Even in retirement, Amy Vokal knows she’ll worry about police and fire first responders whenever a siren blares.
“My heart is still going to skip a beat,” she said during her last address to the Mankato City Council earlier this month. “I’m going to say a prayer, and I hope everybody is alright.”
Vokal retired as the Mankato Department of Public Safety’s director Friday, a day after her 55th birthday and two days after her 33rd anniversary in law enforcement.
She led the department, which now has about 59 police officer positions and 20 full-time firefighters, for the last five-and-a-half years. Retiring now was fitting given this week’s milestones, and she said it also just felt like the time was right for a new leader.
“There’s an appropriate period of time that you work and then you turn it over to the next person to take it in a new direction, a different direction,” she said. “I feel really good about the department and how I’m leaving it.”
While her concern for staff safety won’t go away once she takes off the badge, she loves the service-mindedness she sees among the next generation of police officers and firefighters. One of her last acts as director was welcoming new recruits at a swearing-in ceremony Wednesday.
Afterward, Mayor Najwa Massad spoke about how Vokal’s calm, sincere leadership proved invaluable during trying times for the city.
“We’re going to miss her dearly,” she said. “We wish her all the best and God bless her on this new journey.”
Challenges didn’t take long to present themselves once Vokal took over as director in 2019. The department was in the process of reorganization when the COVID-19 pandemic started in early 2020.
Like any organization with dozens of personnel, the uncertain times added degrees of difficulty when it came to scheduling, keeping staff safe and making sure shifts were covered. As the department handled these internal matters, it at the same time served as a resource for residents and businesses adapting to the pandemic.
Within months of this tall task, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, touching off a spring and summer of unrest around the state and country. With experience on diversity and equity projects, Vokal feels like she was the right leader for that time in Mankato.
Vokal helped found the Tapestry Project with Jessica O’Brien, formerly of the Minnesota Council of Churches, and Julie Hawker, formerly of Lloyd Management. Housed within MCC’s Refugee Services office in Mankato, the project sought to grow social connectedness between diverse groups in Mankato.
Working on it was a highlight of Vokal’s career, she said. She was struck by immigrant and refugee experiences in particular, saying it helped her understand the challenges they faced before coming to Mankato.
In response to the 2020 protests, Vokal said the department sought feedback from a diverse group of residents.
“We opened up ourselves for exposure,” she said. “We had to hear it, good, bad and indifferent.”
One demonstration featured a march from Riverfront Park to the Public Safety Center on Front Street. She recalls meeting protesters outside the building.
Some people yelled; others were constructive. Mostly Vokal felt like the group wanted acknowledgement, to be heard.
Rather than defensiveness, Vokal said her reaction was more about seeing where improvements could be made.
“We’re right in some things, but any industry that thinks everything is fine today — that’s not the way the world works,” she said.
A lengthy standoff involving a suspect and a child in April 2023 represented another test for the department under Vokal’s leadership. The extremely delicate situation on Hilltop Lane ended peacefully, and the suspect, Walter Brown, was sentenced to prison this year.
Massad brought up the department’s response to the George Floyd protests and the Walter Brown standoff when reflecting on Vokal’s tenure. Her years as mayor generally overlap with Vokal’s as director.
“She kept everything calm,” Massad said. “Mankato was much safer with her around.”
Vokal felt the city’s trust during the incident. During her remarks to the council this month, she said she knew the limited communication during the incident wasn’t easy to deal with.
“I felt you knew I would do what was best for our community,” she said. “We did get the best possible outcome.”
Biography
Vokal grew up in Orinoco, Minnesota, a small town about a 15-minute drive north of Rochester. She attended the University of St. Thomas for college, majoring in sociology with an emphasis on law enforcement.
An internship at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension further fueled her desire to go into law enforcement in some form. It was a BCA agent who encouraged her to apply for a job in Mankato.
Vokal started her law enforcement career on Aug. 21, 1991 as an undercover drug task force agent in Mankato. The task force had recently formed and needed people who weren’t recognizable in the community.
She fit the bill as a Mankato outsider at the time. While undercover she had a different license and a vehicle registered under a fake last name. She still went by Amy, as another name might cause trouble if she ran into somebody unexpectedly and didn’t answer to it.
“We were four young cops and we had a blast doing that,” she said of the work. “But there is an end to that too. The undercover part really wears on you.”
They never knew when a call would come in from a suspect wanting to buy drugs from who they thought was a dealer, but was really an undercover agent. And it wasn’t like she could tell college friends and family members about her work.
Going into a patrol job a year and a half later allowed her to share more about what she was doing. Interacting with community members felt gratifying to her.
“I knew so many houses and people and businesses just from going to all these different places,” she said.
Vokal enjoyed being recognized as a cop around town. If she needed groceries after a shift, she kept the uniform on rather than changing.
“I just felt like this place accepts me and they’re here to support me,” she said. “One thing I’ll say about Mankato is during my entire time here ... I’ve always felt this community supports public safety.”
Law enforcement was more of a male-dominated industry back then. Even so, Vokal remembers Mankato had a reputation for supporting female officers.
While she’d love to take credit for that culture, she noted it predated her tenure at the helm, so her role has been more about continuing it.
From the patrol division she went on to become a commander, then a deputy director in 2014, then director in 2019. One of her favorite roles over three-plus decades in the field was running the department’s field training program.
Reflecting on her career, Vokal used the word empathy to describe her approach to the job. She said she’s someone who feels others’ grief strongly.
The characteristic helped her relate to people on the job, like the time she helped a woman going through a substance use emergency. The woman happened to have a unique name shared by one of Vokal’s family members.
About 15 years later Vokal encountered the woman again. The woman, in a much better place, thanked her for being kind to her back then.
“Being decent to a human being in distress means so much,” Vokal said.
She sought to extend that sense of care to the officers and firefighters under her purview. Another accomplishment she’s proud of as director is a health and wellness program for the department, encompassing resources for physical, mental and spiritual health, from good eating habits to sleep science to kinesiology.
In retirement, Vokal will consider some job opportunities on a non-full time basis. She wants to leave enough quality time with her parents, friends, two dogs, Bean and Paisey, and cat, Gray Cat.
“I want to spend some time catching up and being able to enjoy them,” she said.
She’s thankful she gets to leave her beloved profession with gratitude, confident in the department’s future.
“I am humbled to be a small part of what they’ll become in the future,” she said. “It’s going to be outstanding.”
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