards, distinctions and accomplishments tax the limited news hole of this newspaper.

Jeffery Brandau’s experience and education suggest someone can ably administer a department. But his record as a successful investigator suggests he is a real crime fighter, not a pencil-pushing policeman. Looking at his résumé, one can assume he rose in the KBI because of those successes and an ambition and desire to better himself that had him pursue such things as a master’s degree in public administration from Kansas University and take on the added responsibility of serving as president of the National Alliance of State Drug Enforcement, or helping found the Shawnee County Drug Court.

Tonganoxie would not be able to afford Brandau were he not already getting a pension from his KBI retirement. Far from finding any fault with that arrangement, we salute the means it gives this city to tap into the knowledge Tonganoxie and other state taxpayers invested in the past 28 years.