Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 1, 1990 TAG: 9007010262
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: VICTORIA RATCLIFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When he was young, Roanoke County's new police chief wanted to be a clinical psychologist like his father, who worked with German prisoners of war at a Michigan POW camp and later was chief of psychological services at a Pennsylvania state mental hospital.
In fact, Cease, who became a police officer to help pay his way through college, says today that he's "never really gotten that out of my system . . . I'm still a frustrated psychologist."
But in the 22 years he's been a police officer, Cease says, he's been able to put his psychology background to good use.
Cease grew up as an only child in Warren, Pa. After high school, he went to Albion College, a small, Methodist-related school in Michigan known for its high academic standards and its psychology program.
But the school also was expensive, and Cease realized during his sophomore year that he needed a job. Several fraternity brothers had gone to work at shops and foundries that supported the automobile industry and came home dirty, sweaty and exhausted each day.
One day, Cease saw in the classified ads that the city of Albion was hiring police officers. "My roommate and I joked about it," he said. "We had seen them around town, and it looked like a good job. They never seemed to do much. They wrote tickets and drove nice cars and wore clean uniforms. . . . It didn't pay much, but it looked like a better job than working in the foundries."
Cease and his roommate applied, took a test and became police officers in 1968.
Cease's first assignment was walking a beat downtown on the midnight shift. "You had a lot of opportunity to reflect - especially in the winter," he said. Albion winter temperatures could drop to 25 degrees below zero in the early morning hours, and Cease would wrap newspapers around his legs and body inside his uniform to keep warm.
He earned his first promotion after about six months: He got to ride in a patrol car. His second promotion came a year later: He got to drive the car.
"I really enjoyed it," he said of the job. "But by the end of my senior year, I still had no intention of being a police officer."
When Cease graduated with a psychology major and a minor in history, he had worked as a police officer for 2 1/2 years. He wrote a resignation letter and went to the chief's office to deliver it.
His chief, one of the few around with a college degree, refused to accept the letter. "He said, `Come back in two weeks and tell me why you want to leave police work.' "
Cease told his chief he wanted to be a psychologist, that he enjoyed studying human behavior.
But the chief argued that Cease should consider a career in police work. He said Cease was a good officer and that police work was similar to that of a psychologist. A police officer deals with human behavior - mostly abnormal human behavior - every day, he said.
The chief urged Cease to get a master's degree in criminal justice administration at Michigan State University.
Cease considered the suggestion. "I liked police work. I wasn't unhappy being a police officer. But I was still hung up on being a psychologist." But the chief prevailed. He "portrayed the job in such a way you could have the best of both worlds."
For the next two years, Cease worked full time on the midnight shift for the Albion Police Department while commuting 65 miles each way to Lansing to work on his master's. His wife drove him to class so he could study or sleep during the drive. She sat through classes with him and then helped him with his homework.
"This went on for two years," he said. "It finally got to the point I never got any sleep at all. It was a terrible life for two years."
Cease took a leave of absence from his job to work on his thesis on the psychological selection of personnel in the Pittsburgh Police Department. He compared the productivity, performance and discipline of officers who were psychologically evaluated for their jobs with those who weren't.
The study made Cease a believer in psychological testing for police officer applicants. "It takes a certain personality to be a police officer," he said.
After finishing his thesis, Cease - by now a patrol corporal - continued at the Albion Police Department.
One day, the director of public safety at Western Michigan University invited Cease to apply to be administrative assistant at the university department of public safety. "I said, `No thanks, I'm not interested in a security operation,' and I hung up the phone," Cease said.
"He called me right back and said, `Don't hang up until I tell you what I'm willing to pay.' " The salary was 25 percent more than Cease was making in Albion.
The university was getting rid of its security operation and starting a certified law enforcement operation. Cease would be responsible for recruiting, selecting and training officers, and for writing policy and procedures. He was recommended for the job by his adviser at Michigan State.
Seventeen years to the day before Cease would start a new police department in Roanoke County, he watched a new department start at Western Michigan University. "On July 1, 1973 . . . I watched the new shifts hit the road with new uniforms, new badges" and everything else that goes with a new department, he said.
Cease was appointed captain of the patrol division. He served in that position for seven years, until the public safety director retired. He then was appointed public safety director after the university conducted a nationwide search.
Cease made changes in the department. He started conducting psychological testing of applicants and he implemented new performance evaluations. He began taking advantage of computers in the university computer department and computerized much of the operation. Then he got involved in a pilot program in which the state of Michigan funded a multi-jurisdictional drug task force in the Kalamazoo area. Cease was elected chairman of the task force.
The task force was "very successful," he said. And it made him realize he was getting bored. His department "ran real smooth and I got caught up in the drug thing. I realized I wanted to go back into municipal law enforcement."
Cease began looking for a chief's job in a university community. The job in Morgantown, W.Va., came open and Cease applied.
The job went to someone else who didn't work out. Four months later, Cease got a call from a new Morgantown city manager - Doug Fawcett - who asked if he still was interested. The city manager who had initially interviewed Cease for the job had penciled `Second choice, not bad' at the top of Cease's application, Fawcett said.
Cease was interested. After another selection process, he got the job.
He learned something from his predecessor's mistakes: "They don't change . . . football teams, they change coaches. I don't consider myself a chief. I consider myself a team leader. You're only as good as your people make you look. You need resources to make them look good so they ultimately make you look good."
Rioting students
When Cease went to Morgantown in 1983, the main issue confronting the police department was its relationship with West Virginia University and its 19,500 students, Fawcett said.
The department and university "had a negative attitude toward one another," and Cease "turned that around fairly quickly," he said.
Morgantown had erupted into a war zone, particularly on football game weekends, with drunken students taking over streets, rioting and setting bonfires, according to a number of people interviewed for this article.
George Taylor, then-vice president for student affairs at the univerisity, worked with Cease to improve relations between the department and the university and to resolve problems with students who had become uncontrollable.
"I saw him come into a situation and, through the use of leadership, do some things that were quite different," said Taylor, now vice president for student affairs at California State University in Los Angeles.
"John showed he was interested in getting to know the university, its students and its staff. That may seem insignificant . . . But he asked questions. He asked the right questions. He sought to get to know the individuals . . . and then to work with the university in planned ways . . . to develop a strategy for making law enforcement in Morgantown respected in a community that was highly educated and tended to question everything."
Taylor and others praised programs Cease implemented to improve relations between the two groups.
He was instrumental in establishing a community action committee made up of students, business leaders, members of city government, university administrators and clergy. "This was the leadership of the community sitting around a table discussing how we could cooperate to achieve desired results," Taylor said.
Cease formed a program for students to ride along with police officers. Ron Justice, administrative assistant in student affairs at the university, said that program let students see first-hand what police officers' jobs were like.
"It gave students a chance to know police officers and it gave them a contact person in the police department if they had problems. Through that, they formed a very good bond."
Each semester, Cease attended student meetings and said, "These are our rules, here's what we expect, but what can we do to help you?" Justice said.
Cease's efforts paid off, he said. Five years ago, Justice - who carries a pager - was called out regularly by university police to handle student problems. "Last year, I was paged out twice - for minor noise infractions," he said.
Where before students had gotten into major confrontations with police, they began calling Cease to say "We're planning a social event, what can we do to stay within the law," Justice said.
"He's very, very fair. He let the fraternities and sororities know he would be running operations for underage drinking. He told them how to stay within the law, how to card people and how to spot fake IDs. Then, when he had the raids, it was no surprise. And if you're caught, you can't say you weren't warned," Justice said.
A talker
"John's a straight shooter. He'll let you know where he's coming from. He often has to take a strong stance, and it's not one everyone always agrees with," Justice said.
"His personality is the reason for his success. He's not wishy-washy, but he will compromise. He's always open to suggestions."
Said Taylor: "John is a communicator. He believes in sharing information."
"He's a talker," said Bill Smyth, Cease's assistant chief and now acting chief in Morgantown. The joke around Morgantown, Smyth said, was "Ask him what time it is and he'll tell you how to build a clock."
Fawcett agreed. "He's very outgoing, very extroverted. Some people have this vision of the police chief as the paramilitary Army colonel type. He's certainly not that."
But Cease does believe in discipline, those interviewed said.
"He puts fair and consistent rules in place and he enforces them fairly strictly," Fawcett said. "You knew what was expected of you as an officer. If you met that standard, you were rewarded. If not, appropriate action was taken."
Both Fawcett and the current Morgantown city manager, Dennis Poluga, said they worked well with Cease, even if they didn't always agree with him.
Both said he would fight hard for causes he believed in. "John's a good trooper," Poluga said. "He'll fight internally as long as he thinks he's got a chance. He'll fight until the decision is made and then he'll follow the policy."
Several people said other department heads in Morgantown government often complained because they felt Cease and the police department got more than their share of city money. But, Poluga and Fawcett said, it was because Cease was more prepared in defending his budget requests.
"He doesn't mind overwhelming you with justifications," Poluga said. "Others were not as thorough."
Smyth, his assistant chief, said Cease learned how to negotiate with city government officials. "A lot of other department heads were sort of jealous of John. He got what he wanted. But he documented and justified why he needed things."
Smyth said the Morgantown Police Department had needed a new public safety building for years before Cease came to the city. "I thought I'd leave here without seeing a new building," he said.
But Cease pushed for a new facility and was the driving force behind the new one that will be occupied this summer by the department, Smyth said. "A lot of other department heads call it the John H. Cease Memorial Building," he said.
Training a priority
Internally, Cease also made an impression.
After a string of police chiefs in a short period of time, "John came in and really straightened the thing out," Poluga said.
"He took a department that was kind of provincial and upgraded the level of professionalism quite a bit. A lot of people [in the department] now are strongly management-oriented and capable."
Cease puts a high priority on training, several people interviewed said. Once he has a capable team in place, he can become more policy-oriented and community-oriented, instead of focusing on day-to-day operational matters, they said.
Poluga said he expected Cease to "give everybody a fair chance" in the Roanoke county police department.
"If he feels there are deficiencies there, he'll train them. If they still can't perform, he'll make their lives miserable one way or the other. John won't put up with people who aren't doing their job. I don't think he'll have any qualms about finding a way to get rid of them, demote them or move them into other jobs," Poluga said.
Conversely, Poluga said, "the better people have been able to move through the ranks" in the Morgantown police department. "They've had his support."
Smyth, who was a corporal when Cease came to Morgantown, said his former boss "doesn't want a bunch of yes-men running around. I've been able to sit down and talk to him, and we always agree to disagree."
When the two did disagree, Smyth said, "a lot of times, he'd change his mind. That's what I liked. I had input."
In Morgantown, Cease created a job improvement committee in which rank-and-file officers could make suggestions or point out problems.
He devised an evaluation process for his officers that has been used as a model for other police departments, according to Bud Goodwin, the professor whom Cease recruited to help create it.
Marcia Ashdown, first assistant prosecutor in Morgantown, said her office had a good relationship with Cease. "He's a person who likes to work toward the resolution of problems, even if it involves compromise on his part. Someone who is willing to compromise accomplishes more than someone who's hardheaded."
Ashdown said officers who worked for Cease respected him. When one of the several chiefs before Cease left Morgantown, Ashdown said, officers threw a party. "There was no party like that this time. They're generally sorry to see him leave."
Joe Bartolo, the sheriff of nearby Monongalia County, W.Va., said he, too, had a good working relationship with Cease. "I'm sorry to see him leave. . . . You get along with him better as you get to know him better. We got to the point where we got along very well, and then he leaves town."
Several people interviewed mentioned Cease's organizational skills as one of his strengths.
"John is an organized thinker, a focused thinker," said Taylor. "He knows how to put the pieces of a puzzle together . . . He is a master at planning. The more you plan, the better you can execute. Some people would say he overplans."
Bartolo agreed. "He does a lot of planning. He'll have that place dissected and know where all the problems are."
Many said Cease anticipates potential problems and then turns them into positive situations.
"He is a teacher - I would say a master teacher," Taylor said. "He keeps up with his trade. He reads his books. He keeps up with issues that are evolving."
White-water rafting
Cease also gets involved in community affairs.
"John will be involved in the library, the parks, the children, the senior citizens," Taylor said. "John will know that community better than somebody who's been there 40 years - probably in about a month."
As for his interests, "John is an excellent cook . . . John likes to fish and he likes to talk," Taylor said. "I think he's a born comedian."
He's also a fanatic about trains - a hobby his son also has become interested in.
"I play with model trains. I look at real trains. I take photographs of them. I read books about them," Cease said. That interest came from spending time with his grandfather, who worked for the Bessemer and Lake Erie railroad in Pennsylvania for 50 years.
Cease also enjoys canoeing and white-water rafting - another hobby he plans to pursue in the Roanoke area.
Cease said he decided to apply to be Roanoke County police chief because he was getting bored again. "Accreditation and finishing the new building was the only thing perking my interest."
He checked into the position and decided that starting a new department was the challenge he was looking for. "It was the opportunity to do it. I really wanted to try it. It's an ego thing. The problems that were explained to me were all things I've done before. It was almost a made-for-order situation. And it's a nice feather in your cap professionally if you can do it successfully."
Cease said the Roanoke area also was made to order for his family. They wanted to move south and stay in the mountains, he said. After looking at the community, they decided it was right for them, he said.
But, he said, he probably will leave Roanoke County eventually.
"There's no place to go . . . to expand professionally unless you go to another organization," he said.
But, he said, he could be in the county for five or 10 years or even for the rest of his career. "I certainly don't want to leave in a couple years," he said.
"The objective here for me is to work myself out of a job - to build a management team that works efficiently and effectively."
Many of those interviewed said that's exactly what he did in Morgantown.
Poluga said Smyth stands a good chance of taking his former boss's job. "John put a good system in place. What we may need now is maintenance," he said.
Taylor said it differently: Cease, he said, "is not just a police chief. He's a leader. The mark of leadership is the ability to leave behind in others the will to carry on. If you review Morgantown, you will see the will to carry on."
by CNB