Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 2, 1990 TAG: 9007020124
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: VICTORIA RATCLIFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Officers Barry Mills and Frank Wilkins, who were working South County, were dispatched to a 1:15 a.m. fight at the Holiday Inn at Tanglewood.
After asking questions, Wilkins pounded on the door of a room near where the disturbance occurred.
"Sheriff's . . . ," Wilkins yelled. Then he looked at the floor, shook his head and corrected himself.
"Police officer," he called and walked into the room.
Later, Wilkins said, "What do you expect after 16 years of banging on doors and saying, `sheriff's officer?' I knew going out of there tonight somebody would do it. It had to be me."
Wilkins, Mills and four fellow officers made Roanoke County history Sunday as the first officers on patrol for the new county Police Department.
County residents voted in November to take law enforcement duties away from an elected sheriff and turn that function over to a hired police chief who would head up a police department.
Following its regular patrol schedule, Lt. Chuck Hart's platoon pulled duty on the new department's first shift - midnight shift July 1.
People who needed police assistance Sunday morning didn't seem to realize that the officers who answered their calls in crisp new navy blue uniforms and new white police cars were the same officers who had come to their aid for years in brown uniforms and cars.
When Mills and Wilkins responded to the call at Holiday Inn, they asked night manager Patrick Conner if the patrons who were fighting were the same group who had caused problems in the motel the previous night.
Yes, Conner told them. But "county sheriffs came out last night and straightened them out," he said.
For a short time Sunday morning, there was an overlap with patrol deputies in brown uniforms and cars backing up patrol officers in blue uniforms and white cars.
Soon after the midnight shift began, Mills received a call to be on the lookout for a car on Brambleton Avenue that had been pulling in front of 18-wheelers and slowing down.
As Mills drove south on Brambleton, he met Officer Tommy Valentine driving toward him near the Orange Market at Roselawn Road. Valentine had worked the earlier shift and was wearing and driving brown.
The two officers stopped for a minute in the Orange Market parking lot. Valentine told Mills he had driven farther south on Brambleton and had not spotted the car in question.
Later, as Valentine backed up Mills on another call, he said that even though he knew to look for his fellow officers in white cars that night, "it came as a surprise when I pulled up and saw that white car. It hit me then. It was kind of a shock, but it's kind of exciting too. It's kind of sad in a way."
Valentine spoke as he waited while Mills talked to some people in the parking lot of the Cedar Ridge apartments, where a boat had slipped off a hitch and rolled into a parked car.
Butch Christian of Professional Auto Towing and Recovery had been called to the accident. "Do you know he's wearing a different uniform than you are?" Christian asked Valentine, pointing to Mills.
Valentine looked back at his brown sheriff's car parked behind Mills's white police car. "This is weird," he said.
It might have felt weird for the officers in brown. But the officers in blue were feeling excited.
They had planned to arrive in civilian clothes at 10 p.m. Saturday at the public safety building on Peters Creek Road. There, they would pick up their new cars and change into the uniforms that they couldn't wear until July 1.
Most of the officers arrived at 9 p.m.
Mills' wife, JoAnne, laughed about how her husband started preparing for the midnight shift at 4 in the afternoon.
"I asked him to go out to dinner with us, but he said, `No, no, no. I've got to get ready.' He tried on his uniform and it was too small. It was exactly like a little kid," she said.
Other officers on the midnight shift were just as excited.
"It's just like starting a new job. . . . This is the highest my morale's been in two years," said Dave Flynn, who patrols West County.
But it's the same job, isn't it? the officers were asked as they sat in the line-up room waiting to start patrol.
"No," said David Wells, who patrols South County. "It'll never be the same."
"It's a new same," Mills said.
For the last two months, deputies have posted a sheet of paper in the line-up room counting down the days until July 1. On the sheet posted Saturday night, someone had crossed out 7 hours, 2 hours and 1\ hours. The last notation - 45 minutes - was never crossed out.
It was festive in the line-up room as officers waited that last 45 minutes.
First Lt. Mike Winston had ordered a cake for the first shift. On the cake was written "To our new beginning. The best. RCPD 1990. Good Luck."
Police Chief John Cease and County Administrator Elmer Hodge attended the line-up. Several off-duty officers came in civilian clothes to witness the birth of the new department. One took pictures.
Cease told the officers it was a "pretty historic occasion. I can't tell you how proud I am we reached this point without confrontation," he said.
Cease said professional law enforcement was his goal and that one of the things that made him happiest when he came to Roanoke County was to realize what a fine group of people worked for the department. "It's a good police department," he said.
Hart told the officers to "make every effort to make a good impression with the citizens." Deputies always stood out, he said. But, citizens "will be looking at us extremely closely now. . . . Set a good example for them," Hart said.
At 11:50 p.m., the officers were eager to get on the road.
Wells left first. He turned on his lights and siren briefly as he left the parking lot. As Flynn left the lot, he gave a war whoop out of the window.
The first call was minor: a disturbance at a convenience store on Electric Road. Mills and Wilkins talked to the clerks and left soon.
As the night progressed, it became business as usual.
Mills, who said at first that it felt different to be patrolling the same district he had patrolled for years, realized that after the first couple calls he had forgotten what color uniform he was wearing.
"In one sense, it's back to work as usual," he said. "We're getting the same kinds of calls, and we're not handling anything differently just because we're police officers now. But I still, in a sense, feel like I have a new job. Our colors are new, the cars are new, the forms are new, we have a new boss. The whole department's new.
"But once the calls started going, it's `let's just go take care of work,' " Mills said.
by CNB