Blankenship sworn in as IPD captain

It was a familiar scene in the lobby of the Ironton City Center last Thursday — Brandon Blankenship was being sworn in to a position in the Ironton Police Department.

“Third time, isn’t it,” asked Mayor Sam Cramblitt II before swearing in Blankenship as a captain.

“It is,” Blankenship said. He was sworn in as a patrol officer in August 2019 and then as a sergeant in 2020.

He said he didn’t start out to be a captain but when the opportunity arose, he decided to go for it.

Blankenship said that he took the Civil Service test to become a captain because when he was a sergeant “it really opened my eyes up to what this career could be for newer people.”

He said he gained a lot of knowledge as a sergeant and wanted to further that knowledge as a captain and help the new officers coming into the department.

“I want to show them the right way to do things,” Blankenship said. 

He will now be patrol captain on the evening shifts.

“I will also be doing the drug investigations for the city,” he said. “They are keeping me busy.”

Blankenship graduated from Ironton High School in 2014 and had been working as a plant supervisor when he lost his job. He decided to go into law enforcement and graduated from Scioto County Career Technical Center in Lucasville in 2019. He served with the New Boston Police Department for three years before coming to the Ironton Police Department.