Editorial: True Blue

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This week the Greenwich Police Department announced that Detective Pasquale Iorfino was retiring after 28 years with the force. He has had, by all standards, a very successful career, first as a patrol officer and then as a detective. He has comforted those who needed comforting and delivered justice to those who broke the law. Chief James Heavey said it best: “Pat has proven himself time and time again to be a highly successful investigator with an unflinching desire to catch the bad guys.” After 28 years on the force we thank him for his service and for helping our community remain just that — a community.

Twenty-eight years. That is quite an accomplishment. Long gone are the days of working for one company for 40 years, retiring at 65 and receiving a gold watch. That was always more myth than fact. According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median number of years a person has been with his or her current employer is 4.6. That number is less among younger workers and more among older workers, as you would expect. However, it is nowhere near the 28 years that Detective Iorfino was with the Greenwich Police Department. It is obviously a testament to him wanting to serve his community, but it also says something about the police department itself.

Our police department resides today in a beautiful building just off Greenwich Avenue. Its artistic exterior belies a bustling safety complex that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It wasn’t always that way. When the first borough police formed in 1896, Greenwich was a much different community. The department has grown to meet the needs of society, or more appropriately, to make sure the bad guys’ needs are met fittingly. Along the way, three officers died in the line of duty. None recently, but one did involve an officer being shot and run over by someone he was trying to arrest.

Today the Greenwich Police Department has a complement of 155 sworn officers. An interesting note is that 33 of those officers, or 21 percent, served previously in the military. Military training is excellent training not just for the battlefield, but for how you behave off of it. It is duty, honor, country—or in this case, town. All of the officers, military and non-military, have one thing in common: they want to serve our community. While we sleep, they work and while we work, they work. Last year alone they answered 45,500 calls at all times of day and night and in all kinds of weather, never knowing with 100 percent certainty what sort of situation they were walking or running into.

While we like to think of ourselves as a small town, we do encounter criminal elements more common to a city. We applaud the police department in putting information out to the public that is meant to educate and remind us on how we can protect ourselves, our loved ones and our belongings. Too often we take for granted what the police department does in keeping our community safe. Which is why we are pleased to see them holding “Coffee with a Cop” this Sunday morning at Upper Crust Bagel in Old Greenwich. It demystifies the police department and is a great way to meet the officers who actually patrol your neighborhood while you sleep. To us, this is a great community service for the entire family, and we thank  Upper Crust Bagel for hosting it.

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