Officer Mattias Huglen Joins Roseau Police Department

by Ryan Honl

The City of Roseau hired three new police officers recently. One of them is Officer Mattias Huglen. He grew up in Roseau and graduated in 2020 from Roseau High School. Mattias played hockey, baseball, and football while in Roseau. He comes from a sports family. His siblings and many of his cousins played hockey for Roseau. The Huglen name and hockey go hand in hand around here.

After high school, he went to Montana.

"I went to Montana Bible College for a year in Bozeman, Montana," Mattias said. "It was a one year discipleship program. I grew in my faith a bit."

After Montana he moved on to Alexandria Tech to study law enforcement and get his license.

His dad, Steve Huglen, is a public defender.

"I've always had interest in something like law enforcement," said Mattias. "I was encouraged by him."

As far as why he wanted to come back to Roseau, Mattias said, "Looking for a smaller area to work. I went on some ride-alongs and kind of saw how they work. I liked what I saw so I just wanted to come back here for those opportunities. I enjoy hunting and fishing. I do a lot of duck hunting in the fall. I like to go ice fishing. I go to the boundary waters quite a bit during the summers."

Mattias said training is going great on the force. "It kind of varies," he said. "They teach you the different kinds of calls."

Asked if Mattias has had any tough calls yet he said, "Nothing too crazy. We patrol quite a bit. We try to be out in the community and around the school."

Mattias said he likes working with Chief Hodge. "I've learned a lot from him," he said.

Chief Hodge had great things to say about Mattias coming on to the force.

"He's really coming into his own," said the Chief. "He's a quiet officer and coming into his own and that's good to see. Strangely enough with Mattias I actually stopped with the sergeants and went over and had dinner at Jake's. He and his parents were there. I said, 'here's a card for when you get done with school.'"

The police department is now in great shape with the three new officers on the force.

"We are fully staffed," said the Chief. "Originally when I took over as Chief we had part-time positions that were open. With 200 and some openings on the post board we're never probably gonna get part-time officers ever again. Unless you're starting at the jail or something like that. We brought it to the counsil and just said, 'could we hire two full- time officers for mid-shift so we could start getting some days off?' We looked at the benefit of that and it was agreed upon to hire two full-time officers instead of two part- time officers like we did have. Now we're finally full staffed. It took almost a year to get everyone in place. It was a difficult time. We were definitely not struggling but I think people were starting to need some days off. It's really good to have them fill in those positions. It's nice to have them working out as well as they've been working out. We've been really lucky with the group of officers we have. It's really easy for me to do my job when I don't have to worry about them doing their jobs. I know they're going to do it right."

Asking how things are, coming back to the community he grew up in, Mattias said, "It's been pretty good so far. There's some solid people out there. I've gotten to know a lot of people. I'm hoping to help people."

Mattias is happy to be back in Roseau and Roseau is fortunate to have some great new officers join the force recently.