Hinsdale’s last police chief retired after residents voted to reorganize his department. The chief before him went to jail after pleading guilty to numerous fraud and theft charges, and five of his officers were indicted.

The town’s new police chief, Christian S. Pedoty, said he’s aware of the department’s recent past. And he wants to change it.

“There has been some scandal in this department,” said Pedoty, 42, who officially assumed duty on April 11. “Some people may have been turned off by everything that happened here. I am just the opposite.

“When I saw that this agency had problems in the past, I found that appealing to me because I saw it as a challenge,” he said.

That’s what town officials wanted to hear.

“I want the department to come back and be respected the way it used to be,” said the Selectmen’s chairman, Bruce Marshall, the son of a former town police chief who also served on the department under his father.

Pedoty is “the kind of person who can turn it around. There’s a lot of negativism here against the Police Department. I think he’s the person who can bring it back to what it was,” Marshall said.

Eleven people applied to replace former Police Chief Christopher Powell, who resigned in August.

Pedoty, a former lieutenant for the Metropolitan Transit Authority police force in New York City, was one of three finalists. He is the town’s first full-time police chief since RalphB. Marshall, Bruce Marshall’s father, resigned in 1982 after 20 years on the job following a dispute with a member of the Select Board. Voters last year approved a nonbinding referendum that called for changing the structure of the Police Department from a part-time chief and two full-time officers to a full-time chief and two part-time officers, which reduced the department’s budget by $26,000.

Powell, who had been the town’s part-time police chief for seven years, retired three months after the measure was approved at the annual town elections. Although the town wasn’t bound by the result of the referendum, it passed by 28 votes, so officials decided to follow the will of the people anyway.

“We figured that if enough voted for it, we should have it,” Bruce Marshall said.

Powell was a selectman in Worthington when he served as Hinsdale’s police chief. His predecessor, Mark A. Green Sr., was employed by the Central Berkshire Regional School District.

Pedoty’s credentials are different. He served as both a detective-sergeant and lieutenant in the MTA’s police force, the law enforcement arm of the MTA, which includes both the Long Island and Metro North railroads. The MTA police department covers 5,000 square miles in two states.

In New York City, the force often works in tandem with the New York City Police Department. Pedoty said he was once part of a community policing detail that included members of the NYPD in the Fordham Avenue section of the Bronx.

“It’s different,” Pedoty said, referring to his previous experience. “But it’s not so different. People are people everywhere you go.”

A native of New York City who graduated from high school in Hawaii, Pedoty is retired from the MTA. As a lieutenant in 2009, Pedoty was one of the MTA’s 100 highest-paid employees with a annual salary of $197,800, according to records compiled by the Empire Center of Albany, N.Y. He said his salary in Hinsdale is $60,000, and he receives a pension from the MTA.

“I couldn’t have moved my family here with just the salary here,” Pedoty said. “I didn’t come here for the salary. I came here because this is the type of community I wanted to work in. It’s the size I wanted to work in. And there was a need for me to come and make changes here.”

Besides Pedoty, Hinsdale currently has one sergeant and five patrol officers, who all work part-time. Pedoty said he would be interested in hiring some full-time officers to provide the town with better coverage.

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