Bemidji honors Officer Chad Museus with emotional retirement sendoff

Dozens of emergency vehicles and neighbors lined Bemidji Avenue on Thursday as Officer Chad Museus was escorted home from his last shift, a public farewell that marked the end of more than 28 years in law enforcement. A special scanner callout captured the mood with a line that described patrol as a "front row seat to the best show in town."

Museus retired on April 16 after a career that began with the Bemidji Police Department in 1998. He later spent four years with the Paul Bunyan Drug Task Force during the height of methamphetamine manufacturing in northern Minnesota, then worked 13 years with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension on narcotics and homicide cases in the northern half of the state. He returned to Bemidji PD in 2019 to work midday patrol, a visible assignment in a city where officers often become familiar faces.

The department said Museus received awards from the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, the Minnesota State Arson Investigators Association and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for work tied to missing-person, homicide and arson investigations. That range of honors reflected the kind of career that moved between routine patrol and some of the region’s most difficult cases.

Museus has also been tied closely to Bemidji outside of police work. A 2021 Bemidji State University profile said he had lived in Bemidji since 1998, had worked in law enforcement for 23 years at that point, and started Nature’s Edge Garden Center with his husband, Tyler Olson, in 2006. The business, now Nature’s Edge Greenhouse south of Bemidji, gave him another deep connection to the community he served.

Bemidji is home to 14,574 residents, and the city says its police department works closely with the community, city departments, county, state and federal agencies. That made Museus’s departure more than a sentimental goodbye. It also removed a veteran officer whose experience had linked street-level patrol, multiagency investigations and the city’s day-to-day relationship with residents across Beltrami County.