Confederate Gold and Silver (2 page)

Paul was the type of boss who saw the potential in so many of the troopers who worked for him over the years. As two of his sergeants had done for him early in his career, he had done the same for those he had supervised. He spent hours and hours of his own personal time helping them to develop their skills so they could be successful in their careers. He was happy to help anyone. When a kick in the pants was needed he had not been afraid to do that either, but it was always done in private, never in front of others. As Paul was not bashful about telling someone they had screwed up, he was often the first one to pay a compliment to a member of his staff who had accomplished something significant. He always took the time to publicly praise his staff when they solved a particular case and he often stepped to the rear so his troopers were the ones who received the recognition from the state police command staff for a job well done. The troopers and detectives who worked for him knew he often did that for them and they appreciated him for those gestures.

Giving a kick in the pants to someone was something which sometimes had to be done. Most times it got the desired result. But after Paul had done it to you twice and you had not responded accordingly, he wrote you off and you soon found yourself back on the road, writing tickets and investigating accidents instead of working in an investigative assignment. As a lifelong New York Yankee fan, work was unlike baseball. When it came to work you had two strikes with him and then you were out. Three strikes was never an option for him as he did not have the patience or the inclination to give you that third strike. In his world after the second strike it was over and you had struck out with him. He had the juice to transfer his few problem children back to the road and he did so without any regrets.

While Paul sometimes needed to motivate certain members of his staff to get them refocused on what they should be doing, no one ever had to kick him in the pants to get him back on track. Hand him any type of assignment which needed addressing, such as a murder needing to be solved, a bank robbery to investigate, a command to take over because it had been underachieving, or a complex narcotics wiretap to run, those were the matters which were never a problem for him to take on as they were the issues he excelled at. He looked forward to issues and problems; it was the mundane police work which bored him. The problem assignments which were handed to him always had the problems resolved by the time he was done. Those assignments were always thoroughly completed as Paul’s work ethic was beyond reproach; so were his ethics in dealing with others. Well, at least most of the time they were.

Sometimes he stepped on people’s toes, sometimes egos got ruffled, and sometimes it even got physical, but the job always got done. “Get it done; I don’t care how you do it, just as long as it’s legal, ethical, and moral. Just get it done.” That had been the motto he lived by. Whatever the assignment was, Paul and his troops always got it done very well.

One of the last investigations Paul conducted was an Internal Affairs investigation which the Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety personally directed him to handle due to the sensitivity of the matter at hand. He argued with the commissioner over being handed this assignment, but he had lost the fight. He was now forced to take on an investigation he wanted no part of. This investigation involved the Governor’s office, the media, and a fellow member of the state police department who was alleged to have been involved in some minor criminal activity. The subject of this investigation had come up through the ranks with Paul and was a somewhat friend of his.

The allegations made against this fellow command staff member had been suspect from the beginning, but by the time the investigation had been handed to Paul they really stunk. They continued to stink the entire time he investigated the case as the media whipped the sensational allegations onto the front page of several Connecticut daily newspapers for weeks. When his lengthy investigation was completed he had justified enough of the facts, which others had summarily dismissed early on, that his investigation helped to clear the false allegations made against his friend. But as he had done so many times before, Paul had not been content enough to just clear his friend; he kept investigating when others would have been content enough to stop there. His persistent efforts at digging at the other facts of the investigation led to new evidence being discovered. This evidence resulted in another senior command staff member and two other state employees being charged with several criminal violations, as well as with several administrative violations. The investigation had been an unpleasant one to conduct as no cop likes to have to investigate another cop, but for Paul it had been
“just
business”
as usual, even though his thorough investigation had brought him some personal satisfaction in the end.

During the criminal trial following his investigation, Paul was present on every opportunity he could be. During the trial’s closing arguments, and later during the sentencing phase, he listened as the presiding judge, and the Senior Assistant State’s Attorney who had prosecuted the case, both made strong comments publicly criticizing the state police commander Paul’s investigation had identified as being complicit in a variety of serious criminal activity. To make matters worse, when Paul’s report was obtained under a Freedom of Information request the media had made, the report identified Major Thomas Barlow as the person directly responsible for conducting unauthorized criminal investigations on several state employees. Part of those unauthorized investigations also included Barlow illegally accessing state police computer files for personal use and falsely obtaining copies of the employee’s financial records. Barlow had also participated in a variety of questionable off-duty activities during the same time these unauthorized investigations were being conducted. Paul’s reports detailed all of these transgressions in significant detail. Both the criminal conduct and the administrative violations were clear violations of the
State
Police
Administrative
and
Operations
Manual
regarding personal conduct.

Barlow then made the additional mistake of commenting publicly on the results of the investigation. In doing so he lied to the media, blaming others for the crimes and violations he had been accused of. Paul knew there would be hell to pay over the investigation’s findings because of Barlow’s close relationship with the governor, but he did not care as he knew it would be well worth it. Plus it had been the right thing to do. Sitting in Hartford’s Superior Court, Paul had a thought about Barlow just before he was sentenced. “Payback can be a bitch!” He then listened as an obviously upset Judge James Washington berated Barlow in open court for his criminal conduct and falsehoods. Paul had never cared for him as he thought he was a two-faced publicity hound, but he had not gloated when Barlow was found guilty of the charges against him. He did allow himself to take a little pride in his own work when Barlow was finally dismissed from the state police a week after the criminal trial had concluded. It was really more personal satisfaction than gloating, but whatever it was he was pleased Barlow was finally gone from the ranks of the state police.

Paul’s efforts in investigating this matter received many favorable comments from within the state police and from several Connecticut newspapers as the investigation had shown that cops can police themselves. However, because the governor did not like his association with Barlow being mentioned in police reports or in the newspapers, Paul was soon transferred to an administrative assignment that he was totally unprepared for. It was a transfer he never saw coming.

The one thing Paul could never tolerate in his career was administrative bullshit. Now his new assignment, one which required him to attend the same boring and repetitive meetings each and every month listening to the ass kissers who agreed with every decision or with every new worthless program the commissioner and his civilian staff dreamed up, gave him heaping doses of administrative bullshit. During these meetings he often found himself daydreaming and wondering what cases his detectives were working. When he did pay attention during these meetings it was not for long. “No wonder nothing ever gets done at headquarters. All of these morons are sitting in meetings all day instead of being in touch with the troopers in the field. They are the ones who are doing the real work.” Paul had always tried not to invoke the mentality others in the field had when they referred to headquarters types of people, but now he found himself mixed in with them. “Guilty, but through association only and not for much longer!”

Paul tried every way possible to cope with his headquarters assignment. He gave it a new chance every month or so, but after several months of trying, and after he had met with the state police commissioner for a second time to try to get back to the field, he realized the commissioner was simply a political hack of the governor. Even though he had just completed a long and difficult sensitive investigation, one the commissioner had personally selected him for due to his acquired investigative skills; it seemed as if his hard work did not matter. Despite his requests to be reassigned back to his previous assignment, one the state police had spent thirty years training him for, his requests fell on the commissioner’s deaf ears. He now knew the commissioner would only do what he thought was best for his own career and would do only those things which would keep him out of the governor’s dog house. The commissioner, who he had openly defended in the past from previous criticism, was someone who now proved to be a person who did not have the spine to do the right thing, not only for Paul, but for the department as well. He now had not only lost Paul’s confidence, but had also started to lose the confidence of many other senior command staff members as well. On the day he left his second meeting with the commissioner, he knew the end of his run had come. He went home that evening and told his wife, Donna, he was done. “They’re trying to fit a round peg in the proverbial square hole and it’s not going to be me. I’ve tried talking to Commissioner Cagney and I’ve tried reasoning with him, but it’s no use talking to him about something he won’t do anything about. Men with principle and conviction stand up for what they know is right, but he won’t ever stand up. I’m getting out as it’s time for me to do something else in life.”

During the last week of Paul’s thirty plus years in law enforcement, few people learned of his decision to retire and many never knew he had left until after he was gone. Even the day before he retired, he had taken one of his former secretaries out to lunch to celebrate her birthday and had kept news of his retirement quiet even from her. He wanted it that way and he jokingly threatened those he had told about his retirement plans with bodily harm if they told anyone else. He had joined the state police department without any fanfare and now he wanted to leave the same way. Pomp and circumstance had its place, but he had always detested it being directed at him. He quickly nixed any mention of a retirement party.

As he wound down the last couple days at work, Paul finished up the few loose ends which remained. This included turning in most of his gear and his assigned undercover car. “I guess I’ll have to go and buy a car now. I haven’t owned one in over thirty years,” he told Michael Smarz, manager of Fleet Operations for the state police when he turned in his Chevy Impala. Turning in his assigned gear, he only kept two souvenirs from his career; his state police badge and his Connecticut State Police ID card. “I might need these someday,” Paul thought as he signed off on paperwork at the Quartermaster’s Office. Without anyone noticing, he slipped both items into his jacket pocket.

Paul had one of his detectives drive him home after his last day of work and it was a difficult ride for him to experience. As he stood in his driveway watching his detective drive away, tears washed down his face. It was difficult for him to realize his dream was finally over.

******

While the ride home on the last day of work was difficult, the really difficult part was just beginning. Paul and Donna had wrestled for months over whether she should also retire when he did. While it took a couple of more weeks for her to make the decision to do so, somewhat reluctantly she retired as well. Paul had spent the past several years laying the seeds, dropping regular hints to his family that he wanted to retire to the Pawleys Island area of South Carolina. Now it was time to make the move.

For the past twenty-two years Paul and his family had vacationed in the greater Myrtle Beach area with other family members and friends. It was during those trips that Paul’s idea of retiring to a warmer winter climate had grown. The beautiful Grand Strand, with its great beaches, warm weather, plentiful restaurants, and numerous golf courses, helped to convince Donna that this was the time to make the move. They looked forward to starting a new chapter in their lives together and being able to do so when they were still relatively young and healthy enough to enjoy it.

Donna Waring had been a somewhat reluctant supporter of the move to South Carolina as she also had a career she loved. She had looked forward to spending many more years at her career and to developing her skills even further in the financial field. Her financial skills had allowed her to work her way up from a part-time teller’s position with the Newtown Bank and Trust to a branch manager’s position at one of the bank’s busiest branches. As much as she loved her position with the bank, the bank administrators loved her even more. In her they had found someone they could trust to train new managers and someone who could be counted on to resolve the most complex financial problems some of their customers had encountered during the market’s downturn. When they learned she was retiring, they knew she would be difficult to replace.

Donna’s somewhat reluctance to move south also was due in part to the fact she liked the stability of her life in Connecticut. She had a beautiful home, her career was flourishing, she had a wide variety of friends, and most importantly their two children, Brian and Sean, lived close by. While her two boys were now up and out on their own, and while both were doing well for themselves, they were still her babies. Brian had recently purchased a home in Southbury; he had a nice career at Costco and was active in the town’s volunteer fire department. Sean was living nearby in Waterbury and was teaching physical education at a nearby local elementary school. He had recently surprised Donna when he told her of his engagement to a fellow teacher. It was going to be tough for her to leave them. She knew her boys did not need them to manage their daily lives any longer, but deep down Donna always wanted them to need her. She was a mother who truly loved being a mother to her two boys.