The Carbon County Sheriff’s Office recently appointed Daniel Zeigler as its new captain.

The announcement on Thursday marked a homecoming for the Carbon County resident and Panther Valley graduate.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for me to give back and have an impact in the community that I grew up in and also reside in,” said Zeigler.

Zeigler will be tasked with operational oversight of the sheriff’s office. It’s a role he will share with Sheriff Tony Harvilla and Chief Joseph Hager.

“As I started to go through the process and speak with the sheriff, I quickly realized that our goals and our visions were pretty well aligned,” said Zeigler. “I think that’s pretty important when you’re forming a new relationship with a new position.”

Zeigler’s duties will also include serving as sheriff’s liaison to the courts, county administration, elected officials and the community.

“My goal is to really focus on making things as safe as possible, making things as efficient as possible, and making this office as effective as possible,” he said. “So everything that we do going forward is going to focus on those three principles. We really need to be as responsive to the public as we can.

“The sheriff’s office has very many functions, so to look at all of those functions and determine how we can best meet the needs of the public is going to be an ongoing focus.”

Most recently, Zeigler worked for the Northampton County Sheriff’s Department, where he was assigned to the Field Operations Unit for the past six years.

In that role, he focused on both civil and criminal functions throughout the county of Northampton.

“We were tasked with being on the road every day, out in the community, serving warrants, doing training, doing community outreach,” said Zeigler.

Harvilla felt Zeigler’s background and connection with the community made him a perfect fit for the constantly evolving demands of his office.

“With the growing sheriff’s office, we realized that we needed a position that would focus more on community liaison, and judicial and administrative liaison, as well as helping to redo our policies, procedures and so forth,” said Harvilla. “The current staff here, we’re kind of bogged down on the day-to-day activities, and we needed one more upper-management position here to be able to address those things.

“And since community liaison is so important these days, the timing was perfect.”

Zeigler, who has a bachelor’s degree in the administration of justice from the Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degree in public administration from Devry University, also has extensive background in the juvenile justice system having held executive level positions for several agencies in New York, where he also held the position of Deputy Commissioner of Social Services in one of its smaller counties.

He has also provided consulting services to numerous agencies focused on implementing organizational change and creating trauma informed environments.

“I’ve seen a large gamut of the mental health issues that exist, and the need for our office and other offices to be responsive to those needs in the public,” said Zeigler, “and making sure that we’re able to provide our deputies with training to be able to deal with that as those folks come into our courthouse or we interact with them on a daily basis.

“But I think I also have a good understanding of what the needs are in the smaller county, and having been on the road for the last several years, I think I’ve seen about all you can see, and I’m happy to bring those experiences to Carbon County.”