Wash. Officers Accept Buyouts, Spare Colleagues' Jobs
Jan. 01--When he was 20, Bob Sheehan worked part time as the night clerk in a liquor store in Newport, R.I.
During the cold winter nights, a beat cop nicknamed Shorty Kelly used to come in to warm up and talk to the young Sheehan. The two were from the same neighborhood, and Kelly talked to Sheehan about police work.
The conversations were life-changing for Sheehan.
"He kind of convinced me it would be a good thing for me," Sheehan, 57, said recently.
Sheehan joined the Air Force, served four years with the security police and then landed a job with the Tacoma Police Department. Now, more than three decades later, he has turned in his badge and retired from his law enforcement career.
Sheehan, the department's assistant chief of Investigations, is one of seven police officers who retired today to take advantage of a buyout offer.
The city offered general-government workers who are eligible to retire a $12,000 lump-sum buyout as a way to help deal with a $31 million budget shortfall.
Also retiring from the Police Department are:
* Assistant Police Chief Richard McCrea.
* Detective Steve Shake.
* Sgt. Dennis Kieffer.
* Patrol officer Don Nelson.
* Patrol specialist Chris Anderson.
* Patrol officer Bill Budinich.
The seven officers have more than 224 years of combined service to Tacoma residents.
"We are going to miss them," Police Chief Don Ramsdell said. "All of them have been productive members of our department for years."
McCrea has been an assistant chief for more than eight years, including overseeing the Administrative Services and the Investigations bureaus.
Shake was the department's longtime sketch artist. He also administered the agency's polygraph tests.
During their decades on the street, Kieffer, Nelson, Anderson and Budinich all were cited by their commanders for their work.
Sheehan spent the past five years as an assistant chief and primarily oversaw the Operations Bureau. He worked in all three bureaus; served on the SWAT team as a negotiator and as a sniper; and investigated child abuse, burglaries and robberies.
He helped with the campaign to build a new headquarters and substations and then, once voters approved the measure in 2002, shepherded the project along as each building was designed and constructed.
"I have had a great career," Sheehan said.
The number of retirements -- and that they are occurring at one time -- is unique to the Police Department.
But the combination of the city's buyout offer and the chance to save the jobs of some of the younger officers was an opportunity most of the veterans couldn't pass up, Ramsdell said.
The city has proposed laying off 56 police employees -- 52 of whom are the least senior patrol officers. The retirements will save the jobs of at least seven young patrol officers, Ramsdell said.
"The people who are at the retirement stage recognize that," he said. "It's an extremely tough decision to make."
Stacey Mulick: 253-597-8268
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Copyright 2012 - The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash.