Illinois FOP
Meritorious Award
For the response to the ambush of a police officer and the arrest of the suspect.
The record
Over twenty years in uniform.
Three generations here.
My grandfather, Norman Leroy Rose, was one of Marion County's early deputies. My father, Norman Alan Rose, gave nearly thirty years to this work at the Centralia Police Department, the Southern Illinois Drug Task Force, and a statewide investigative agency. I am the third generation of my family to wear a badge, and this county is where I come from, not a place I moved to for a job.
I have spent more than twenty years in uniform, first in the Army and then in law enforcement. I am a sworn Illinois investigator with statewide jurisdiction, I have carried federal credentials on two task forces, and I have been an assistant team leader on two tactical teams.
I am an Army Airborne Ranger and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, honorably discharged as a Sergeant First Class.
I was born in Centralia, grew up in Odin, and graduated from Salem Community High School. My wife Crea and I are raising six children in Centralia, three boys and three girls. They will grow up in whatever county we hand them, which is the reason I do any of this.
Since December 2024 I have served on the Marion County Board for District 4, on the Law Enforcement Committee and as the board's liaison to the EMA. That is the seat that reads the Sheriff's bills every month, so I already know what the jail costs, what the fleet needs, and which capital items keep getting pushed to next year.
Why I am running
I have wanted this job my whole life.
I have wanted to be a police officer for as long as I can remember, and I have wanted to be Sheriff since I was a little kid, when my grandfather Norman Rose ran for this office.
After September 11th I was not old enough to be a police officer yet, so I joined the military to serve my country, and I fell in love with that life. When I left the Army and went after the goal I had held since childhood, I made myself a promise: never lose the citizen's perspective.
For many years I was an ordinary citizen. I know what it is to stand on the other side of the counter. I know what it is to be the victim of a crime and have the case not taken seriously, and to watch bias keep a case from being handled the way it should be. Not here in Marion County specifically. Nationwide. That is the part people miss about this job. I understand the citizen's perspective. I understand organizational leadership better than most. I understand the police perspective. A Sheriff needs all three.
So yes: I want to be Sheriff. No, I did not expect to be doing it at this moment in my life. But when I saw what was happening to the most important office in this county, and the games being played with it, I thought of every excuse not to get involved. I prayed on it. I woke up with one verse running on repeat.
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then said I, “Here am I. Send me.”
Isaiah 6:8
I have been all in ever since, with a sense of purpose I have not felt in a long time.
If you have questions about me, my platform, my intentions, or my background, ask me directly. Call or text (706) 973-7697 or email votecodyrose@gmail.com.
Law enforcement
Village, city, state, and federal, in that order.
2020 to Present
Investigator, Illinois Secretary of State Police
Assigned to the Illinois Statewide Auto Theft Task Force as an auto theft investigator with statewide jurisdiction. Assistant Team Leader on the department's SWAT and Statewide Weapons of Mass Destruction Team since 2024; SWAT operator 2021 to 2024.
2019 to 2021
Federal Task Force Officer
Sworn as a Special Federal Officer with the FBI Violent Crime Task Force and as a Special Deputy U.S. Marshal with the Marshals Service Metro East Safe Streets Task Force, working violent crime and gang cases.
2018 to 2020
Gang Intelligence and Patrol Officer, Centralia Police Department
Patrol and gang assignments. Assistant Team Leader on the High Risk Entry Team in 2019 and 2020. Worked gang intelligence and shared case information with regional and federal partners.
2017 to 2018
Police Officer, Farina Police Department
Rural patrol and investigations in a small department, where the officer on duty handles the whole call. That is the same reality most of Marion County lives in outside the cities.
Elected by my peers as a Fraternal Order of Police labor representative, first at Centralia PD and later at the Illinois Secretary of State Police lodge.
Recognition
Awards and commendations.
National, 2022
Kids First Award
Missing Person Awareness Network.
Illinois SOS Police
Achievement Award
For my actions in the location and apprehension of the suspect who killed Deputy Sean Riley, a Marion County native.
Additional
Unit Citation and commendations
Illinois Secretary of State Unit Citation, plus several commendations from the Centralia Police Department.
Military service
Twelve and a half years. Thirty-six months in combat.
I served in the United States Army as Airborne Ranger infantry, including thirty-six months of combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was honorably discharged as a Sergeant First Class.
I graduated from the U.S. Army Ranger School and later returned as an instructor at the premier leadership school of the United States Army. As a Senior Instructor and doctrine writer I evaluated platoon leaders and taught raids, ambushes, patrol bases, land navigation, operations planning, and small unit tactics. I rose from recon scout to pathfinder platoon sergeant over the course of that career.
Decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal, the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Expert Infantryman Badge, the Ranger Tab, and the Parachutist Badge. I previously held Secret and Top Secret SCI clearances, both since lapsed with no adverse adjudication.
Platoon Sergeant
Led all logistics, training, and mission planning and execution for a specialized infantry platoon of thirty to forty soldiers.
Senior Operations NCO, 101st Airborne
For a specialized air assault infantry battalion, coordinated training, personnel, resources, communications, intelligence, and fires. Built and ran the short- and long-term calendar and managed the budget along with vehicles, maintenance, ammunition, food, and water, while handling tactical mission planning for the battalion.
County government
The seats I hold.
What I was elected and appointed to, and what each one puts in front of me.
2024 to Present
County Board Member, District 4, Marion County
Law Enforcement Committee, serving as EMA and Homeland Security liaison to the board. Also the Liquor Establishment Committee and the Labor Relations Committee.
2024
Delegate, Illinois Republican State Convention
Represented Marion County Republicans at the state convention.
Current
Board Member, South Central Illinois Regional Planning and Development Commission
Regional planning and development for south central Illinois. Hazard Mitigation Study Committee and Policy Committee.
2010 to 2012
Public Safety Diver and Rescue Swimmer
Special Tactics and Rescue Team, Jefferson County, New York. Also served as a volunteer Deputy Fire Coordinator for the county.
County board
I read the claims. That is how I know what this office costs.
A county board seat is not a title. It is a stack of claims, budgets, and requests that somebody has to actually read before the vote. I read them, and I ask the question behind the number rather than the one on top of it.
2024 to
Present
Present
The Sheriff's Office budget, from the other side of the table
I review county claims, department budgets, and the Sheriff's Office requests for capital and facility work: jail maintenance, the transport fleet, the security camera system. Most candidates for Sheriff learn the budget after they win. I will not have to.
2026
Reading past the headline number
More than once I have found that a figure presented to the board did not mean what it appeared to mean. It was a percentage that was an artifact of how a report was built rather than a real result, and a pacing assumption about the fiscal year that did not survive being checked against the payroll calendar. I take those findings to the department and the Treasurer first, not to a microphone. That is the job.
2026
Kratom ordinance: the research behind the vote
Asked to consider a flat prohibition, I researched it and recommended something narrower and more defensible: ban the synthetic and concentrated compounds that are actually hurting people, regulate the leaf at twenty-one and older, and be honest that a non-home-rule county reaches only its unincorporated areas. Good intentions do not survive a court challenge. Careful drafting does.
2026
Finding money that is not the county's
I researched federal and state funding for the county's aging criminal justice technology, including a cybersecurity grant program with a rural set-aside Marion County qualifies for and a free state assessment that supplies the justification it requires. I also built monitoring of the county's federal registration status, because when that lapses the county quietly fails state prequalification and stops being able to receive grant money at all.
2026
Asking the federal budget to carry our roads
I submitted a federal appropriations request on the county's behalf for our Highway Department. Rural counties are handed road and bridge obligations far larger than a rural tax base can carry, and the money to close that gap exists at the federal level for counties willing to go ask for it in the right form, at the right time. The request is in. Asking costs the taxpayer nothing; not asking costs them the road.
2026
Bringing Washington to the shop floor
I invited Congressman Mike Bost to come see our area's employers in person, to hear directly from manufacturers what they need and what is standing between them and the workforce they cannot find. Jobs and public safety are not separate problems in a county like this one. A community with work has fewer of the calls a Sheriff's Office spends its nights on.
2026
Fixing the assessment problem without spending the $750,000
The county paid $15,000 for a study of its assessment problems, and the board set aside roughly $750,000 to act on it. I went at it a different way first. I took the findings that $15,000 already bought, requested additional tax records from the county and the state, filed public records requests for the rest, and built the whole thing into one system, so instead of paying to re-examine everything, we can identify the exact properties that need attention and work them in order of who is being hurt worst.
The other half matters just as much. That same system lets a homeowner who is over-assessed pull the comparable data they need to file an appeal, in one place, without knowing which office to call or what to ask for. Fixing this from the government side alone would take years. Give residents the evidence and they can correct the record from their end at the same time.
I did this working with the assessors, not around them, and I published what I found including the parts that did not help my argument. Some of what people believed was wrong turned out to be lawful, and I said so in public. A finding you only publish when it favors you is not a finding.
Emergency management
I built the county's emergency management system and gave it to the county.
As the County Board's liaison to Emergency Management, I did not write a report about what the county needed. I built it, at my own cost, and donated it. Marion County pays nothing for it and owns its data.
Live since
April 2026
April 2026
mcema.us, the county's public emergency information site
A live county map with National Weather Service alerts, river and flood gauges, road closures, wildfire and earthquake feeds, and public pages for preparedness, training, and the emergency operations plan. Built on a platform I own and provided to the county at no charge. I also built the editing tools so county staff maintain the site themselves, without paying a vendor to change a sentence.
2026
A registry for residents who cannot ride out an outage
Residents who depend on oxygen, dialysis, or other powered medical equipment can sign up to be checked on during a disaster. I designed it to fail in the resident's favor: if the system misbehaves, it lets a person register anyway rather than quietly turning away someone who needs the welfare check.
2026
Re-established the Local Emergency Planning Committee
Federal law has required every county to maintain a Local Emergency Planning Committee since 1986. It is the body that plans for a chemical release, a derailment, a pipeline failure. Marion County sits on rail lines, pipelines, and tank farms, and this county had gone years without keeping that committee up the way the law requires. I re-established it. Nobody campaigns on a committee. It is the difference between a plan and a phone call to somebody who hopes they still have the right number.
2026
A rewritten Emergency Operations Plan, ready to file
I updated Marion County's Emergency Operations Plan and worked it through with the EMA coordinators and the partner agencies who have to execute it, so what we have is all-inclusive and built for this county, not a template with our name typed into it. It is finished and staged to be submitted the moment the update window opens. I also published a plain-language summary of it publicly, because a plan nobody outside the courthouse has ever seen is not a plan. It is a binder.
2025 to
2026
2026
Equipment rotation, and getting the county's federal paperwork straight
I established the agency's policy and built a maintenance and replacement rotation plan for its equipment, so gear gets replaced on a schedule instead of after it fails during a call. I also consolidated and reorganized the county's SAM.gov registrations, the federal accounts every grant dollar has to pass through. Neither of these makes a headline. Both are the reason the next thing works.
2026
Hazard mitigation planning
I assembled the technical core of the county's hazard mitigation planning: 483 recorded storm events from 1950 to 2026, and a parcel-by-parcel exposure analysis of every property in the county against flood, mine subsidence, and earthquake liquefaction hazards. The findings went to the County Board Chairman, the EMA Director, and the regional planning commission as a briefing package. Adoption of the plan itself rests with the county and the state.
2026
Grant eligibility and grant money
I built monitoring that watches the county's federal registration status, because when it lapses the county silently fails state grant prequalification and stops being able to receive money. I packaged an Illinois EPA application for the emergency operations center building and found a route through its energy-audit requirement at no cost to the county. I corrected the county's FEMA capability self-assessment, the one tied to homeland security grant eligibility, against real census figures for residents with access and functional needs.
Certifications and training
The unglamorous list.
Illinois Basic Law Enforcement Course, 2018. ISSP Advanced Investigator's Academy, 2020. National Gang Academy, certified Gang Crime Expert, 2020. SWAT Operators Course, 2019. Hostage Negotiator Phase I, 2022. FBI Title III intercept and FBI/DOJ Use of Force, 2020. Wicklander-Zulawski interview and interrogation, 2017. NW3C financial crimes, electronic warrants, and intelligence courses, 2021. FBI Cyber Investigator First Responder, 2017.
IACBM Professional Leadership Training, 2025. ICRMT Road and Jail Conference, 2025. IEMA Region 9 regional training, 2025. Certified Ethical Hacker with CompTIA Security+, Network+, Linux+, and A+. Anti-Terrorism Officer, Critical Infrastructure Protection Specialist, and FEMA critical infrastructure assessments. Dignitary Protection Specialist. EMT, rescue diver, and hazmat operations. FOIA trained.
Affiliations and education
Vetted, and still studying.
I belong to InfraGard through the Midwest Members Alliance, the FBI's public-private partnership for critical infrastructure protection, which requires FBI vetting. I am also a member of the International Association of Auto Theft Investigators, the Midwest Gang Investigators Association, and the Fraternal Order of Police.
I completed 58 credit hours toward a bachelor's degree in Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism at American Military University with a 3.55 GPA, earned a law enforcement certificate from Southwestern Illinois College on the Dean's List, and trained as a cyber security engineer through the ABCO School of Technology Veterans Transition Mission Program.