 It's a pleasure to introduce Captain Ronald Young from the Amherst Police Department. He's been employed here since 1987 when he was first assigned as a community service officer. He's served in various roles primarily in the detective bureau. He's a graduate of Southern Police Institute Command Officers Training Corps and has a master's degree in criminal justice from Westfield State University. Today's presentation will focus on the transformation of the Amherst Police Department from a single-night watchman to a much larger modern agency. The culture of the Amherst Police is based on a tradition that has modest beginning but is fundamental to its identity and place within the Amherst community. So truly this is this is my pleasure for being here thank you for having me. You know I've had a couple of conversations out in the hallway and my reason for being here is kind of born from a complete accident. One of the chief had charged me to kind of get rid of some of the junk that we have in our basement and so when I was in the basement looking for junk I started uncovering all these different things most notably they were photographs and but then I started finding like these old these old uniforms and some of these old tunics and things and even in my very limited intellect I thought to myself you know these belong to somebody other than us and so that's why I reached out to George and I kind of like what started the ball rolling for a while we're here so the first thing I need to do is say that I am certainly have not become an expert on the Amherst Police Department history I have I'm in much better place than it was a year ago just because it is so fascinating but we thought this would be a great starting place to maybe start and talk about some of the things that we've learned I've already learned some things from some new friends today about you know things that happened before my research so so that being said um this is kind of the first like 30 three minutes or 30 three minutes of 30 seconds this is going to be an unabashed and unashamed like appeal is tell us about where we are today it made kind of sense to talk about like what we do now at the police department before we talked about the past and when I was trying to figure out to make it kind of an idea of what I wanted to chat about how I did it was just talk about kind of very briefly some of the things that we're doing in the community today and then I will go back to like the chiefs of police and like what happened underneath each one of their it's very odd and we've got a police department that's been in existence since about about 1876 or so and we've only ever had six chiefs so which is really kind of in a hundred years yeah it's very anomalous you know of course Chief Chief Maya and Chief Hart took up about half that century so the rest of it's kind of child's play but I think if and I'll pick on Chief Maya because he's not here I think it's longer than that but um it's it's really interesting you know whereas in today's day and age and if you knew kind of like the inside and the fundamentals of what's going on in policing today with with just some of the turmoil in our community and some of the problems that are happening with some it is rare for a police chief the last longer politically longer than three or four years in most police departments that are about any substantial size and now and again this is an unashamed and unabashed thing and I don't apologize for this it's like it's like the research commercial not sorry sorry it's hard to be a police officer in Amherst the community expects a lot from us and the byproduct of that is it kind of makes us better we make mistakes we make a lot of mistakes but and I'm kind of problem so if that comes through thank you so we have a mission statement I won't bore you with it one of the things that I do is one of the things that they came about when we talk I'm gonna talk briefly very briefly about each chief one of the things that Chief Maya did do was is he started and still the idea of like where we're going to be 10 and 15 years now be at this concept of strategic management and the concept of thinking strategically what was going to happen when he wasn't the chief anymore fundamentally that is really a backbone of what we do as an agency I recognize that in a few short years I'm going to be living somewhere in Florida driving my wife nuts it's going to happen we all know it you might as well say it but there is going to be there are so many people behind me that are so much more well read and more prepared for the future and our mission statement kind of we try to change it on a biannual basis just to reflect where we're going sometimes it's changed very in my new manner in ways but we understand that that's a future couple things that we're going to talk about one of the things that Chief Sherpa did we're going to talk about his state was he was he forced us to be an accredited agency and I was one I was a sergeant at the time and I kicked and screamed all the way through it and I think I powdered my fist on around it has made us a better agency it is it is a standard that we matter fact our reassessment was just a couple weeks ago and we still get better and we still we find best practices and we identify things that we do wrong and the way like we found some documentation things a couple weeks ago that we're just in that they were old school so you know we improved it and that's that's what brings to the table I won't worry with organizational charts and put this up here just to kind of show you where we are we have all these organizational charts and we use fancy words like units and missions and you know at some point it all started with some poor guys walking around downtown checking the gas lamps so but we do maintain organizational charts our staff is big we always average we're approved for about 50 officers that's that's what we're for financially we we use them in a bunch of different ways obviously we have patrol officers which most people in the holiday and you call them I want to get a cop we have investigative units we have canine officers we spend a lot of time working on community outreach and things of that nature it depends on which one you to talk about that's TJ and Dash so TJ is a really nice guy Dash frightens me a lot frightens me quick war story I grew up in Springfield right so I grew up in the Forest Park section of Springfield you guys know it well my Nana my grandmother she came for Susan immigrant from Ireland she would be a fat kid I could ride my bike down there after school she'd feed me and then I could go back to my house and I get fat again so what do you think when you're a fat kid right so I got on my Schwinn with a banana seat and sissy bar and I was riding and I was riding down Dorset Street in Springfield in a German shepherd ran off the front porch and bit me completely unprovoked by the way and I was probably nine or ten years old and I'm 53 now and I still I'm still terrified of these shows so that's what my record says you know the other dog Marvin he's a male if he's smaller and he's sweet so when I leave the gym tonight I'll go out the front door and all the way around to go to my car because if you're hot by dash wait until I'm nearby attacks me through the glass and someday he's going to defeat the glass we all know it anyway I'm sorry to digress so we spend a lot of money on topping now about five million dollars you know a lot of between between what we're budgeted for police officers I'll reach everything from from from things that we do for training we spend a lot of money on training etc etc we respond to what we found a call is a patrol division that's the backbone most policing agencies is still what it was what it was we talked here a little bit what it was back in the teens in the 20s and it's what it is today and you know people come on when they expect a competent person to come and give them a hand so that's that's what we do but we also have a bunch of other things that we do just breaks down our calls for service we answer about 20,000 calls of service a year which is you know you know for 50 50 person police department it's actually it's actually you know because it's a busy police department but again we all know that because we're from the community it's a busy town it's you know it's always potentially left in blurry fills because I want to try to hide the facts what's the most call is it accidents or is it I think I think that the probably the most the most fun the most common call is for a general disturbance and then it's a kind of a records keeping glitch so so somebody calls it and says you know I heard a lot a lot bang in my neighborhood it kind of gets it's like a catch on thank God I've been around here for 30 I think I've been to four murders and that's yeah robberies are a funny thing so robberies are because of the old UCR statistics which for those of us to bore everyone at the death we were required to report certain things to the federal government you know the party in the park be your back in the day most of you calm title one two crimes they've broken robbery down to a variety different things now so now that we report things as a neighbors complain which goes to the state police and all the way to the FBI things that would have been classified as robberies in the past are not a shoplifting somebody grabs a bit you know first from somebody like a purse snatching it's not considered a robbery even though to me it's a robbery so it's that's a whole mother-in-law last we of course have a detective bureau one of the things we're talking about ironically at the bottom here is records keeping and my new friends that we're talking about in the in the hallway were saying that prior to private prior to the 60s we're really poor keeping records the police department was really terrible and record keeping we did it it was sporadic and it wasn't it wasn't codified in so and then a bunch of other things we do you know we have neighborhood liaison we try to we try to spend a lot of time with people in town who don't like the cops that's one of the things that we found actually helps we also try to do things that are not traditional policing you know I think the worst thing that ever happened to the law enforcement in the country is the radar gun you know because most of the people there you know the first contact other than me that my daughter ever had with a police officer was when my wife got stopped for speeding so it's like you know you know we try to do things that aren't traditional enforcement it helps us and it's for selfish reasons I'd like to say it's for it's for selfish reasons you know we try to make friends with people who quite frankly just don't trust the cops so that's what I think we do and one of those things is this this is my brainchild they'd like to say well I stole it I stole it from somebody but we do that we can keep going so we also recognize that we have some issues here in town with drug abuse so we all are keenly aware what's going on with the opioid crisis in the country so we've started to deal with that now we've trained people officers especially they have a background in clinical support all the three of these officers have a background on it so and that's what they do we talk about dealing with people in a non custodial way after care resource resource development and things like that basically what we do with people who have overdosed as we meet with them again in a non you know a non-threatening way and just try to offer them resources and we found that a lot of people do take advantage of aftercare and it's become very important we haven't had an OD death in two years that's not accidental well 18 months 18 months is probably a fairer lesson we we through Craig's door we have some officers again that have a clinical background like Barone on the right there who's short but I won't say that because he's not here you know Mike Barone has a background he worked for many years down at BHN health network in Springfield and so he works with a lot of our friends here in the community that either have mental health issues or homeless or both in substance abuse so that's something we do we do spend a lot of time training and when I get in the second half of this we're going to talk about this one of the things the chief Maya did when he became the chief was back in back in the early 70s you recognize some of the deficiencies and the problems that were going on in the country as it relates to policing problems that we still see to this day you know things that things that happen police overreach things like that that are simply can be trained away so and we'll talk about that we talk about safety in schools you guys don't care about that we do train people throughout the community we have we we have a lot of folks at workforce that are prior military and they have some skill sets and so as a result of that they have put together these programs where they meet with not just the school department but town buildings and now we're working with different different retailers and people in the community that are just having a plan that if there's an act of violence in the community what would be a good idea an appropriate response and so that's that's important and you don't care about this batch it's interesting oh no please don't tell my curtain because he's the supervisor a friend of mine I just didn't think that would be funny actually dispatch is a really interesting part of what we're going to talk about a little later on the communications were really sporadic with policing early on and what the call boxes did and then you know when we actually we didn't have 911 in the police station till 1970 so and again types of calls we already talked about that we also we oversee a local community many people know Carol she has a barred owl there another thing that I'm scared of when I was a sergeant so I'm in this I'm in a little vestibule right I'm a sergeant it's like three o'clock in the morning I'm like I'm just walking off at three and this woman walks and I was hot it was in the summertime like July or August and she a woman and a woman I see around town and from I was about my age she goes hey I was just on southeast street I was headed home I worked with the university and I hit an owl I'm like oh really and she was in here it is and it was just for the record angry so being a city kid I'm like so she does now I have an owl hopping around the line just for the record they don't cover that in the academy anywhere in the academy if anybody knows bus foster just passed away a couple weeks ago so his wife was was was was I was involved with at the time birds of prey and she actually came down like three in the morning with a big box and put this owl and I brought somewhere so I watch one of my friends drive away with this creature in the front seat and I'm like oh that's that so anyways so that's that's kind of where we are today in a 10-minute thing I again not sorry but I wanted you to know where we've come we're always improving and that's kind of where we're at so here's a little bit of the history and this is not a complete thing it's just kind of a start as I said I broke it down I broke it down kind of by the chiefs that seemed to make a lot of sense because of the way it happened and the way time went by so if we could look here super briefly this is the this is the way the police station looked what I came to work in the early it was in the basement it was now in the basement he made the entrance down here you walk downstairs chief Maya's office was up on the second deck by the town clerk's offices now and we parked in this spot out here was always reserved for the shift so the sergeant got this spot and if you were a lonely peon like me you had to park around the back of the building we had a lock up here there was a three-cell lock up that was downstairs in the basement and there was a detective here which was a little room they had there were two detectives and the rest of us we shared that common area there's a booking room a little squad room and if we need to train we trained up in the community room that's what we did our training so if we didn't go to the academy and that was it and I was so proud you know walk in there we had we had five police cars and we shared them one of the burned oil really badly the old unit C so I tried to get to work early so you didn't get that these are the 23-year-old boy this is what you're talking about so that's it that's kind of where I started and it's hard to believe that that was some 30 years ago so the first night watching was fist there he came on board in the 1870s I think that he is so don folks don't know like him when I came on board Don was my sergeant and he was on sample three I'm still he's just lost his wife just passed away this past year so Donna Donna's very special to me so but I think that I I think that somewhere down the line the lineage is there I try to convince Donna looking up in greater detail but if you knew no doubt it always kind of a grumpy old guy and he's not much in the mood to do it these days someday I'm gonna do it on my own but I I believe Don Fisk there lived Fisk there lived on strong street and how he got the job is a different story but there were some political connections and of course Don Don lives on Salem Street but he didn't grow up there he grew up he grew up on North Whitney Street an upper Ward North Whitney Street so so anyways that's that's kind of interesting and what why they think that's really interesting to me and this I kind of put together Don Don retired in 1987 when I was a young cop and he gave to me a box key right so he got this from Bud Heath and Bud Heath got it from somebody else's keys probably a hundred years old and that when I first came on the job everything that was we popped everything open the box only thing that this opens there's two places this opens like the town the lights here at University Drive and amity and the lights in the center of North Amherst but when I first got on the job this open everything this and I've been carrying around all these years and when I was putting this together I realized just kind of how special the chief has one and if anyone knows John Chudson keys badge one he and I came on together the same he has one the rest of them if they're still in the building I don't know so at some point this doesn't belong to me at the station so that's I just think it's kind of interesting Don I work for Don and I believe that the first person that popular the police department saw Mr. Fair the original to the elder if you will he wasn't actually hired a police who's hired a lamp lighter and we were chatting out in the hallway that I guess that was that was up was not unusual for for many agencies the first night watchmen were also the people that were lamp and I think that's kind of fascinating he actually he actually fisked there at the time was not an Amherst resident he lived in Lubbock he was an Amherst kid originally but he lived in Lubbock at the time and he came all the way down he needs to take care of this kind of really fascinating so was his routine to patrol so to speak because he was going from lamp to lamp so he would go what we now think it was the center business district you go from lamp to lamp and then eventually and it get records being poor but there is an indication that he started to be a day watchman who rattled some of the doors of the downtown businesses and then replace them so again to kind of make up for you today I get when I first got hired I remember the old community service officers from the 70s and 80s I was a commercial service officer and that was my job was I came almost to rattle the doors and they would go down and I knew every door in the center of this town they're all so different now they're called opticians that isn't there in a long time in a classic cafe but we would rattle the doors and the lineage kind of goes back to that and if you if if the chief came in the morning saw the log that there was something they're talking to mine now and you didn't find it when your Ralph said you paid for that he was not in again the lineage kind of goes back to the early land fighters have to put him out in the morning after that let him in the evening or I don't know the answer to that why it's going out either 11 or part of midnight he was he was the tender right even that was part of his job was to put them on now the the records that I see he was unarmed he was unarmed other than you maybe carrying the billy up or something and a flashlight after the turn of the century because flashlights early on like they didn't exist right so imagine that that wasn't kind of a lonely existence I think of that all the time so after that you know once we got it once we got into the late 1800s they actually hired a full-time police chief was Melvin Graves right so Melvin Graves established the police department he was actually the only police officer for about close to 20 years so he's not in this picture here this picture here is was taken probably in the 20s it's one of the older photographs this is definitely the Memorial Day photograph it was taken on Memorial Day so this is not 20s it's taken the 30s by that so this is Bill Engelman who actually became the chief of police Frank Hart who actually became the chief of police right Jack Traynor who was the chief of police and there's there's a lot of a lot of discussion of who that is a lot of people back and forth what can't wait make certain who they think that is I think that's Buck Jewett Clarence Jewett and I like Jewett does anyone know Mike who lives here in downtown? Mike's a retired professor from Amherst College and a friend of mine who would have benefited he believes that that's where that is as well that's Clarence Jewett but so 1920s there's about 6,000 people in town right? Yeah, God bless you I don't think I don't think that the population went over 10,000 until after the 40s So here are a couple of interesting facts about Melvin Graves that I thought were really as we as I said he was the sole officer for many years he was the one that he was the one that eventually oversaw the moving of the police station so we're again we're talking about out front about 1915 or so there was some questions about what was going to happen to it and then eventually when the town hall was constructed the courthouse was up on there was a courthouse of on the second deck where the theater is up there or third deck I'm sorry and on Saturday morning the judge a district court would actually cut George would come and actually have district court on Saturday mornings in the upstairs there and for a while Chief Graves had a had a little office there up on the third floor and then as we all know eventually it ended up down to the basement where we prior to that the police station was roughly in the area like where the fire was so he was the one who kind of oversaw the movement he eventually ended up hiring by the time he left there were four full-time police officers one of whom was Ed O'Brien was not pictured here but Ed O'Brien again had the jumpy head today is a relationship to a couple of people that own my knowledge that O'Brien actually was our first motorcycle officer and of course Chief Graves oversaw the first purchasing of the police car so we went a very long time about having motorcycle officers so he became the police chief in 1894 I mean appointed a police officer they actually named him or not not he was nominally named as the police chief about 1915 according to my records and then he left the job in 1936 but for most of these early portions of his job he was the only full-time police officer he hired other men and there are some names that float in there I actually have listened to them but it appears as though they were people who either hired as my watchman or as part-time police officers are constantly kind of interesting about that the call boxes at the time which we have one of them there's one in the police station but the call boxes at the time there is actually somewhere that I've never seen and I don't think there is a map of where the call boxes were located we know that the one that we have is not the one that's here in the center town which is the most famed one one we have was recovered the DBW back in back in the 70s it has been has been redone I think that's the one that I think that's the one that was on Pleasant Street about where the road is now and what it's now at least late but that's kind of an assumption on my first question Edward O'Brien we talked about Thomas Dylan the third officer they hired was an officer named White Slee he's not a lot of written about him. In handwriting the beginning stages of this one this is what the rules and regulations look like for the police department when Melvin Graves handed over the over the job to Jack Traynor and Jack Traynor further codified this and this is and actually the original of this are in my chief's office I'm done on a typewriter on that old onionskin paper. They've actually been from here because some of the acid was starting as you can see starting to kind of mess with paper a little bit but if you're going to read these and I have a copy here and I made a full copy and it basically talks about things that you ought to do. Just to kind of put this in perspective our police now I we just redid our accreditation assessment closer a couple weeks ago we have about 115 policies. No literally we have 115 policies plus a whole manual of memorandum and operational special orders. If you need to if you need to get a new tie there's an order on that. So you know we've learned from policing that you know that where cops get in trouble how they you know one of the things that happens when policing breaks down in the community is is when we leave people their own devices in an area that they don't do very often. So so the concept behind that the what we have now is that we have directions for like when you get into a cruiser accident if you've never been in a cruiser accident like what do you do and if they don't do it correctly then we can take some type of disciplinary action or retrain or whatever. But I just think it's funny that you know you got on the job and they gave you a revolver in your nine seconds and said hey read this and get out there. Good luck to you. Things are a little different. Jack Trayer became the chief of police in 1926. He was at relatively short by Amherst standards. He was only chief police for 23 years or a police officer for 23 years I'm sorry. He became the chief in 1936. He was actually a little older than the traditional police officer when he became a police officer. That's one of the reasons when he retired in 1949 he was out of retirement. He had a prior life. He was an educator early on. He was actually a very well read man from what I understand. Clearly I didn't know if he passed away. But the Trayer family still anybody know any of the Trayers? There are some Trayers that live in town. Do you know the Philishevner? No. His son also named John also goes on by Jack. Just passed away within the last seven or eight years maybe ten years or so. But there's some other. A couple things that Chief Trayer did that were really interesting. He was the first person. He was the first person or the first chief to really started accurate record keeping. He also was the one he recognized at the Massachusetts State Police or resource for us. And so he began inviting them in here. They did joint training together particularly right after World War II. Right at the tail end of his of his of his chief. He recognized a lot of the returning vets that were being hired needed training that was outside of military. He was the first one that required accurate crime scenes to be done. Long before CSI was invented. I didn't realize I didn't know how boring I would be. So I brought I brought I brought some things to look at. I think this is kind of interesting. That way you won't pay attention. Because about 70% of what I've been doing today are lies. Kind of an interesting thing was is we didn't really have photography in the Amherst Police Department in the 50s. So if you had like a major accident or a fatality or something like that we'd call the state police. So there was a corporal by the name of Saroi that lived on on West Street. And he would come and take photographs for us. And so there's some interesting ones here. I'll pass these around. They're really kind of interesting to look at. Most these are from the 30s. Chief trainer was the one who insisted on this. Like certain traffic accidents or injuries would occur. Because statutorily they weren't required in those days. But he recognized the need for that. It really kind of sounds so silly that we had cops that were taking pictures of the crime scenes. But in the 30s that just wasn't done. So I'll give you a couple of these around. If you care to look at it, it's not just pass them on. But there's one particular, I have thousands of these. There's one particular that I'd like you to look at. Because this is a source of discussion in my group. This photograph here was taken in March of 1939 by corporals over like Massachusetts State Police. And I'd like to know what intersection this is. I have many many different, I have my own opinion on this. I don't even know Gabriel Tigg is the other captain that I work with. So Gabe and I, we fight constantly. And because he's not here else is, I don't care for him very much. He and I actually have had many discussions about that. He's done a bunch of research on this. I'd like to pass it around. But there's some other interesting things in here that I think are great. This is a very interesting photograph as well. That would have been caused by a chief trainer. Also taken by corporals, you're right. And what's really cool of me, if you have a magnifying glass, like my fingerprint glass that I still keep on my desk, because it kind of makes me look very old, so please put it on. You can see this, this is the, this is the, this is Ninum College Street, right? This is College Street and the South Pleasant Street intersection. As you're looking, as you're looking northbound towards Hastings, and you can see the, you can see the Grace Church and the, and the convent. The flanted half-mast. And I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting, you know? And then I'd look and see the date, and the date was December 11th, 1941. Oh. That's kind of an interesting photograph. And there are some others. If you care to look at them, great, not, I just kind of, kind of like this. Interesting. Now I can, now I can, you can basically talk about nothing up here. You guys know what's going on? If I give up, do I need to go? Well, it's 10 o'clock. You tell me when it's time. Well, it's 10 o'clock. People have to leave at one, they'll leave at one, and we'll just keep listening. Let's go, because we're all stuck. Keep going. Keep going, yeah, don't. All right, so Bill Englandman, we won't talk a lot about Bill Englandman. He didn't really do much as the chief. He had a long time patrolman. He was kind of, he was, quite frankly, without speaking ill of the dead. He was a chief that really didn't do a lot, and kind of, the way he left of being, being the police chief was not in the best thing. He was not, he was nothing. He ended up taking his whole life away from life. So he, there was some indication that he might have been, not the most up and up chief. And so he's, he did do some things that were interesting during the fifties. I mean, he did integrate a lot of the veterans that were returning from World War II. Chief Englandman also, also really raised the level of policing in terms of manpower. They went from being a five or six man police department to like a 15 or 20 man police department. But that's also a large part of his functionality, so much of the force in the times shortly following the Second World War. So again, some of these photographs are from the past. Oh, and that one you should, if there was any able to read, there's a sign. Is that, is that the question, the whole one? No, that's not, no. This is one of that. The same religious church is there. The post office is right there. Oh, yeah, that's right. But before, if you actually look at this with a magnifying glass, what this is, this is, this is the Chevy dealership. Yeah, yeah. They ended up at Dickinson Street, eventually, before Rembus. Oh, that was right. Yeah, I showed that to Jeff Roy. You remember Jeff? Yeah. He became the Chief of Police down there. Jeff, look, I remember the Frosty Cal. I do, too. Remember that was the Sunshine Car Wash at one point. Yeah, a large bath. A large bath, Sunshine Car Wash. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, good to take a while. What is that? Is that one of the other ones? Yeah. So Chief Hart, That's right in the corner of Southeast Street. Oh, Chief Hart. Yeah, Chief Hart. Yeah, Chief Hart. Actually, you saw him there, you saw him the other day. Yeah. So Frank, Frank is a very important part of our agency. He was kind of a, and I didn't know him. He passed away shortly before I got here. But he, a couple things with Frank, one, that he came here as a college student. And that's how he ended up. He was originally from Whitman, Massachusetts. I think he was a semi-provincial football player. He was a big guy like me. And he came out here to go to college. And he was, and there are writings that we have, that we've seen of this, were back in the 60s, he purported the necessity for police officers to have an education beyond high school. And that, he recognized that for them, truly to be able to serve them. And where we are now is we won't hire somebody unless they have a college education. So you think of it as where that's come at 50 years. He was a forward thinker. Even though he wasn't a polished man, from what I understand, he was, he was one of these people that was truly looking to, you know, we were talking earlier about, like, thinking strategically and planning strategically as an agency. He was the one who really instilled in. A lot of what he did early on kind of has focused down the way we think and the way we conduct business. He refused to hire police officers to put them on the street that he didn't train. So the very first police officer that ever went to a true Academy was Don Maya. Eventually he became the chief. When Maya got hired in the late 50s, 58, 59, he went to the State Police Academy in the same State Police Academy that I went to. I'm framing him. I went to the one in Aguam, but the same State Police Academy and he was the first in the line there and that became a requirement of the job. Back when a lot of large agencies, like agencies like Springfield PD and Aguam PD, weren't doing that. They would hire you. They were somebody's brother-in-law. They gave you your revolver in a night stick and told you to go out there to the hood. And then, lo and behold, you find out these capital robin people whenever wondered why. There were no backgrounds done. There was no vetting process. He started a vetting process in the 60s about how he was going to vet police officers. You think about really how remarkable that is. And we now, of course, we use background investigation tools that they didn't have available. They're presided over the big expansion of the university over the department during that period. What it kind of went from, that being Mass Aggie to the university. Yeah, it boomed in the 70s there. I mean in the 60s. My guess is you're right because he actually also created a rank structure which prior to that there was only a chief and a deputy and then everyone else was a patrolman. And then they created the name of Heath Buggy. He was our first sergeant. And then after that, Chief Maya became a sergeant and we hit because of that boom in the size of the agency. I mean, he had to create different ranks that were never a necessity. Did he come as a student at the university? Yeah, he went to the agricultural school. And that's how we ended up up here. He was a doctor at that time. I'm sorry? I'm sorry? Yes, a bar. Yeah, around Strong Street. And if you go out in front of our station, the stock would, what do you think? That's not a mystery. Come on, be on your side. It's Pleasant Street looking south towards the crossing of Amity. That's what game thinks too. And I'll point out again that I don't care about it. The present fire station of this building was very rubbery. It was moved that way in order to expand the store which is now CES. Oh, the house that was moved where Dick and I lived. Yeah, well, when I was a young cop here, that was a grocery store, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The best story about Frank Hart. Ah, here we go. You'll remember this, Bill. Maybe. I don't think you were in town when I was in the, when there were police, there were student riots going on. There were problems in the late 60s, early 70s, Vietnam, uprising, all of that. That was a hard era. Frank Hart was the chief. And he was a farmer as well. And he used to come and stand in his farmer overalls in the center of town right at the main intersection. And he talked to the students and said, you know, what are you doing? You know, I mean, God, this isn't the way to bring about change. You got to go do and take things, you know, as they come and move it along. And the students were like, God, this guy's the police chief. He doesn't look like a police chief. And he just made, he should keep everything very calm. And Amherst was one of the few towns that didn't really have any problems during all of that. And I think he had a lot to do with it. Active town. Remember Eric the Red? And there was a lot of, right, there was a lot of protests. You're absolutely right. And they also had streaking in the 70s, too. Which I was never at the right place at the right time. I have photographs that I'll show you later. Well, it's funny you say that because I remember when I was a young cop. So I would have, this would have been, I'd been on the job maybe 10 years when the first GoPro, so we're talking around the 90s, 25 years ago. And Don Maya was the chief and there were some protests and some people took over and did an intersection down in the center town. And there were protests. And Chief Maya said, I remember saying to him, I said, you know, what are we going to do? And he said, we're going to direct traffic around them. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, back in those days, I had all my hair, I was all polished up. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, we're going to direct traffic around them. But think of how much common sense that is. Like why pick a fight you don't need to pick. You know, and a lot of that came from heart. That common sense approach. A way to understand that just, you know, protesting is part of what makes us us. And that's okay. And that's okay. And so, you know, it's funny, we have all these tools and these things talking about community policing, but if you actually realize that you truly are part of the community, it makes community policing just something you do and not a program, right? So, that's the way I look at it and that's the way I was told when I got it. Back in those days, they had to beat it into my head. Because I know people have that. Oh, that's a great one. Yeah, that's a great one. That's kind of neat. So Chief Maya, of course she took over, he hired me. One of the things, one of the games that we used to play in the station was who was the last person that was hired by which chief? So, so Ed Motling on me was the last officer that Frank Hart hired. He was bad JT. I'm bad 49. You were right behind me. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, sure. Don Maya, the last person that hired, that he hired was Mike Burrell, who we saw earlier in the photograph. So, the last person that chief, that sure, sure part hired was Marcus Humber, who we saw earlier in the photograph. It's just, it's kind of been, I'm not, I'm like the middle child, right? And I'm left handed, so I'm like, that's it. So, Chief Maya was a veteran, and that actually makes a lot of you as an Air Force veteran, and a lot of the things that he did in the 70s, when he became the chief in 1973 was, he really was the one who very much refined the way we kept records. And we still, he used to say that to you when you were young, because an apartment record, if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen, if you don't report it. So, he actually devised a system when he was a sergeant. It's an old, it's still on the station today. These old card system, where we used an old Selectrix typewriter, and I did it in his young cop, too. If you arrested somebody or wrote them a citation, or placed them in a protective custody, or assisted them, you did a report on a little colored index card. Pink was for arrest, blue was for a citation, yellow was for a protective custody, and they were filed in this enormous filing cabinet. And it was the first, like a roll of decks, weighing to go back and search people. So as an investigator, when you were doing, somebody found out, somebody broke into somebody's garage, well, you knew that somebody had been in a car with somebody. You could go and pull these cards out, and it was a wealth of it. It's outdated now. We went computer on your Chief Maya's leadership in 1988. Our first computer system was installed. But it was, it's interesting. It's still upstairs. We keep it up in the records. It's filled with thousands. And once I pull out, you know, somebody who I arrested back in the 80s when I had all my hair on a flat stomach. And I looked at it, I said, it's kind of interesting that that piece, and there are cards in there that go back when he was a sergeant in the early 60s. It's very, very fascinating. Of course, he retired in 2000. Don's still alive. He still resides here in town. He's a lifelong resident. He lives up in North Amherst. And I saw him on Christmas time. So, it's a common thing when you get promoted that you're called the former Chiefs. We had some promotions recently and I called the Chief of it because he likes to keep track of what's going on in the station. I don't see him very often anymore, but. And so, then, of course, Charlie Sherpel became the Chief of Police. He was the next one. Chief Sherpel was actually not an originally an Amherst kid. He's like me, a Springfield kid. He was a long-metal police officer for a couple years before he came here to Amherst. It's ironic because one of the reasons I think I work here is because of Chief Sherpel. My father-in-law is an Italian guy from South End, in Springfield, where Chief Sherpel is. And I knew one another. And I think that when I put in my application that maybe, just maybe, he recognized my name because I wrote it like 80 times on the application. So, that may or may not have something to do while I work here. But Chief Sherpel was a great guy and he really also was a builder. He is the one who oversaw accreditation. He's one of the people that installed, installed, we have a very firm and very often copy-filled training program that a portion stole, a portion we refined. He is the one who created a mentoring program within our agency, which has become really instrumental in how we do things. He is the first one to oversee true change as it relates to community relations. He recognized that outreach was important and he's the one who began it and Chief Sherpel has done himself. And Chief Sherpel, actually, again, my younger sister was about a decade very short. Yeah, for many, many years. And of course, Chief Sherpel stole his year-in-tality, raised his family year, his daughter's school teacher and the naturally herself. Courtney, yes, Courtney, and she actually has a family of her own and she loves what I am. And of course, we know Chief Williams currently the president. He, like me, he a little earlier than I, kind of an interesting document if anyone was ever born and wanted to look at it. I keep track of the of the old Z numbers that we used to use with CSOs. I was Z79 in your program and in your hearts. No, in your hearts. The chief was Z, where was he? The current chief was Z19. So there were 70 CSOs between the chief and I, just the way that went. So kind of interesting. But he's been a great chief. He's a forward thinker. There are a couple of things that I really like about our current chief and a lot of things I like about our current chief. But there's two things that I like about him. One is, he is a big proponent and recognizes that the agency is bigger than he is and that he and I are in the deep autumn of our careers and that we need to wrap our head around the future and what's going to be the agency in the community and not in full as best for he and I. The other thing I like about our chief is he's very thoughtful. He doesn't make decisions rationally and he understands that some of the decisions that he makes impacts not just the agency but the community. He's a good thinker and an all-around decent guy. So that's that. So just kind of wrap up and bring this back up because a lot of this comes back to chief heart. If chief Maya were here he would tell you that it takes a forward thinker to kind of create something and we kind of do a lot of things that this man was thinking about 60 years ago 70 years ago which is a bit closer to 80 now because he became a police officer in the 30s. So pretty, pretty fashion yeah pretty interesting so that's that. I'm sorry I went out beyond my time. That's alright. Thank you for that. One comment I forgot to mention that the Amherst Police Department is the birthplace of like 15 police chiefs over the decades. I think you're absolutely right on the money and Chief Sherpa keeps telling me that the office that I'm in is the lucky office and I'm supposed to know them but I keep telling them I'm too old for that. Because Chris from our most went to Belchertown Jen went to South Miami Jen went to some place else. Yep he went to Orlean's Mass and Mike Kent went there. The reason was but then you go back well sure John O'Connor and yeah yeah it is I mean a large we're fortunate because the town treats us well. Like our training budget I shouldn't say this amongst taxpayers but I will because it's our training budget is triple what some other agencies are around here. It does pay off I mean we make mistakes but our mistakes are mitigated and it's not an accident it really isn't so but the by-product is there's been a lot of people that have brought that and been able to go to other agencies because of what they've learned and then they will transfer to those so you're improving all the police departments I just was looking out for their own selfish reasons that they were able to further their careers because of things that the town gave us and we're aware of it like it's not something we take for granted we know that we have something that most other agencies don't. Could you speak a little bit about the relationship of the Amherst police department to the county and lock up and we'll have to know if the department needs to manage it has that been a longstanding thing is that like it's probably been it's a relatively recent thing so and I'm going to say maybe within the last 10 years and that's really truly about there's an MOU that exists for those of you who don't know what we're talking about is when we take somebody in a custody so there are very specific laws about how we keep people in custody on we have to release them and there was some case law that popped up in like the early part of 2000 about somebody who goes back to do process you take somebody in custody on let's say a Friday night and the bail commissioner would say hold them for a month because they had a history of defaults or the severity of the crime or something like that but there was no due process in other words there was no review of the complaint and that's 72 hour period like if it was a Monday like we sometimes we'd have somebody in our own self like if it was Labor Day weekend maybe they go Tuesday morning right so you have this person who's in custody but there's no independent review it's just based on like the probable cost David what I saw at the scene so because of that case law we recognize not just our department all of them they had to make a better plan about how because if that was not uncommon when I was an officer we'd arrest somebody for a crime let's say if something's severe or they had a history of we'd have to feed them and clothe them and we were not prepared to do that so when I think originally it came from monies from the federal government and then eventually responded by the state for that purpose so that police departments they had to keep so many in custody so in other words Kume Shot killed somebody we made an arrest on a Saturday morning we'd have a place to bring them a place where people were trained for you know better trained like suicide liabilities they had a medical plan to place they were just better prepared for monitoring people who were custody in any town USA that was the original reason for it we rarely keep someone in our cell block for very long it's truly a temporary and holding facility we arrest somebody they're either brought to a regional lockup or they're brought to a court it's very very anomalous for some of this day for any period of time in our custody and the only thing was we don't arrest people like we used to you know if you went back even 10 years ago we would make something like 300 or 3000 arrests a year and we probably make 60% of that amount we arrest for the most serious crimes and the mandated arrest but some of the more the nuisance related crimes that we have we tend not to make physical arrests for anymore and because we've found that by extending outreach and going back with them or sometimes if we bring them to court in a summons fashion there can be an alternative sense that makes the victim whole but improves our relationship with the community so something like an analyst and I know there are a lot of people who say no we don't arrest as many people doesn't mean we don't solve the crime it's just we don't physically take as many people in our custody as we did what about the relationship with the police forces and the colleges that's a unique thing that we have here in Amherst that they don't have in a lot of other communities it sure is it's kind of like always the way it's always been right so you talk to other friends where I talk to people someone like Chris Prongles who left him with the Belcher Town and it's a different environment so let's take the university police for instance it's the obvious one because they're such a big agency they're very well trained there's great people up there it's it's they have a different mission than we have and so sometimes we have to negotiate that it's not right or wrong it just is so I think we in the last 15 years or so on Chief Livingstone has a large lot to do with this we've negotiated that and we figured that out that we can both kind of do what's best for our respective communities and then kind of work in harmony in concert and we've also done well too because Amherst College is led by a police chief who's a foreign thinker now and the training level that he has there is excellent so you see an Amherst College police officer getting a quality trained person instead of unlike Washington and other families so one of the things I wanted to talk about too I forgot to mention this with Chief Sherpa when I came on when I got here on the job in the early 80s there was one female officer there was one female officer and now an hour I think we're like I think like 23% of our police forces 21% something like that so yeah basically it was a bunch of white guys running around in uniforms and we've you know Chief Sherpa recognized that you know that just isn't going to work so he you know he recognized that you know the community has got to kind of look more like the community so the police run in and so the way he started recruiting processes is so much different back in the olden days people got hired because of who they knew and how things went our recruiting process now is I think it would rival most other agencies so am I eating up time here do you need me to get me out of here? okay this is great thank you everyone thank you thank you