A Biography of John F Jarrett

Being born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, John F. Jarrett is a true Arizona native who always had a great interest in electronics yet intended on being a pharmacist. Somehow however, his interests changed and he began a career in law enforcement while attending Phoenix Community College changing majors and delving into Administration of Criminal Justice! In doing so, John became involved in a security business ultimately becoming a self-employed security supervisor for several property management companies. In the summer of 1974, he joined the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department as a Reserve Deputy Sheriff while continuing his college studies. Attending a police academy on weekends, working a security business in the nighttime and taking a full load of college courses during the day was quite a feat!

In January of 1975, John transferred his credits, equal to an Associate of Arts Degree, to Northern Arizona University and pursued his Bachelor of Science Degree in Police Science and Administration. While attending NAU, he worked for the Flagstaff Ambulance Company as an Advanced Emergency Medical Technician II as well as for the Flagstaff Police Department as a work study certified police officer and the Northern Arizona University Office of Student Affairs as a Student Residence Hall Advisor. In December of 1977, John became the Director of Security at Little America in Flagstaff, Arizona, until March of 1979 when it was time to be a policeman again. He then moved to the White Mountains of Arizona and thinking that this area and move were just stepping stones, he has stayed for more than thirty-five years! John worked his way up throught the ranks with the City of Show Low Police Department where he ultimately attained the rank of Commander and acted as the department's assistant chief of police. Here he helped to manage twenty-six sworn police officers and a total staff of over thirty-seven personnel. This does not count the numerous volunteers! He has also authored numerous grant requests through which the department was awarded more than $1,000,000 in needed funding for technology, equipment and manpower!

John has attended numerous law enforcement specialty classes and several management training schools. One management course was the "Arizona Law Enforcement Leadership Institute." This was a very intense two hundred and forty hour course presented by Arizona State University. John is also a graduate of the Dale Carnegie Course and was also a graduate assistant for several Carnegie courses.

During John's career in law enforcement he has been able to combine his many interests and talents including computers, electronics and radio systems to management and adult education and training. Through his self-study, work and education, the Show Low Police Department became a leader and model for other agencies in police technology. This includes; mobile radio data networking, digital imaging, wide area network links, local area networks, custom application programming, database programming; from small local databases to large client server SQL databases, World Wide Web presence and more. John has also assisted other police agencies with their computer and software needs through consultation and custom software as well as providing services to several large corporations.

Training of others has been another interest of John's and in 1997, he appeared on nationwide satellite television in a training series on Community Oriented Policing and specifically, interpersonal communications. John was a certified Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training (AzPOST) board police instructor and was a subject matter expert in the aforementioned AzPOST satellite video production. He has also been a certified Community College Instructor in both Police Science and Computer Technology. In 1997, he was appointed by AzPOST as the Regional Training Facilitator for both the Navajo County and Apache County regions. In being so appointed, he facilitated and coordinated training requests for local and regionalized training of police officers. In 1999, John narrated and facilitated a panel of experts in a two-part AzPOST satellite telecourse on "Suicide by COP" with a nationwide broadcast in March and April of 2000. He later moderated a two-part AzPOST satellite training course on 'Elder Crime' along with many "Law and Legal Update" telecourses. He was subsequently appointed the AzPOST telecourse narrator and moderator for all telecourses and helped produce numerous video training programs until well after his police retirement.

He is also self-taught in several computer programming languages, analog and digital electronics and also holds an FCC Technician-Plus amateur radio license, N7MJJ. He has written and copyrighted several computer programs and programmer libraries along with a self published small book titled, The Expandable Sinclair ZX-80/81. This was a book of electronic projects for a small Zilog Z-80 based computer system and was published in 1981. The book held good reviews and sold well. John was asked to write an article called, "The PC Game Port," which was included as chapter 16 in a book titled, MS-DOS System Programming, Third Edition, published by R&D Communications. This chapter deals with the PC game port and how to program it in several programming languages including assembler. He also wrote numerous articles in the 1980's for Computer Trader Magazine on "Cops and Computers," as well as several other periodicals. Since 1980 John has had a small business that he called "Computer Engineering Services." Custom hardware and software to solve system problems has also been an accomplishment. The name of his business was later changed to Jarrett Consulting, Information Technology Services and Systems (JCITS Systems) LLC.

John retired from the Show Low Police Department in October 2001 after 23 years of honorable service to the City of Show Low. In 2002, he was hired as the Management Informations System Director for the White Mountain Apache Tribe at the Hon-Dah Resort and Casino in Pinetop, Arizona. As the MIS Director for Hon-Dah, John wrote a lot of code and many custom programs for large SQL databases including the entire Personnel Management System for Hon-Dah. John took a leave of absence from Hon-Dah in March of 2003 and returned to the City of Show Low as the Interim Chief of Police. In 2013, he retired from the Hon-Dah Resort and Casino and he also retired his first business, JCITS Systems, LLC. In more recent years, he started Mankind! Sauces, LLC, as a future opportunity, and Jarrett Properties and Investment, LLC for several residential and rental properties that he owns.

John has been married to Betty since 1980 and they are still together after more than 35 years! She retired in 2013 as a second grade teacher from Blue Ridge Elementary School in Pinetop after 29 years! They have two adult sons, Matthew and Benjamin. All of the Jarretts are certified PADI scuba divers with John holding Advanced and Nitrox Certifications. His other interests lie in luthiery, (guitar building), electronics, travel, carpentry and most anything challenging and outside of the ordinary!

Please visit the Jarrett's Photo Gallery!

http://www.jcitssystems.com/gallery3

...and "Mankind! Sauces"
http://www.mankindsauces.com