Dixon’s Casey Fuller Graduated from CHP Academy, Set to Work in Oakland

Dixon’s Casey Fuller recently graduated from the California Highway Patrol Academy in Sacramento and will be patrolling the streets of Oakland according to his father, Dixon City Councilman Rick Fuller.

Casey Fuller, 32, completed the grueling 28-week CHP Academy and graduated on April 29. A proud Councilman Fuller – along with his family – attended the graduation ceremony and received the opportunity of pinning the CHP badge on his son.

“I think he will enjoy a law enforcement career because of the teamwork that’s needed to be successful,” Rick Fuller said. “That never became more clear to me than when I sat in the graduation and I’ve never seen any graduation that was more professional, more focused.”

Casey Fuller, 32, was raised in Dixon since the second grade, his father said. Although Casey grew up watching his father fight crime as the Dixon Police Chief and later, as undersheriff for the Solano County Sheriff’s Department, Fuller didn’t plan on following his father’s footsteps.

Fuller’s first career choice was baseball, his father said, and while in college Fuller signed a contract with the Colorado Rockies to play minor league baseball. But when that opportunity didn’t pan out, Fuller began working as a baseball camp specialist and coach.

During the past three years, he has owned and operated his own baseball training company, his father said. Life after baseball saw Fuller returning to college to attain a degree in psychology and later becoming interested in a career in law enforcement.

“What he wanted to do most is provide for his family in a professional manner,” Councilman Fuller said. “It took him almost two years to get through the (CHP) process. To follow his interest in his job. He got in on Oct. 24, 2010, and he spent 28 weeks in a very rigorous process during the week, and occasionally had to stay two weeks at a time because something would happen at the Academy that they would have to do. That culminated on the 29th of April. He graduated in a class of 68 … and started with a class of 120 people. He was one of the top graduates.”

Fuller said he is proud of Casey, as he is with all of his children, and offered a bit of advice to his son.

“That he always adheres to the lessons that he learned from the Academy and his fellow officers and he’ll survive like most people do in his career,” he said. “I guess from my professional standpoint and listening to his mother, of course, I am concerned. Her concerns are for the safety of her son. I tell him the same thing, he’s got one of the most professional departments in the nation … they do not lead much to be desired when it comes to training, they are almost like Marines.”

Fuller is set to begin patrolling the streets of Oakland on May 21.