John Ellington is the Town of Stevensville’s newest police officer, having started work on December 17, 2019. Ellington is a veteran, having served in the U.S. Marine Corps infantry, serving in combat in Afghanistan.
Following his five years in the Marines, Ellington attended Police Academy and then took a job as a County Sheriff’s Deputy in Highland County, Florida. After that he worked in the city of Lakeland’s Police Department, before moving to Stevensville.
Ellington has a wife, Keri, and a four month old child. He said that Lakeland was a city of over 100,00 people, sitting in the center of the Florida peninsula, it was also sandwiched between even bigger cities. The work was pretty stressful, he said, so he and his wife decided to take their baby and “go somewhere nice.” He said they were familiar with Montana because Keri’s parents live in Darby and they thought Stevensville would be a nice place to raise a child.
Ellington said it was nice to be working in a small town and that he enjoyed the special attention he was getting from Police Chief James Marble in making the adjustment to a small town community environment.