New London — With recent funding approval from the City Council, the police department is moving forward with plans to add a fifth detective to its ranks.

Ten-year New London police department veteran Joshua Bergeson will be promoted to the rank of detective at a ceremony to be held at 4 p.m. Friday at City Hall.

Bergeson is a Groton native who enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and was deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

He was hired by the city as a police officer in 2007 and followed a family tradition of service to the city. His late father, Axel Bergeson, was a 21-year veteran of the New London police department who had attained the rank of lieutenant before his death in 1995. Bergeson’s uncle served as a supernumerary officer in the city and Bergeson’s brother, Todd Bergeson, is a captain in the department.

Bergeson is a member of the department’s Crisis Intervention Team, bicycle patrol unit and rifle squad. He has 17 letters of commendation and for the last several years has been one of the region’s leading drunken driving enforcement officers, with more than 120 DUI arrests in the last four years. For the past year he has been assisting instructors at the state police academy teaching new recruits in DUI enforcement, according to a written statement from Chief Administrative Officer Steve Fields.

He is married with two young children.

Acting Chief Peter Reichard, in his request for the additional position to the City Council, said detectives handle the most complex and time-consuming cases and the fifth detective position is needed in response to an increased workload. Much of the increase comes from an explosion in the number of investigations into overdoses and overdose deaths in the city. The department had six detectives in 2013 and has gone for three years with just four.

The promotion will help free up patrol officers’ time to become a more proactive department with a focus on community policing, Reichard has said.

Bergeson’s career has not been without controversy. He was fired from the department in January 2012 by former Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio, a month after Bergeson and other officers were accused of using excessive force during the 2011 arrest of a man outside the Southeastern Connecticut Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence facility on Coit Street.

The incident led to a federal lawsuit against the department by Rueben Miller, who claimed he was beaten and sprayed with pepper spray.

But an internal investigation by the department cleared Bergeson and others of any violations on the department’s use of excessive force. The local police union challenged Bergeson’s firing and he was rehired in 2013. The lawsuit eventually was settled by the city.

g.smith@theday.com