THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607280097
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: JEFFREY S. HAMPTON, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: 120 lines
A drug dealer recently telephoned William Olin ``Olie'' Leary to congratulate him on his retirement after 30 years with the Elizabeth City Police Department.
``I hope you never come back,'' the dealer said. ``I think it's going to be easier now.''
``No, it won't,'' Leary said. ``Because Joe Tade and the rest of the boys are still out there.''
Leary and Tade have arrested the dealer previously. He's out again, but that's another story.
Capt. Leary, 51, a narcotics investigator for nearly three decades, retired July 1 with a statewide reputation among law officers and drug dealers as the cop who always gets his man.
``I think he was the best investigator I've ever run across,'' said Lt. Tade about his partner of 20 years. ``He was born to do it.''
Last week, Leary sat in the living room of his home and reminisced about his career.
The long and lean Leary wore shorts, a T-shirt, ball cap and boat shoes with no socks. About two weeks' growth of beard covered his face.
``This is the first time I've ever been able to grow one,'' he said, rubbing the stubble and grinning. ``I wanted to see what it looked like.''
Beards have been against regulations for Leary since 1966, when former Police Chief W.C. Owens swore him in and gave him a gun. No bullets, just a gun. He was two months shy of his 21st birthday, so he wasn't allowed to carry a loaded weapon.
That was no obstacle, however, for a green and eager Leary. He came across a drunk a week or so later and tried to arrest him. The drunk resisted. Leary bopped him on the head a few times with a nightstick and dragged him to the police station, proud of nabbing his first offender. To his surprise, the sergeant rebuked him and released the drunk. No bullets before age 21, and no arrests before age 21, he found out.
Leary was making $55 for a six-day workweek and loving it. The older police officers took him in and taught him how to survive on the streets as a cop.
One officer told him: ``Before you set the world on fire, you've got to light your match.''
Leary followed that advice by learning everything he could about being a cop. He even rode with officers on his day off. One of the first lessons he learned was that not everybody respects a police uniform.
Leary was on duty at a football game one Friday night when a fight broke out in the stands. He waded into the crowd absolutely certain that his police uniform was a suit of armor. Not so.
He was beaten severely. ``I held on to one of them, though. I arrested him.''
Leary and one of his first partners, Frank Cutchens, gained a reputation for always being in the middle of things.
Chief Owens once told them, ``In police work, if you're not getting complaints, you're not doing your job. You guys must be working overtime.''
``I have a lot of respect for Chief Owens,'' Leary said. ``He was tough but fair.''
Owens returns the respect. ``He took a real interest in police work early in his career. As time went on he developed into one the finest police officers I've ever known.''
After Leary made his first drug arrest in 1969, he spent the next 27 years chasing drug dealers, and they didn't like it.
A drug dealer once phoned Leary and described his wife's car and what she was wearing. He also described in detail what his daughter was wearing to school.
``He never threatened me or them, he just asked me how my family was doing,'' Leary said.
Incensed, Leary doubled his efforts to get the guy. A few weeks later, Leary and Tade busted him. Leary asked him politely, ``How's your family?''
The guy said, ``I knew I'd made a mistake when I did that.''
Leary said he misses his work, but he doesn't miss such threats - or phone calls from informants in the middle of the night. Leary had a host of informants. That's one of the reasons he was so effective.
``An informant is worth three or four policemen,'' Leary said.
An informant once led him to find and bust some heroin dealers. The ringleader, who wasn't caught, wanted revenge on the small-town cop. What followed might have been a scene from a television police drama:
The dealer sent some thugs to Leary's house to teach him a lesson. Late that night, Leary heard someone pounding on his front door. Before answering the door, Leary put a pistol in his back pocket. When he opened the door, four men pushed their way in. One guy said, ``We're here for some drugs.''
``You're at the wrong place,'' Leary said.
``We don't think so,'' the man said.
Leary pulled out his pistol and slugged the man with the butt of the handle. The man dropped a four-inch switch-blade knife on the carpet. Leary ordered all four men to lie down on his front lawn while his wife called the police. Leary talked tough to intimidate the men until police arrived.
Then he noticed that his gun was unloaded.
``My voice changed, and my knees started knocking,'' Leary recalled. Though it seemed like an hour before police got there, they arrived within a few minutes of the phone call.
Leary didn't press charges. Instead, he gave the men a warning: ``You go back and tell your dope dealer to come over here himself next time.''
Even his daughter's boyfriends shy away from him. Leary insists he's an old softie, and he's famous for pulling practical jokes. He loves to fish and play golf now that he has free time.
``People don't realize, police are human beings, too,'' Leary said.
Leary has three children from two marriages. He's been married to the former Juanita Sawyer for 17 years. Juanita is an excellent cook - and good with a gun, Leary said. She has run belligerent informants out of her house and dealt with threats on her life. And she is mother to many of the young police officers who often come over for dinner.
The job is tough on everybody involved.
``Police work cost me my first marriage,'' Leary said. ``It cost me a knee, a back operation and several scars. Police work is hard work with low pay and long hours.
``When I first came on the police force, an officer told me, `Congratulations. You're now an official SOB.' Well, I'm proud to have been a part of that bunch of SOBs. I would do it all over again. I loved every minute of it.''
Immediately after he retired, Leary signed on as a part-time deputy for the Pasquotank County Sheriff's Department. He will help with drug investigations. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JEFFREY S. HAMPTON
William Olin ``Olie'' Leary even once ``got his man'' before he was
old enough. Leary's first arrest, in 1966, was nullified because he
wasn't yet 21.
KEYWORDS: ELIZABETH CITY POLICE RETIREMENT by CNB