PARKER — With Lt. Dennis Hutto becoming the fourth police chief in Parker’s history Aug. 29, all of the town’s previous chiefs, who know each other well, gathered to share memories.
Current Chief Charles Sweatt has worked with each of them, who seem to have a shared levity as they razzed each other with old stories recently.
When Will Oost was a young officer, more than 15 years before he was chief, he was called to a shooting at a trailer park.
He was fresh out of the military with no official police training. He was unsure of himself and a little afraid.
He pulled up to the scene, got out of his patrol car and hid behind the door, a move he admitted was inspired by movies. He grabbed the microphone on his dashboard and started talking to the suspect.
“You better get out of the trailer right now,” Oost recounted. “I checked the microphone and I had the wrong microphone. I had broadcast that around radio.”
Soon enough, three Bay County sheriff’s cars pulled up, but only after the suspect had came out of the trailer and Oost had put him in the back of his squad car.
The inspector for Bay County was one of the officers on the scene.
“Did you read him his rights, yet?” the inspector asked.
“What’s that?” Oost responded.
The inspector entered the back of the car to talk to the suspect. It just so happened then-Parker Police Chief Joe Walker pulled up and saw the Bay County inspector in the back seat.
Walker pulled Oost aside, apparently not seeing the suspect. “Oost, what have you done? That’s the chief investigator of Bay County.”
Another story came about 20 years later. Lt. Dennis Hutto was a young officer tailing a suspect of multiple burglaries around town. The suspect spotted the cruiser and led a chase that veered through several backyards, leaving a twisted path of battered fences. The suspect’s vehicle got hung up on a fence right before Hutto just barely missed an above-ground pool. Both of Hutto’s headlights were gone, the only illumination the blue and red flashers rigged to the roof.
“I heard about that swimming pool for a long time,” Hutto said.
“We replaced some sod, some chain-link fences,” Sweatt added.
Sweatt talked about the difference experience can bring.
“When you’re young, it’s all cops and robbers, but then you grow up,” Sweatt said.
Over time, that’s included the changes in policing. Walker started his career walking a beat in Panama City in the late 1940s; he didn’t even have a radio. The trend at the time was to give the newbies the toughest beat possible. Walker drew the Glendale area. He purposefully picked out the meanest collar he could find and was determined to bring him in regardless of resistance.
“It was about respect,” Walker said.
Every one of the officers, with more than a century of experience between them, talked about community policing in Parker. Sweatt says that is more rewarding than the rough-and-tumble activity of their youth. He added that was what Walker was preaching before it had a fancy title.
“What’s good about a small town is you get to know everybody,” Oost said.
Hutto said that continues. He said he helps older people put insulation devices on their faucets to keep them from freezing.
Sweatt mentioned he will sometimes get a call completely unrelated to criminal activity.
“You may be the only person that person has a chance to talk to,” he said.
That familiarity applies to repeat offenders — frequent fliers, as the chiefs call them. Oost was given an assignment to take in a suspect who had a reputation for fighting with police. Sometime earlier, the bearded man had drunkenly taken an ax and chopped up his own vehicle, cutting off the headlights.
“My wife made me mad,” Oost recalls the man saying. “I don’t want this car anymore.”
Oost had all of this in his head when he went up to see him. He calmly told the man as he stepped out of his house trailer that if he was going to fight him, Oost would call for backup and things would get worse. After he said it was a misdemeanor warrant, the man agreed without protest.
Years later, Oost was the only person he would trust. When he needed to cash his check but didn’t have an ID, Oost vouched for him at the bank.
The accumulation of good deeds has not gone unnoticed. Sure, community policing pays off in the normal ways — residents informing the police of unusual occurrences — but it also has had an unintended consequence.
“Situation in 2010, I felt like crawling under a rock,” Hutto said.
One of Parker’s officers, Mark Bomia, killed his ex-girlfriend while in uniform.
“Everybody in the department was shocked. He just snapped,” Hutto said. “We felt horrible. Our job is to safeguard the community.”
The response from the community was one of support. They showed up at the station unannounced and mailed letters and cards. People stopped them on the street to give encouragement.
“Police officers are hired to take care of citizens, not arrest them,” Oost said.
Many things have changed in Parker. When Walker started, he was the only officer; the department has nine full-time officers who sometimes handle more than 1,000 calls a month.
What is not changing is the legacy of officers rising through the ranks. Hutto worked 17 years in Parker before this promotion. He brings with him the focus on community policing.
“They do trust us in times of need,” Hutto said of the community.