Dave Kelly October 15, 2018
Officer Dave Kelly is the first retired Pawtucket policeman to be interviewed. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was nearly assassinated, the longest game in baseball history occurred at Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium (33 innings), Metallica formed in a Los Angeles basement, and Dave Kelly got sworn in as a Pawtucket policeman. He prowled the streets from 4PM to midnight for thirty-seven years and saw the city change in many ways. Other than a year in the Special Squad, he was in his beloved Car 204 for over three decades. This is what he said … TT- What year did you get on, and what year did you retire? DK- I was appointed July, 2, 1981, and my last day of work was June 29, 2018, and I officially retired July 7, 2018. TT- I saw the YouTube video of your last radio transmission. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1881259728561870 After all that time, what’re we talking? How many years? DK- Thirty-seven. TT- It must’ve been hard to walk away from. DK- It was. It was. But you know, like I said on the video. Times have changed, and so has this job. And unfortunately some of the people you work with. It’s a whole different breed of people now. Like your job. You’ve seen how things have changed. For the most part, I had a ball. I loved coming to work. I worked nights. For twenty-seven years, I worked Car 204, the Heights car (Prospect Heights is a government housing complex.) I worked four to midnight. The only reason I switched to days was because I turned fifty and was running around with guys half my age and figured it was time to slow down a little bit. TT- Let’s talk about the process of becoming a cop. How old were you in 1981? DK- Twenty-three. Before that, my dad was a police officer in the city of Pawtucket from 1947 to 1966. He had a heart attack and died at forty-five. I was always interested in the police. Actually, I always wanted to be a fireman as a kid growing up but I was afraid of heights (laughs). I had quite a few friends on the police department, I knew the job, liked the job, and growing up I got to know a lot of people. Their cadet program back in the early seventies, I got involved in that, used to work in the summertime going on ride-a-longs and stuff like that. I did that quite a bit. And when I graduated high school in 1976 I got a job as a traffic clerk and worked in the office for two and a half years. Then a dispatch position opened in 1979. In the meantime I had taken the police exam twice. I took it in 1977 and 1979. First time I took it I was only eighteen-years-old. I finished like fifty-fourth or fifty-fifth. So I had no shot at getting on at that time. The second time I took it I finished nineteenth. I thought they were gonna hire probably fifteen or sixteen people in the next two years, but as it turned out I was the last guy to get hired off that list. I started the police academy on April 13, 1981, and I graduated July 1, 1981. It was twelve weeks. TT- Was it a paid academy? DK- Yes. I think we made $230 a week. And our police academy was down at Davisville, it was at the Sea-bees base in North Kingstown. TT- So it was a state-run academy? DK- State run, yes. The Municipal Police Academy. TT- So for like two hundred years, the firemen in Pawtucket, they all trained under the fire department. In essence we created our own until 2015. It’s too bad we lost that. So was this the case for the police up to a certain point? Or were you guys always trained by the state. DK- No. I wanna say back in the 50’s there was one, because I’ve seen pictures of people in the mid-50’s. Then the state did away with it—the State Police ran it. So the city took over and ran an academy like the fire department would run a school. I think they did that up until 1969. I think it became state law in 1970 that you had to either attend the Municipal Police Academy, the Providence Police Academy, which was strictly for the Providence Police Department, or the Rhode Island State Police Academy, which was strictly for the Rhode Island State Police. I mean nobody ever went to the State Police Academy unless you were gonna be a trooper. TT- So you went down there for twelve weeks. Are we talking 8-4PM? DK- We had to be on the gym floor ready to go at 7 AM. We used to go 7-4. TT- So you would drive down there. You weren’t housed? DK- We used to drive. I remember I used to pick up a guy named George Haddock. He was a D.E.M. cop (Department of Environmental Management). He lived on Clark Avenue. We used to ride together. We used to leave at 6:15 and—now that I come to think about it, we used to do ten-hour days to make a forty-hour week. We went 7-5. And we’d be there until five o’clock and then drive home. The same thing for twelve weeks. Of course, after eight weeks, you had your PT, your running and your calisthenics—you’d knock that off and then you’d do traffic and the range and stuff like that. At the end it became a little less stressful because you weren’t doing all the physical stuff. TT- So the first eight weeks is like boot camp, pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups. DK- Yes. Usually we did PT from 7-9, had a class from 930 to 1130, had lunch, and then you might have two classes in the afternoon. We were out by 4:30-5:00. TT- What were the classes? DK- Oh boy. Let’s see. Criminal Law. Traffic Enforcement. Juvenile Law. Constitutional Law. B.C.I.-- ID work, fingerprints and stuff like that. Domestic Violence, which wasn’t as big as it is today. The Range, driver training, EVOC—Emergency Vehicle Operation. We did that down at Quonset (Point) on the track. TT- That is so cool. What did they do? Turn you loose with a police car? DK- They had instructors. They’d take you down to Quonset for a couple of days, and you take the hubcaps off all the cars driving crazy. They’d set up the cones and you’d just fly around. Basically, you’d lock it up and learn how to control a skid. First Aid, CPR. TT- What were you doing on the gun range? DK- It’s a 40-hour course on how to operate a revolver, which at the time is all we had. We didn’t have the automatics. A 6-shot revolver. They trained you with that and the shotgun. TT- What caliber revolver? DK- We shot with .38’s. Eventually, at some point, we switched over to .357’s, but when we were at the range we were using .38s and 12-gauge Mossberg pump shotguns. TT- The good old standby, the Mossberg. So 40 hours they teach you everything about guns, how to hold them, clean them – DK- Exactly. Clean it, safety, protocols, everything. Soup to nuts. We did day-firing, night-firing, in fact when we were there, the kid I used to ride back and forth with (to the academy,) George Haddock, he was a D.E.M. cop. The Cranston Police ran the gun-range. We were shooting in Cranston. One of the guys was firing a .223 (M-16,) and they were trying to show you how it would penetrate—they had this old cement mixer, and they were firing into the cement mixer. Well, when they fired into the cement mixer, it ricocheted, hit him in the nose, went up, blew the top of his face off, he almost got killed. And the blood came spurting out. We thought he was dead. We all got shrapnel on us. Six or seven of us got hit. TT- What the hell happened? DK- When he fired, the round didn’t penetrate. It ricocheted off the cement mixer and came back and caught him right in the face. TT- He didn’t die? DK- Didn’t die. When it hit him it must’ve hit him sideways, caught his nose and just went up. But the blood was pouring out. Luckily they called the rescue and the Cranston guys got there quick, like two minutes. He never finished. He graduated with us but he never came back because we were like two and a half weeks away from graduation when that happened. TT- And he still became a cop… DK- Yes. D.E.M., and then he was an East Providence cop for a while. Then he got hurt there and went out on a disability. TT- So it’s a dangerous job, right? It is what it is. DK- It’s a lot more dangerous now than it used to be. It’s always been dangerous. You know, when you come on this job, you could get shot, you could get hurt, you could get killed, but today you’re a target. You can be executed. That’s a whole different ballgame. It’s not what it was. It’s a whole different job altogether. TT- That’s an evolution, right? You know it’s turned bad when you can’t even get something to eat without worrying about someone sneaking up behind you and blowing your head off. DK- You’ve got to be aware of your surroundings all the time. Even sitting in the car, you don’t know, someone comes walking up to you, you don’t know. TT- So ’81, you get on. You get through the academy, you graduate. How many people were in your academy? DK- About 30, but I was the only guy from Pawtucket. TT- So this is everyone from around the state. You got guys from Coventry, East Greenwich-- DK- Coventry had two, Warwick had seven, Cumberland had two, Lincoln had one, Woonsocket had two, D.E.M. had five, Westerly had one, one from Newport, etc. TT- So you get on and what happens now? How do the cops do it? When we got on they shoved us into Fire Alarm (dispatch.) DK- I got sworn in on July 2 at nine o’clock in the morning and went to work at six o’clock that night. I worked the overlap, the 6pm-2am shift. TT- Talk about the shifts. Our job’s pretty simple. Two day-shifts of 7am-5pm, two night-shifts 5pm to 7am. DK- At the time you had a day shift, which was 8am-4pm. TT- How many guys? DK- When I came on we didn’t have minimum-manning. So there might be, you know, twenty-five guys on a platoon, but if you split it up into three-day off groups you might have sixteen or seventeen working. But then, you got three or four guys on vacation, a couple of guys out injured, so normally, when I came on, we would go out on the 4-12 shift with, they used to run a Car 1, Car 3, Car 4, 5, 6, 7, a two-man wagon we called Cruiser 8, and maybe a traffic car. So maybe you’d go out with nine or ten guys at four o’clock. Then at six o’clock they had Car 2, Cruiser 9, which was a two-man car, a traffic car, so basically another four guys. Normally, we’d a have a spare car, like a two-man spare car. We’d go out with thirteen, fourteen guys most nights. You probably had nine or ten at four o’clock, and then another five or six came on at six o’clock. Then midnight’s would come on, midnight’s what they would do, depending on how many guys they had working. They would do the same thing. You might have 20 or 21 guys on a shift, but some guys were on vacation or injured. If they were short guys, no Car 2, and maybe no second wagon. But in those days we had cellblock duty. We didn’t have cameras, so if they had a prisoner locked up, someone got assigned to the cellblock. They’d pull a car off the road to sit with a prisoner because we didn’t have cameras. When I first got on, the first year, I was bottom guy on the job, so I lived in there. I was probably there two out of four nights. TT- That’s terrible. So the guys that come in at 4 leave at midnight, the guys that come in at 6 leave at 2am. So there’s another overlap at night, so the busy times-- DK- It was 7pm-3am at one time and then they kicked it back to 6pm-2am. But that was to cover the shift change at midnight, so you’d have extra guys on the road. At three, four, five o’clock in the morning things used to die down—at least they used to, not anymore—so you could run with seven or eight guys after midnight. 4pm-12am was the busy shift. Always the busiest shift. TT- So in the morning is the day shift. How many guys come on at 8am? DK- I can remember, when I first got on, we didn’t have minimum-manning. You’d come to work on a Sunday and might have five guys. TT- How could they not have minimum-manning? DK- Because they didn’t want it. They didn’t want to pay for it. You guys got it in arbitration, years ago you won it, and we tried getting it for years and years. They wouldn’t give it to us. Henry Kinch was the mayor at the time, and they saw what they were paying the fire department and they didn’t want to pay us. We were only trying to get thirteen guys, you guys had thirty-one. We’d go out, many nights when I worked the midnight shift, we’d go out with six or seven guys. TT- When did you get minimum-manning? DK- ’87, ’88? We didn’t get what we got now. It was eight guys—six one-man cars and one two-man car. 4pm-Midnight was seven one-man cars, 6pm-2am was two two-man cars, and midnights were six one-man cars and one two-man, so eight guys. Eventually we got it up to eleven on days, eleven on 4pm-Midnight, and ten on the overnights. And that’s what it is now. Eleven-eleven-and ten. So we run seven one-man (cars,) two two-man (cars on) days, seven one-man, two two-man 4pm to midnight, six one-man, two two-man midnight to 8am. What they do is eliminate Car 2, which is the car roaming this side of Newport Avenue after midnight. Car 1, 3, and 4 cover over. TT- So the Cars are like our engines—everything has a district. DK- The city is broken up into seven districts (fire department has six.) Four on the east side, three on the west side. Car 1, which is everything north of Central Avenue, from the river/Central Falls line to Newport Avenue. Car 3 is everything from Central Avenue to Columbus Avenue, back to the river, Car 4, which I was in for twenty-seven years, is everything south of Columbus Avenue to the East Providence line, back to the river, Car 2 is everything east of Newport Avenue from the East Providence line to the Attleboro line. TT- So Car 2 is basically the rover, all over the east side. DK- Yes. He has a district but yes, he’s all over the place. Then on the West side you had Car 5, Car 6, and Car 7. Car 5 would be Woodlawn, basically everything from Pleasant Street up the southside of I-95 to Lonsdale Avenue, Car 7 is the other end to Lonsdale Avenue, and Car 6 was everything west of Lonsdale Avenue from 95. Car 5 would go to the Providence line. Then you had the two wagons, which were one in the east, and one in the west. They roved. They were on both sides. TT- So you had two-man cars just roving around each side of the river. Like man-power? DK- Yes. We’d always have two traffic cars too. For accidents. One on the east side, one on the west. If you had more guys you threw more cars out. But it’s like everything else. In the summertime, you’re going bare minimum (because of the vacations). TT- When did we get minimum-manning? I don’t even know. (Mandated by contract, minimum-manning is the number of personnel required to be on shift.) DK- You got minimum-manning right before I got on the job, which is probably 1980, ’81. TT- So we were like eight years ahead of you guys. DK- Yes. TT- Now how do your days run? What’s your calendar? We run four-on, four-off. When you start, do they have you on days? DK- No. When I started it was on the 6pm-2am shift. Actually, I was only there for like three weeks. What happened was the class that got on before me got on twelve weeks before me. They moved us all at once, so what happened is, like you guys, they had a bid. They bid the shifts out, so back in the day, no one wanted to work the midnight shift. Anybody who was on midnights would bail off and either go 6-2 am, or 4 to midnight, or, if you had enough seniority, the day shift. We all went on the midnight shift. I went on shift July of 1981, to May of 1983. Then I bid out and got on the 6-2 am shift. May to September I was on the 6-2 shift. When the 4-12 shift came open I bid there in September of 1983 and stayed until January of 2009. TT- No kidding. You loved the night. DK- 26 years, in the same car too, the Heights car. It was crazy. If you look at the books it was frigging nuts (he has multiple scrap books detailing stories and events of the PD through the years. With no more local reporting or newspapers, those days are gone. Like the firemen from this generation, they have thick books filled with newspaper clippings and stories and pictures.) TT- So how many hours a week do the police work? DK- It’s thirty-seven-and-a-half. Basically four days on/two days off. Where you guys advance through the week, we fall back. If I work Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday, I’m off Wednesday Thursday, then I start up again Friday Saturday Sunday Monday. TT- So you’re on midnights. Night shifts are hard, man, because you’re just trying to stay awake. It’s brutal. DK- Midnight is a horrible shift. You had guys on the midnight shift, the older guys, some of them loved it and stayed there. They’d go bury themselves somewhere for two or three hours—that’s the way it was back in the day. Don’t get on the radio after two o’clock in the morning. (laughs) Don’t be stopping cars, don’t be doing this and that (laughs). The sarge would tell you one thing, the guys would tell you another. TT- So you guys are broken down how? Patrol, detectives-- DK- You had the Patrol Division, the Detective Division, the Administrative Division. TT- How many detectives in the Detective Division? DK- Let’s see. You also had the Drug Unit, which was part of the Administrative Division. Um, there’s probably 15 detectives, and another ten guys in the drug unit. They’re considered detectives too. So that’s 25. Then you have BCI, there’s three guys assigned to that, Juvenile is part of the Detective Division. Administration Division had a captain, lieutenant, or sergeant. Planning and Training you have a lieutenant and sergeant, and a patrolman, a Neighborhood Response Unit that has a Major and two guys. TT- What’s the Neighborhood Response Unit? DK- Like a community police type of thing. They handle complaints. Then there’s six or seven school resource officers that fall under that Response Unit. What they do is they’ll do the school stuff in the winter, then when summer comes they’ll get kicked back to patrol, to fill in for the vacations. TT- To get to detective, what’s the process? DK- You have to take a test, which you can take with three years on, but you can’t get made until you get five years on. If you want to take the sergeant’s test, you have to have five years on but you can’t get made until you have seven years on. TT- So there’s a patrol sergeant and a detective sergeant-- DK- If you want to be a detective sergeant, that’s a different test. Then there’s a lieutenant’s test, a Captain’s test, major’s test. TT- So you have eligibility lists like we do (fire department has lists for lieutenant, rescue lieutenant, captain, rescue captain, battalion chief, and assistant chief.) Guys have taken the test, got ranked, and now just wait on the list. DK- Exactly. They could pick off the top three. They don’t have to pick number one. TT- So two years, like us, until the list expires? DK- Yes. And they can only skip you twice. So if they skip you once, at some point they have to make you. Unless the list expires. TT- Then you have to re-test. DK- Yes. Every two years. TT- In the Patrol Division, how many guys are we talking about? DK- You’ve probably got seventy-five guys in the Patrol Division. There’s like a 130 guys total. We used to be 153 but they cut us back big time. But let’s say there’s roughly seventy-five in the Patrol Division, there’s probably 15-20 detectives. There’s maybe 15 sergeants, six lieutenants, four Captains, two Majors, and a Chief. TT- Now the SWAT Team got disbanded after the budget crisis in the crash of 2008, right? DK- Yes. They let it go. You know, the thing is, they’ve got the patrol rifles now, so if something happens you’ve got the firepower out there if needed. Because if you go to something, like someone barricaded, you can call the State Police if you have to. We’ve got the rifle-cars now, the firepower, probably twenty of our guys went to the rifle school, so there’s probably four or five rifles on the street at any given point. TT- Are you allowed to talk about what’s in the police car? DK- There’s really not a whole lot. TT- Are we talking M-4s? DK- Yeah, the mini-version of the AR-15, the M-4, the sergeants also have shotguns. The two sergeants’ cars have shotguns. TT- The patrolmen don’t have shotguns? DK- No. The sergeant’s cars have them if needed. TT- Why do they do that? Why wouldn’t they let you guys at least have shotguns? DK- The mentality of the city has always been, they didn’t want you to have long rifles, for whatever reason. It took a long time for the city to realize we needed automatics out on the street. You needed handguns with 15-round magazines. Because they (the city) figure it’s not gonna happen to you. It’s the old-school mentality. And you finally got some progressive guys in there who said, “Hey, look, you gotta do this stuff.” It took a lot of talking. We finally got them to run the rifle school. We’re gonna run another one shortly. TT- We’re probably the biggest city that doesn’t have a SWAT Team, right? East Providence has one. DK- Woonsocket has one, yeah. TT- There’s 80,000 people here. Seems kind of crazy to me. DK- You can read between the lines on that one. TT- The Narcotics Squad, are we talking about ten guys? DK- Yes. A lieutenant, a sergeant, six or seven detectives. TT- Are these guys undercover? DK- Yes. TT- So these guys don’t have regular hours? DK- What they do is work a Monday through Friday schedule, but they can come in whenever they need them, like if something’s going down. We usually have a guy attached to the DEA Task Force. And we have a guy assigned to the High Intensity Drug Task Force. TT- That is some kind of name. DK- They work out of the State Police. And they’re F.B.I., D.E.A., Marshals … We always have someone with the D.E.A., because if you get involved in any seizures, you get 90% of the money. So it’s worth your while. Like the Google settlement they messed up on. If we had sent a detective to that we would’ve gotten like $30 million out of that. TT- That’s a lot of money. Now let’s backtrack. You started on the street and stayed on the street? DK- I was in the drug unit for 18 months, didn’t care for it, so I went back on patrol after the chief transferred me back. At the time, Kayla was a baby and I wasn’t making any money. 1989-1990 was when we started making money on this job. All kinds of road jobs around, the radar program started up, we were down there working Monday through Friday and maybe getting four hours overtime a week if we were lucky. I didn’t like it. My wife wasn’t working, I’m looking around saying—it just wasn’t for me. It wasn’t for me. I didn’t care for the work. There was a lot of hanging around, because you had to wait for something to happen, and again there was an old-school mentality down there at the time. Different than it is now. Certain people didn’t want you doing stupid things. I lucked out and came back to the 4-12 shift and stayed there. TT- These undercover guys, are they infiltrating gangs? Or are they observing stuff? DK- Basically what they do is use a lot of informants. Could they make undercover buys? Absolutely. But for the most part they use people, bring people in, they’ll get people, like I said, they’ll work with the DEA, make a buy, but for the most part they conduct an investigation. Confidential informants. TT- Someone gets charged with something, give them only one way out. DK- Right. Flipping people. Use them for something else. I mean we don’t have the big city “Serpico’s” running around-- TT- But you guys know the neighborhoods, so you probably set up on certain houses-- DK- People call all the time. What we’ll do, if we get a call about something, like someone sees something, we’ll go out and take a look and see if it’s worthwhile. TT- Like somebody calls up and says, “There’s been ten cars by here in the last hour.” DK- Exactly. Coming and going. Oh yeah. Basically that’s what happens. TT- Now what kind of gangs are active in Pawtucket? DK- You had the Bloods up Broadway near Benefit Street. You used to have a gang back in the day called “The Prospect Heights Posse.” I don’t think they’re still there. On the West Side you have “The Bucket Boys.” I’m a little out of the loop on that stuff, because I’m not working nights anymore. It exists. They’re out there. Up until 1990-91, we never called out “Shots fired,” or stuff like that. Now, there’s something going on all the time, you know? So is there a big problem in the city? I don’t know if there’s a big problem, but you got a gang problem. You got people everywhere. That’s not just Pawtucket either, that’s anywhere you go. Even Seekonk. There’s people everywhere. TT- Some guys are moving drugs, some are moving guns, who knows what they’re doing? DK- I’m out of the loop. Like I said, When I was on nights we didn’t have that much, but the PHP was a half-ass bunch of nitwits. Basically. They couldn’t even spell Prospect. (laughs). But everything’s changed over the last four or five years. TT- Is there a Major Crimes Unit? DK- That’s the detective division. Say like bank robbery. Say you have a rash of bank robberies going on. I mean, like ten or fifteen years ago, we had a group of guys that were whacking everything. They’ll drag in everybody. They’ll drag the Special Squad in, they’ll get the detectives in, they’ll drag guys out of Patrol, I mean like they did in Providence. You see last week, the Family Dollar Store robberies and all of that, they dragged in everybody. It got to that point. Get everybody out there. Sooner or later somebody’s gonna see something. TT- What’s the Special Squad? DK- That’s the Drug Unit. The Special Squad. They do drugs, gambling, prostitution, anything like that. Any vices. TT- They’re the Vice Squad. DK- Yes. TT- Is there a list to get into that unit as well? DK- No. That’s appointed by the Chief. TT- Really… DK- You pick and choose. Sometimes people don’t—even seniority-wise—people don’t belong down there. Like everything else, you’ve got a few unsavory characters on this job like everywhere else. TT- You’re saying you want the most qualified people down there to do what they gotta do. We're talking about handling drugs, guns, cash... DK- Exactly. Does politics play a part in it? I’m sure. But there’s merit too. If you’re out there doing a good job, doing stuff, and doing the right thing, 90% of the time they’ll grab those guys. You know? The guys who are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. TT- On our job, there are certain positions where, if you take it, there’s nowhere to hide. You’re the man. Rescue Lieutenant is a perfect example. Those guys make more life and death decisions in a four-day cycle than most line officers will in a month. So let’s go back. So when you learn all this stuff about when to arrest people, how to arrest them, you have to know all of the laws, right? DK- Common sense dictates that somebody—if you go to a domestic and the lady has a black eye, stuff like that. If you take a complaint, and the guy’s not actually there, the detectives will follow it up. Say you get assaulted and the guy flees. We take the report, and go out to find the guy. In the morning the detectives will bring him in and if there’s enough to charge him, they’ll charge him. TT- As far as the last couple of years go, like nationwide I’m talking, all of the problems and controversy swirling around the police profession, in Pawtucket we’ve been very fortunate. There have been certain incidents where people have been shot by the police, but nothing like that. We haven’t had protests and riots. The majority of people—black, white, brown, whatever—are kind of old school like that. It is what is. If you pull a gun on a cop, something bad’s probably gonna happen. DK-No matter what you do, there’s always going to be somebody complaining about something. You shoot a guy for this, the cops are always wrong. We’re always wrong, because they’ll say he wasn’t gonna do this, he wasn’t gonna do that, you know what? Don’t point a gun. Don’t run around with guns. Don’t have a gun, you’re not gonna get shot. Nobody comes to work wanting to kill anybody. Nobody wants to shoot anybody. I was involved in a situation where I didn’t shoot the guy, but I was there when a guy did, and the guy got killed, and between the lawsuit and all the stuff you go through, lemme tell you, it’s not fun. Grand Jury. Then you gotta go see the shrink, and you gotta go to this-- TT- An attorney. DK- No, no, no. The city backs you on that. The union backs you on that. You’re fine with that. TT- Sounds like a bloodbath. DK- It is. It is. TT- Now when these things happen, the officer involved shootings, do outside investigators have to come in? DK- The State Police come in. Anytime a gun gets fired, the State Police come in. The State Police and the Attorney General come in. TT- Is that statewide? DK- They all do it together. The State Police will come in and take it over. Like that one we just had on Newport Avenue a couple weeks ago. TT- There wasn’t any question about that guy. He’s on video from different cameras firing first. So any gun, or firing of a gun-- DK- Really any type of use of force where somebody gets killed. Say somebody died in the cellblock. Anything. Any time anybody, any type of death, that gets the State Police and A.G.’s office everytime. TT- They’re considered the independent watchdog. DK- Yes. TT- When you guys do have to use your weapons, and somebody ends up getting killed or hurt, in my ten years on this job, I don’t think there’s been one ruled unjustified. DK- Again. Nobody shoots somebody just to shoot somebody. TT- Let’s go back. What about the wife, and dealing with this stress-fest, did it affect your marriage at all? DK- The job? No. I met my wife on the job. My wife’s house got broken into. And I went to a call over there and-- TT- She lived where? DK- On Oakland Avenue. This is back in ’82. We had a bunch of guys going around breaking into houses. They were cutting windows. They were sticking clothesline poles into windows and stealing pocketbooks out of people’s bedrooms. TT- Are you shitting me? DK- Nope. (laughs). TT- That’s actually sort of brilliant. They didn’t even have to make entry. DK- Think about it. They don’t even have clotheslines anymore. So I was on midnights at the time, and I ran over to Oakland Avenue. I knew her sister from Apex. I used to work the detail at Apex. One thing led to another and we ended up getting married, but my wife’s never busted my chops about this. I mean we’ve had our moments, don’t get me wrong, but as far stressful moments-- TT- So you never brought it home. DK- No. I mean I’d tell war stories and stuff. She knew what was going on, but I never had a moment like that. TT- You do see a lot of horrible stuff. You see the same stuff we do. None of it’s really very pretty. DK- My thing is, if you went somewhere, say you got a guy hit by a train, a guy cut in half, or a guy with his head blown off …ok. Do what you gotta do, then don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out. Come home, a beer or two later on, you know, no problem. You’re not gonna wig out over it. TT- When these things happen, like train strikes, you’re there documenting that stuff. You don’t really have to deal with the body. DK- No. To be honest with you, I never had anybody hit by a train. The only two things I never had on this job were somebody hit by a train, and somebody burnt beyond recognition. I had everything else in between. I had a guy take his head off one morning. He was sitting in the parking lot on Dunnell Lane one morning, put a .308 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He pulled the trigger with his toe and it took the whole top of his head off. TT- So the head was laying in the parking lot? DK- The whole top of his head. You know Joe Bruzzi? TT- I know his son. DK- Joe was my best man when we got married. Joe came on the job same time as me. So Joe was on Engine 3 that day with John Delcourt and Mack Qualls. So make a long story short, he’s in the fire school with Ken’s World. So Joe’s telling the story. A week later. He goes, “Oh yeah, Ken was drinking on Delta Drive after midnight. This guy comes walking up no shirt and no shoes on. Asks, “Got any beer?” “Is that a real gun?” BANG! He lets one go. Ken’s like, “Here, take all the beer you want.” (laughs.) Here I come to Dunnell Lane at three o’clock in the morning and this nut’s walking around there with a freaking gun. TT- You see that a lot. Suicides are happening all the time but no one knows. DK- Lot of suicides. You know what? I mean you were a rescue guy. How many dead people have you seen in your career? Think about it. You can’t even count them. And I used to figure it like this. I was in Car 4 from 1982-2009, so I’d get at least one D.O.A. a month. You know, it could be natural causes, it could be this and that, but think back…I remember one time I had a run. A hanging, and overdose, and a crib death three days in a row. The crib death was on Vernon Street, because Billy Malloy and Mike Levesque were there. Had a guy in the trailer park who hung himself in the shed, I mean it never ends. And then you think about it and say, I had this one and that one and this one and holy frig. TT- As many people are born in a day die in a day, right? Normal people don’t see the death but death is happening all around them all the time. DK- I say that all the time. Like I said, it was at least once a month. TT- What was the worst calls for you? DK- The worst call was when Wallace Martins shot the guy. That was probably the worst. When he killed him on Lupine Street. TT- What was that about? DK- We got a call about a guy with a sword. I was doing radar on an overtime shift. I heard them send the cars over. It was like quarter after seven in the morning. So they got a call for a disturbed guy. They sent a couple of cars over there. Next thing you hear is a call for help. “Guy’s got a sword.” So now, I heard them call for help, so I said, “I’m going.” I get over there. It was the middle of February. I shot down Industrial Highway, Central Avenue, and when I get there the house is just in from Broadway. But the police car was way down the end of Lupine Street, near Park Street. So I get there. The house is like an apartment house. There’s two entrances. I walk in the side one and I look. I see the sword on the ground. I see a bottle of ginger brandy on the counter. I walk in the hallway and all I can smell is Capstone (tear gas). I get up there and hear crash, bang. What the fuck’s going on there? I get up there and there’s this freaking guy, had to be 350-400 pounds, he’s laying on the floor bleeding from the face. He’s naked. All of a sudden he gets back up and starts going after the cops. He got this guy Wallace Martins—I guess before I got up there he had grabbed him (Martins) by the jacket and almost choked him (Martins) to death. When I got up there and came walking in, he charged again and Wallace shot him. You know, he figured he was gonna kill him if he didn’t. It happened that fast. It happened that quick. TT- Were you up there when he got shot? DK- I had just walked in the apartment. I was in there maybe ten seconds because I was in there long enough to call for a rescue. The guy was bleeding. I called for the rescue and he gets up and charges Wallace and boom-boom. It happened that fast. TT- Two shots? DK- Two shots. It happened that fast. TT- 2009? DK- 2008. TT- That was right when I got on. DK- I went on days shortly thereafter. February 2008. I was there when it happened, so I got put on administrative duty, had to go see the shrink, had to go talk to this one and that one. TT- So how long-- DK- I think it was two weeks. They carried us injured on duty. We had to go talk to the psychiatrist a few times. TT- What happens to the guy that fires the shots? Is he off until he’s cleared? DK- Out until the Grand Jury. TT- Months? DK- Normally they try to get it in as quick as they can. I don’t remember how long it was. TT- Is that standard procedure though? That the guy who shoots has to stay out until the Grand Jury convenes? DK- It’s up to the psychiatrist. If she feels you can go back to work, you can work. But normally the shooter or shooters won’t be allowed back on the street until they’re cleared by the Grand Jury. There were four of us. Only one guy shot. TT- He got cleared, right? DK- Yes. TT- Like you said, this isn’t something people want to do. DK- No. No. No. Believe me, you do not want to go through that. I never second guessed this guy, because I don’t know what happened prior to my arrival, but for whatever reason, he had good reason to do what he did. TT- If you’re gonna get choked out by a 400-pound guy, you’re worried about your own life, right? DK- This guy was out of control. TT- The one thing I don’t think people understand is that at some point, this situation has to be resolved. We can sit and talk to somebody for an hour. We can have firemen and cops and everybody’s talking, but at some point we got to put companies back in service and resolve the situation. DK- You have doctors and lawyers saying you could’ve done this, you could’ve done that, but you know what? At the time it wasn’t an option. You know, you can sit back two years later and talk about it but at the time it wasn’t an option. TT- At some point we have to take people to the ground. Whether it’s mental, psychological, whatever their problem is, it has to be resolved. DK- At some point enough’s enough. What’re you gonna do? You’re going. If it takes one guy, two guys, six guys, or eight guys, you’re going. But for me, the job was never really the same after that. Thinking about the next time, depending on what the results are, you could be going to prison. If you’re the shooter, it could be for murder. I thought about my wife, thought about my family, you have to. You sign up to do a job, and this job sometimes requires action, and those actions have ramifications across everyone who knows you. TT- Let’s talk about people. In the last ten years I’ve never seen so much anxiety. These people are locked up in their houses, on their stupid phones or iPads all day, have everything delivered—there’s no more human interaction. We don’t know our neighbors, don’t care to, and don’t help anyone out. DK- You never had this when I was growing up. You never had all this EDP (Emotionally Disturbed Person) stuff. EDP, I couldn’t even tell you what it meant the first ten years I was on this job. But even these kids. Think about it. You go on a rescue run, where are you working now? TT- Engine 4. DK- My wife is the clerk at Curvin McCabe (School.) You go for a seven-year-old kid out of control. Really? Cops and firemen? TT- It’s true, there’s like eight people in the room and all this kid needs is his parents. Which is what 911 has been turned into now—everybody’s parent. Nobody wants any responsibility for anything. DK- It’s everybody else’s fault but theirs. TT- It wasn’t designed for this. And I tell people that as far as the hospital crisis we have going on right now, the hospitals weren’t set up for this either. They weren’t designed to be a catch basin for everyday problems. DK- Go to your doctor. Take care of yourself-- TT- Not even that. How about the drunks-- DK- Back in the day the drunks got locked up. TT- Everything goes to the hospital, which is why they don’t work anymore. Wait times at Miriam are a routine 6-8 hours. Imagine that? So other than that shooting, what runs did you hate the most? For us, it’s the kid runs. DK- Domestics, depending on what they were, could be tough. Probably the worst call I ever had wasn’t a domestic, it was a D.O.A. The lady had been in the house for six and a half weeks. TT- Oh dear God. DK- We get a call for—it was on Paul Street, just in from Byron Avenue. Right there. It was a Friday night. It was October 28 or something, cool, like this time of year. We get a call. “Go meet a guy, he hasn’t seen his neighbor in a couple of days.” So I go driving over there, get there, and he’s standing outside. “Oh yeah, I haven’t seen my neighbor in a few days.” I look at the house. I know this house because an old lady lived there and she’d been ripped off. She had a lot of money and a bunch of kids from Broadway broke in there the year before and stole all kinds of money and stuff out of the house. I go walking over there and the mailbox is freaking-- TT- Jammed. Never a good sign. DK- Right? It goes back to September fourth. (laughs) And I’m like, “This ain’t gonna be good.” I go, “Send me a rescue.” Here comes Engine 6. Chris Cute, Counoyer, and John Kelly. Now it’s a little four-room ranch house. You went in, and the door’s right here, it’s a straight shot. They kick the freaking door in (laughs) and Ralph and Chris made it like ten feet inside the house before they turned around and puked. (both laughing) DK- I’m shining my light from here to like the door over there (fifteen feet.) And all I can see is all this shit moving around. TT- Oh no. DK- Oh yeah. It was maggots everywhere. I go, “I ain’t going in there.” So I called for a supervisor. Mike Nastari comes up. He could smell it from the outside. Mark Force comes up, he’s the BCI guy, he comes up and says, “She’s got to have been here for six or seven weeks.” At one point I had to go into the house. This fucking smell. I got the Vicks smeared under my nose. It didn’t do anything. An hour goes by. The M.E. shows up. These frigging guys in the meat wagon come up. It was so bad they had to put boots on, get a shovel, and put her in the bag (laughs). TT- Oh God. DK- So we get her all squared away, get done at like ten or ten thirty. I gotta go for a beer after this one. I go over to the FOP (the police have a union hall/bar), I walk in the frigging door and everyone goes “Where the fuck have you been?” It was still in my nose, the smell. I got up the next morning and couldn’t get rid of it. That was one of the worst runs of my career. TT- For people that haven’t smelt it, it’s beyond anything describable, right? Like a donkey shoved into a dumpster in August. DK- Another night I got a call for Kennedy Manor. This new guy was on the job who had never done a DOA before. I go over to help him out. I took the elevator up to the 7th floor and as soon as I got out of the elevator—BAM. There was that smell. My stomach turned. TT- Let’s get back to the protocols you guys run by. If Car 4 sees something-- DK- If we get a call, like for someone with a gun, they hit the Alert Tone and send everybody. Three or four cars, anybody not tied up on something else. You can always cancel guys if you have to. Any time something big happens, start everybody. If you cancel them, you cancel them. You’re better off having everybody show up than not enough. TT- So if it’s for a domestic-- DK- They send two cars. The district car and a wagon. If the district car is hung up, they send the next district car. Anything involving weapons or fights is a two-car minimum. Like a vandalism, larceny, assault with no suspect on-scene, that’s one car. TT- Do you fill out reports for every run you do? DK- No. What they do now, everything’s by computer. You just put notes in there, you know, “Responded to 25 Crest Drive for a noise complaint, spoke with complainant …” TT- So as far as paperwork, car wrecks-- DK- Accidents, domestics, every call like that. Domestics have a form that has to be filled out for the state. If you don’t, it will come back to bite you. I’ll give you an example. A couple of years ago, remember the guy that killed his wife and dog and then cut his own throat on Meadow Street? TT- I was working that day but we didn’t go. I think that was Thurber, Cute Jr., and Babul. DK- Well, she had come in like three or four days before that making a complaint against him. TT- Oh no. DK- She documented everything but we just couldn’t find him. It was an active investigation. TT- Wow. He stabbed and cut up everything over there. Babul said when he saw the cops arrive, he shoved the knife into his own neck and cut his throat so badly his head was flopping around as they carried him out. Now, everything else, if you guys can’t—the police handle one aspect, and the fire department handles the other stuff, like we’re garbage men for people. We sweep up the messes people make. DK- They make the mess. We clean it up. That’s exactly what it is. TT- So when a dead body’s found, you guys call the M.E.-- DK- If you find a dead body you call for your supervisor. Supervisor shows up with a detective and B.C.I. and the M.E. You secure the scene. Basically, you do what we call a Base Report. You state what you found when you got there and what you saw. It could be a couple of lines or a couple of pages. Was the body clothed? What position it was in, any wounds on it. Anything suspicious around it. You do your report. The sergeant approves your report. Your supervisor approves your report, and it’s turned over to the detectives and the detectives will take it from there. They’ll investigate witnesses, evidence. TT- You got on in ’81. Were there bullet vests back then? DK- There was. It had just started. Like the late 70’s. I had a vest when I came on. They were a lot heavier and bulkier than the ones we have now. A lot of guys didn’t wear them. The old school guys. None of the old guys did anything new. It’s just like you guys. TT- Yes. Like the air-packs. A lot of the old schoolers didn’t wear them. They hated them. DK- Things changed in 1988-89, when crack really hit. That’s when everything changed on this job. I mean we had a shooting every now and then, and there was still stuff going down at Crook Manor, but from 1988-89 that’s when all the guns came out. We’d be getting calls every day, “Guy with a gun.” “Kid with a gun.” I mean back in the day the kid would end up having a BB gun. Not after that. The guns were everywhere. Now we started getting the “Shots fired” calls. 3,4,5 a night. Some were unfounded but the majority were not. Now every time we turn around there are gun calls. That’s when all the gun stuff started. This stuff was real. That’s also when we went from the revolvers to the automatics. The Heights was out of control until they did the place over. It was nuts. TT- I heard the fire department couldn’t go in there without the police. DK- It was crazy. Everybody was selling dope. TT- How did it stop? DK- They cleaned the place up. Everybody got evicted. But people were selling by beepers, and cell-phones were brand new. Think about that. It used to be you had a guy standing on the corner with a Dunkin Donuts cup. Drugs were in the cup. Now you had beepers and cell-phones. So you didn’t have to stand there with the drugs. You could still buy direct off the street, but why would you now? They also put up the fences and gates around the whole Heights. They put the security booth in there to screen anyone coming in. On a Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, we’d start stopping cars at 4 o’clock. New Bedford, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Bellingham, Foxboro—every car you stopped with Mass plates had a druggie in it. It was nuts. And the later the night got, the busier it got. It never stopped. All night long. And everybody got paid on Friday, so that’s when you’d really see it. TT- That’s what Lemay said. He said it was the days of the cocaine cowboys. Everything just lit off. DK- He’s exactly right. It was nuts. And we were making such good progress over there, one of the gangs threatened my life. TT- What? Was it valid? DK- Valid enough that they wanted to pull me off the street. Some kid was running his mouth at the House of Pizza. But I didn’t want to sit in the office, so they doubled me up instead. TT- What’s that mean? DK- They gave me a partner, so someone could watch my back. They also sent a police car by my house like every hour. I’m not kidding. The people I worked with were really great. TT- How long did this go on for? DK- They were supposedly gonna kill me at Octoberfest. Whether or not that was ever gonna happen, Octoberfest came and went and I’m still here. I think it was like three weeks. TT- That’s pretty unnerving. Now let’s talk about traffic stops. When you pull someone over—I mean I’ve never been on the other side of walking up to a stranger’s car wondering if they’re gonna shoot me. It’s probably one of the most dangerous things you guys do. DK- You never know who you’re stopping. TT- What are you gonna find in the car, how is this gonna go…as you walk up to the window, what’s running through your head? Are you watching his hands? DK- You watch to see what’s going on, you know? Keep the light on so you can see what’s going on in the car. The secret is for people to stay in the car. Don’t get out of the frigging car. If they jump out, I draw down on them immediately. Period. I tell you to stay in the car, stay in the car. You’re gonna get yourself killed jumping out of the car. I don’t know what you got. Guns, drugs… I’d watch them buy drugs. They’d go up to a car, exchange something, and I could always come up with something to stop them. Tail light out. Head light out. License plate light not working. You can always find a reason. TT- But does that allow you to search a car? DK- The smell of marijuana. If things don’t look right-- TT- It’s a tough job, right? They want you to get all this stuff off the streets but at the same time, it’s a fine line. DK- You could always stop and frisk somebody for a weapon. You could always do that. If you find something on them then you can toss the car. TT- Were there women on the job when you got on? DK- There was Melva Ward and then Doreen Tomlinson came on the job in like 1984. She got killed six months later in a car accident. TT- I heard that. Both Lemay and her brother Dave said the same thing. Dave was my boss on Rescue 2. As a matter of fact, he was in Fire Alarm that night and dispatched Lemay to the car crash that killed his (Tomlinson’s) sister. So she was the second woman on the job? DK- Yes. TT- In the whole history of the department, two women. I see more women cops than that on nearly every run now. DK- Right? After Doreen died, Linda Stafford came on, and we didn’t have anybody for a while after that. TT- Is there a physical test everyone needs to pass in order to apply? DK- Yes. I don’t know what it is 37 years later. You used to have to do so many push-ups, so many pull-ups, bench press 85 % of your weight, broad jump, but everything changes. I think now it’s push-ups, sit-ups, mile-and-a-half run, 100 yard dash and some other stuff. TT- It’s different for you guys because you’re not living with the women. It’s more transformative on our job because you have sleeping quarters-- DK- But they had to create a woman’s locker room because all of a sudden they were hiring a lot of women and they’re getting dressed in the frigging men's locker room. See, this is stuff the city never thought about. TT- Absolutely. You can’t expect the women to change in the men’s locker room. DK- Again. It took forever for the city to figure this stuff out. Old school. TT- Now, as far as bad calls, anything involving a kid freaks me out because I don’t have any and don’t know the first thing about them. DK- Every night it was something different. You could start off the shift with a stolen bicycle and end up with a murder. It was soup to nuts every frigging night. Domestic, drunks fighting, loud party call, fireworks call, every night it was different. TT- One of my old bosses, Dirty Harry (Callahan), said every time the garage door rolled up he pretended he was watching a movie. Every run was a new movie. DK- You guys have your same repeat houses all the time. Your frequent flyers. So do we. 444 West Avenue. 107 Mineral Spring Avenue. When those two places closed down the police and fire departments must’ve lost 500 runs a year. (laughs) Other runs were brand new. Summer nights were always busy. Cold winter nights you’d have fires and rollovers on the ice. TT- I don’t if it’s true, and I don’t even know if you can comment on this, but I heard there was an undercover group of policemen that can move from town to town. Rhode Island is tiny. Everybody knows everybody, so new faces allow fresh eyes-- DK- That would be like the High Intensity Drug Task Force guys. D.E.A. TT- They’d be switching guys out-- DK- They’re all over, oh yeah, they’re all over the state. They’re all over the place. We don’t even know who they are. They’d bring in guys from Providence if needed, Woonsocket. You can bring in anyone you need. TT- So they can cross jurisdictions. DK- The drug units can. Especially if you’re assigned to the DEA task force, you’re a federal agent, you can go all over the country. TT- I would think you would need fresh faces because everyone’s watching everyone. You’re watching the bad guys, the bad guys are watching you-- DK- They’re making buys and stuff, but you still have the guys from the city overseeing everything. They’re making a controlled buy. TT- Do you have any regrets in your career? DK- Not one. I had a frigging ball. It was the greatest job in the world. Like I said, the last six months there was some internal bullshit, a couple of frigging idiots down there, and I was gonna stay another year but I said, “You know what? I’m all set.” I looked around, I made the right decision. I’m working (traffic) details now, I come to work there’s no bullshit. I had the greatest job in the world. I went to California four times because of this job. New York City. I’ve been to Police Week in D.C. a dozen times, I met people from all over the country and had a frigging blast. I got no regrets at all. Fire Department’s the same thing. I go back to Chief Thurber, Chief Boisclair, Stretch Tuit, those guys were the greatest guys in the frigging world. They were all friends of my father’s back in the day. TT- Stretch Tuit is a name that keeps coming up. I never met him-- DK- You never met Stretch? That’s a shame. TT- His reputation is so crazy-- DK- He was. He was a good guy. TT- I heard everyone in New England knew this fucking guy. He walked into Fanuiel Hall up in Boston one day and a bunch of firemen from Lynn or somewhere called out “Hey, Stretch!” He was a legend. DK- They called him “Hollow Leg.” (laughs) TT- I heard that too. I heard Stretch enjoyed a drink or ten. DK- This has got to be from the 90’s. Jesus Christ. Bob Thurber, the old man, fell down the stairs and broke his ribs. He was all fucked up. So we go over to see him one day. Stretch goes over, Tommy Griffin and Bobby Thurber junior were on the engine, Engine 4. So I’m over there with Frank Boisclair and Stretch comes rolling in. So he’s sitting there and he says, “What does a heart attack feel like?” All of a sudden he pukes and goes unconscious. So Frank (Chief Boisclair) gets on the radio and says, “Get the rescue to Thurber’s house!” Of course, Bobby was in the station, heard the address, and goes flying over there on Engine 4 with Tommy Griffin. Come to find out Stretch was painting something, fell off a ladder, broke two ribs, and was bleeding internally. He almost frigging died. We thought he was dead. But he was a real character. TT- When did you guys become a full department? What year? DK- Had to be 1800’s. TT- We were officially formed in 1876, when the east and west sides were incorporated as the City of Pawtucket. Before that there were individual fire companies stationed in neighborhoods. Like 1801 is the formation of Engine 1. I think 1808 for Engine 2. They amended the city charter to create them. And then the neighborhoods kept getting bigger and banded together until the city just took over and united everyone. DK- They got pictures going back to the 1890s. I’m not really sure on the date. TT- The public library downtown has a locked room with a ton of police stuff, but not much fire history, which is too bad. Talk about the Line of Duty Deaths. DK- We’ve had how many cops get killed … lemme see. Slocum, he was killed in the early 1900s, another guy killed in the 1900s, you had Truesdale and Newberg, they got shot on Pawtucket Avenue, they got killed by some nut on Pawtucket Avenue, that was in the 1950s. Then there was Charlie Therault and Richard Dently—you see that yellow house right there? (points out his window.) He—Therault—lived there. He got killed in 1952 by some bankrobber from Providence. I never knew he lived there until they showed his house on Pincecrest Drive. Right across the street from me. Doreen got killed. I was working that night. There was a back-hoe on Power Road. She wasn’t sent on a call, but witnesses said they saw the lights go on for ten or fifteen seconds, then she hit the back-hoe, spun around and hit the pole. People were saying she was chasing a car, a big white Lincoln, or white Cadillac, but they never figured that one out. TT- She was the last death? DK- Yes. We had an East Providence cop get killed in Pawtucket. A guy named Caruso got killed in 1958 in front of Prospect Heights. My father was involved in that one. They chased a car into East Providence, lost it, East Providence chased the car back. The guy came around the corner from Prospect Street onto Beverage Hill Avenue, where the mini mart is now? Hit a pole. There was no inter-city (radios) back then, so they’re going back and forth on the phones. East Providence cop got out of the car, walked up to the car, the two kids in the front said they were hurt, he looked in the back seat and this kid Andy Ginitus shot him three times in the face. Killed him. So they all took off into the Heights. There-- TT- Was it a drug thing? DK- No. They stole a car. What happened was, they stole a car from somewhere up on Broadway, four guys in the car, and they were riding around all night. They broke into a store near where Apex is downtown. If you go up on the left, there’s a parking lot where Stanley Krazic’s pawn shop used to be in the 50s. It had guns in the window. They stole the guns out of the window. I guess my father was coming around the corner, heard the alarm going off, and a car pulled out and screwed down School Street. They chased them into East Providence but lost them. So this is like six o’clock on a Sunday morning. I guess this guy Jimmy Caruso picks the car up and starts chasing it back into Pawtucket. It hit the pole and they ended up shooting him. But there was a cop, he’s retired now, Wally Stewart, he was fifteen-years-old and living in Prospect Heights and he saw the whole thing. He lived in the 9 building and saw the whole thing. Saw them shoot the cop and head into the Heights. TT- Wow. So Doreen was the last Pawtucket cop killed on duty. I don’t want to jinx anybody but that’s like thirty or forty years ago. DK- I know. We’ve been lucky. We’re almost overdue. And you hate to say something like that. TT- Same with us. Last line of duty death was in 1993. DK- We’ve been very lucky. And I hope it continues. TT- Do they talk to you guys? I mean because in the last five years your job has become exceedingly dangerous. It was always dangerous but now it’s just—do they just tell you to be more careful? DK- We go to the range. Be alert. Be aware of your surroundings. If you(’re in uniform and) go to a restaurant, sit with your back to the wall facing the door. Always watch what’s going on. TT- That’s a tough way to live, especially when you can be assassinated at any second. DK- If somebody wants to get you, they’re gonna get you. Unless you react fast enough you don’t realize what’s coming at you. TT- When you guys have these chases back and forth across communities, do you have the power of arrest in other communities? DK- What you do is you call the other departments and they’ll come with you. If you go into Massachusetts, they have to grab him because that’s a fugitive from justice. You can’t bring a guy back over the state line. Say you chase a guy into Attleboro and you grab him. They arrest him and charge him as a fugitive from justice. They go to Attleboro court, and if he doesn’t want to waive extradition, they hold him for a hearing if he doesn’t want to come back. TT- But he has to be extradited. DK- Exactly. If he says, “Okay, I’ll go back,” they’ll release him to us. If not, he has to be extradited across state lines. TT- Say you chase someone into North Providence. DK- Normally what they’ll do is turn him over to us on the scene. TT- They make the physical arrest? DK- If we’re there we’ll do it. Usually, as long as he didn’t do anything in North Providence and there are no charges, he’ll be handed over to us. But say he hits two people in NP and it’s a hit and run, they’ll keep him and charge him with that stuff. What happens is the guy will be in court tomorrow morning. We’ll come in with our stuff, North Providence will present theirs, and any other affected city. Say it’s like five different cities involved, everyone will come in with their stuff and look to jam him up. (laughs) TT- (Laughs) Good luck, buddy. As far as meth and stuff, we had an incident two weeks ago, other than that, it’s not really around, right? Lemay said the coke dealers kept it out of here. DK- They probably were. I’ve only been to one or two calls involving meth. We went to West Ave or Mulberry Street one night for a call but other than that I don’t recall seeing much meth. TT- It’s amazing how they’ve kept it out. DK- Coke and heroin. That’s the meal of choice. TT- Let’s backtrack. I want to firm up this High Intensity Drug Task Force. DK- The State Police run it. The D.E.A., the F.B.I., and anyone else—Homeland Security, The Marshals.. TT- And they can go anywhere. They have jurisdiction everywhere. DK- Yes. They’ll link up with Mass, the Mass Staties if necessary. TT- It seems like we’re living in an increasingly violent time. DK- It’s the amount of guns, the money, the drugs. The drug thing is out of control. Heroin addicts have no choice. They need money to pay for their drugs or they get sick. That’s why you see all the robberies. All these bank robbers are usually addicts. They score a quick couple thousand dollars. Remember the Bearded Bandit in East Providence? Robbing all those banks last year? He was a heroin addict. That’s what a lot of it is. TT- Let’s talk about the crime scene. If BCI shows up to process the crime scene, are they running that scene? Or are they just working it and leaving? DK- BCI works the scene. When the detectives show up they are in charge of the crime scene. If it’s a murder, there will be a lieutenant or sergeant in charge of the scene. They’ll assign one or two detectives as the primaries, and the rest will help them. They’re in charge of the scene until they hand it back to Patrol. TT- Talk about your dad’s time. He was on from 1944 to 1966? DK- They only had four cars back then. The rest were walking beats. I think they had ten or twelve walking beats. The wagon ran out of the station. The call box brought the wagon. Of course, they didn’t have anywhere near the call volume we have now. They had traffic guys, motorcycle guys, but that was it. Downtown had five walking beats. Imagine that? The businesses were everywhere. All of Broadway was packed. From Manning/Hefrin all the way down, all the stores. From Apex down that was all stores and businesses. You came across the bridge, Roosevelt Avenue, High Street, Exchange Street—it was bustling. TT- That was before the bad time. DK- ’67 is when they started tearing everything down, urban renewal, and it was never the same after that. TT- 95 came through and ruined it all. Who were some of the guys you looked up to when you came on. DK- Dave Obrych, Joe Montiero, Tommy Anderson, Paul Hockwater, Joe Roy, Chief of Police. Milton King. Teddy Dolan. They were the older guys who had been around for a while. As a matter fact Teddy just died. Milt was a great guy. TT- These are the guys who broke you in? DK- Yes. TT- Is it like the fire department? There’s a certain level of new guy ball busting? Like chores, cleaning. DK- We don’t really have chores to do because we don’t live there like you guys. But they’ll bust your balls going on calls. “Don’t touch the radio.” Or “Keep your mouth shut when we get inside.” You learn the job from them. When I came on there were guys on the night shift who had done 20 years. They loved the night shift. Now, you got nobody with any time on nights. Louie Reed, Paul Hubert, they were on nights 14, 15 years. Not anymore. The midnight shift was different back in the day. Midnight to 3 was always busy but then everything died down after that. Til 6. TT- When I was on rescue it was the same thing. I’ll take my beating until 3 am but then I would like a few hours sleep. Doesn’t always happen, though. We have guys on our job that are kind of legendary guys. Lemay, Chickie, Chief Thurber … DK- Joe Corey. John Seabeck. Those are the cops’ cops. Teddy Dolan. Herbie Collins. Those were the guys. Seabeck is still alive. He’s a cop over at Johnson and Wales. I used to laugh, because I used to tell Joe Corey, “The only guy who should be in jail longer than John Seabeck is Joe Corey.” (Laughs) Kidding of course. They were no nonsense guys. That’s what they were. TT- You think these guys would talk to me? DK- Probably not. TT- Can you think of anyone who would talk to me? DK- David Malkasian might. He would have some good stories. TT- Chief Jay was talking about you back in the day. Said you used to carry a .44 magnum. DK- I did. Had a .44 Ruger Red hawk. We could carry anything we wanted. I shot a raccoon one night. TT- Did you ever fire your weapon on a run? DK- Nope. Shot a raccoon and a couple of skunks. TT- 37 years and you never had to fire your weapon? That’s amazing. DK- I could’ve. I had a kid come running out of Douglas Drug. On Pawtucket Avenue. It was the Sunday night between Christmas and New Years. 2003. It came in as a hold-up in progress. Quarter after seven. I’m sitting under the Division Street bridge. No traffic. Cold winter night. They hit the Alert Tone and send a bunch of cars. I start over there. I take a left on East Avenue. I’m flying. Bang a right onto Pidge Avenue. I pull in the parking lot and there’s one car in the lot. Something didn’t seem right. I pulled up, maybe halfway. All of a sudden I see this guy running through the store. He’s leaving. He’s got a Halloween “Scream” mask and a huge automatic pistol. He runs through the door and I scream, “Freeze, police!” He sees me, falls down, the money goes flying in the air, he falls to the floor. Meantime ten different police cars come flying in. He had a BB gun. 16-year-old Cape Verdean kid. Came real close to killing him. It looked real, and I would’ve been justified in shooting him, but no one wants to live with that. TT- No one. You’ll never sleep again. DK- I had another one. We had a guy. We called him the Tool Man. He was robbing Providence, Central Falls, Pawtucket. He’d have an axe, he’d have a crowbar, he’d have a hammer—every time you turned around he was robbing something. We had a big snow storm. December. Alert Tone goes off, I’d just finished working a radar detail and was coming home. I’m coming down Armistice Boulevard. I’m in my old blue Ford Explorer. Dispatch says, “Hold up in progress. First Fed Savings on Newport Avenue.” Next thing you know he takes off. “Cape Verdean male. Wearing a black sweatshirt and an afro. Wearing sunglasses and driving a green Honda.” I turn my truck around and who’s sitting at the red light? (laughs). I’m in my own car but I’m talking on my lapel mic. I catch up to him, a few cars behind him, it was snowing and gross. I got up on him and he could see me talking on my radio. He gets up to Bellevue Avenue and hangs a sharp right. Just as I turn, I saw Chris LaFort in Car 3. The kid blows the stop sign at Vine Street. Gets to the corner of Carter Ave and misses the turn. Smashes into a snowbank. I’m not afraid of him, I’m afraid of wrecking my personal car or having him back into me! (laughs). Wasn’t even worried about getting shot. I put the gun on him, he puts his hands up. His fingers are all scotch-taped. TT- No fingerprints. DK- Chris rips him out of the car. Turns out he had $5,000 on him. He was wanted for like six bank robberies. He was a drug dealer who owed his own dealer money. No gun because he was the Tool Man. TT- What is the rifle school like that the cops now get sent to? DK- I couldn’t really tell you about that because I didn’t go. Basically, you learn the weapon. We trained on pistols at the Cranston Police gun range, but the rifles I don’t know. Maybe a gun club? It was a 40-hour week-long course. TT- What’s the relationship like with the State Police? Does everyone get along? DK- We see them on the highway but as far as patrol goes we don’t have much interaction with them. The detectives and the Special Squad are a different story. TT- You guys do respond to the highway on occasion. DK- If the Staties are tied up we’ll take an accident report. But if it’s a fatal, the Staties own it. We used to take everything on the highway. TT- Glad you don’t have to go out there anymore. We have guys on our job that say responding to the highway is more dangerous than a house fire. DK- I’d rather be chasing a guy with a gun through Prospect Heights than sitting in the S-curves after midnight. TT- Right? I think that’s all I got. It’s been a real pleasure, Dave. You know what else is funny? You were so diligent on the radar, I heard that after you retired the city noticed a precipitous drop in revenue. (laughs) DK- That’s true. TT- That’s great. DK- Radar was twenty-thirty hours a week. TT- You made them a lot of money. Take care, Dave. DK- Be safe.
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AuthorTom Trabulsi was born in the Midwest, attended high school in Rhode Island, and graduated from Boston University with a degree in American History. He was a bike courier in Boston and New York City, worked construction in the mountain west and east coast, and is currently a firefighter in a northeast city. Archives
August 2022
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