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By JOSEPH B. NADEAU Woonsocket Call
BELLINGHAM — If you work at a job for more than 34 years, chances are you will be witness to plenty of change over that time.
Police Sgt. Paul Peterson also knows that despite the passage of years some things about being a police officer never change.
Peterson was thinking along those lines this week as he headed out on one of his final patrols of local roads. It was his last day on the job before heading into retirement and he was willing to talk about police work a bit before he called his career 10-7 (out of service).
Much of Peterson’s time on the local department was spent working the overnight shift and that’s the last shift he worked for the department as a storm dropping freezing rain settled over the area.
“When I came on the job, the cruisers didn’t have cages separating the front and back seats and communications were poor,” Peterson recalled as he drove the watch supervisor’s four-wheel-drive, sport-utility vehicle.
The communications in use when he started out on the job as a provisional police officer in April of 1974 required the cruisers of the time to carry a long whip antenna for contact with the station’s radio tower at the town center. Getting messages to the station and replies along the 13-mile stretch from its north town line to its southern border with Woonsocket and Blackstone could be challenging, and the option of communicating with neighboring communities limited due to the different radio frequencies in use at the time.
Today, local police officers have state-of-the-art radio equipment allowing contact with all neighboring communities and the laptops in their vehicles provide instantaneous record and vehicle checks for an improved level of safety.
Bellingham in the 1970s was a more rural community and the gap between North Bellingham and South Bellingham still hosted the old dairy farms that had been a mainstay of the town’s economy.
The large scale business district that inhabits Hartford Avenue near I-495 didn’t exist nor did any of the town’s condominium developments or large apartment complexes. The power plants that now operate in town had yet to be proposed and town offices were still located in historic Town Hall building with the shared police and fire station next door.
Police work, however, was still just police work. Peterson and the rest of the department working under Chief Normand McLinden dealt with many of the same problems Peterson and his fellow night shift officers handle today.
Fights and domestic incidents frequently sparked by substance abuse, serious motor vehicle accidents all too often tragic for the same reasons, and a long list of people in need of assistance kept the night crews busy then just as they do today.
Over the years, Peterson has dealt with enough people looking for a police officer’s help to know that being attentive to their concerns is probably the best thing a police officer can offer someone in crisis.
“To that person, it is probably the most important thing that has ever happened to them and you are there to give them a hand or at least to try to help them,” he said.
“You might not solve the case but you have let people know you are there to help them or will try to help them,” he said.
In recent years, the town has also seen a rise in robberies and even home-invasions but Peterson believes the old standards for police work remain true even with those incidents.
“You have to have that spark of interest in the job you had when you first got here,” he said.
Nearly 35 years later, Peterson still had that “spark’’ for wanting to catch the bad guy when something happened. When a crime like an armed robbery would occur, Peterson still wanted to catch the person behind it and would still feel that rush of adrenaline police officers get when they head to a reported crime without knowing exactly what they will find when they arrive.
The ability to deal with that unknown and get answers is one of Peterson’s strengths that Capt. Gerry Corriveau will miss the most.
Peterson was the last of his generation of local policemen still on the job and had been a valuable asset in teaching police work to the newest members of the department. Only a handful the department’s 30 members have 20 years or more of service -- among them Corriveau, Lt. Kevin Ranieri and Police Chief Gerard Daigle -- and in recent years the department has been losing positions as result of town budget cutting.
“Losing Paul is a big hit for us,” Corriveau said while noting his experience is not likely to be replaced.
Peterson had a knack for getting suspects in cases to admit what they had done, and Corriveau said he once asked him how he was able to do that so successfully.
Peterson responded that it was just something that he did, but Corriveau learned over time it was more than that.
“He had a way of talking to someone involved in an incident that gave them a level of comfort,” he said. “They would have that level of comfort and they would tell you things they might not otherwise,” he said. Over the years, Corriveau learned that technique from Peterson and it helped him in his own handing of police cases, he said. “It took me a while to get the idea, but when I did, the question I had asked Paul was finally answered for me,” he said.
Driving the stretch of North Main Street just past the town center, Peterson noticed the pavement was beginning to collect an icy coating and called back to Dispatcher Stephen Daigle to summon the highway department before the roads became dangerous. It was just a routine action that he had done many times before and yet was part the job just like the many other duties-- building checks, notifications, dealing with teenagers-- that might fill up the shift.
Peterson said he doesn’t have any immediate plans for his retirement years. He will have more time to spend with his wife, Megan, and hopes to get out to the Cape more frequently to see his dad, Paul Sr. He will still be living in the area and you might still see him working a police detail now and then.
On this night, the weather would be the highlight of his last shift with fellow overnight patrol members Douglas Houston, Tim Joyce and Leo Elzy. It wasn’t a bad way to end a long police career.
Article and Photos courtesy of Joe Nadeau and The Woonsocket Call |
