Last Friday Mayor Joshua García interviewed the finalist for the position of Holyoke Policde Chief. For about an hour and through a dozen questions, Capt. Brian Keenan of the Springfield Police Department answered questions that the mayor already had plus those from community members. In the end, trhe mayor was very pleased with Capt. Keenand offered him the top cop job. Details about the contract will be released soon.

Holyoke Media recorded the entire interview.

We also are highlighting several of Capt. Keenan’s responses below:

COMING UP THROUGH THE RANKS

1- “I worked in the patrol. I worked in the Narcotics Bureau. I worked in the patrol again. After 13 years, I was promoted to the rank of Sergeant. I was a patrol sergeant. I worked in the police academy. I did a police academy class where I was fortunate enough to train Officer Babbitt and Captain Montfort and a lot of Holyoke other officers that we met with.”

Capt. Brian Keenan

OUTSIDER/INSIDER

2- “I’m fairly certain that I’m the only guy from North Weymouth, Massachusetts, who’s ever been a captain in Springfield Police Department and is a correctional officer in the county Sheriff’s Department. I’ve been an outside guy my whole career, and with the coming to Holyoke, I’m an outside candidate, but I’m a local guy. I’ve worked in conjunction with the Holyoke Police on training issues. We’ve worked on the lobbying issues at the Statehouse. We’ve worked with them in several narcotics and gun operations over the years. I’ve made arrests in these streets. I’ve been through the doors and hallways and the streets. I’ve been part of tactical operations on the streets.”

DISCIPLINE

3- “I’m attenuated enough that I’m objective if I come to the Holyoke Police Department, there’s no good boy network. You’ll be judged on your merit if you’ve been in a position for a long time when you haven’t done any work. The position belongs to the Holyoke Police Department. It doesn’t belong to Detective Jones or Detective Smith. By being an external guy, you also bring in fresh perspectives. You do a lot of things great in Holyoke. You got some very, very talented, brave, bold police officers that go out there and do a very dangerous job with low staffing conditions. But I think new perspectives might help.”

POLICING CULTURE

4- Policing can be a testosterone driven business where people aren’t always most accepting of others and it can be very competitive. And then there’s also a culture of haves and have nots. The detectives, the uniform guys think the detectives have too much time off. The detective guys are mad because the uniform guys aren’t on call. These things happen when there’s no communication. These things happen when people don’t sit at the table. These things also happen, Mayor, when people are in positions for too long. If you’re in unifor officer in the Holyoke York Police Department and you’ve been working your tail off and you’re bringing in guns and you’re bringing in drugs and you’re making great arrests and you write an awesome report and you don’t see a career path. You’re going to get frustrated. And oftentimes if you’re an older guy who’s been a detective for 30 years and you’ve had enough, but you really don’t want to go because when you’re in those type units, you become a brotherhood. You don’t want to walk away. Sometimes you need help from the boss to move those guys on, and they’re happier when they do it and they can find a leadership.”

SPEEDING

5- “And speeding enforcement is difficult because to look at it both ways, I know how a lot of the officers think. They think that, you know, if I write this guy a ticket, he’s going to have to pick whether he pays the ticket or he buys groceries for his family. That’s where officers sometimes are quagmire with these with these ticket things. But I understand all this. It’s a fine balance between compassion and enforcement. We have to be able to do both. And that comes from leadership, that comes from direction, that comes your drug dealing issues in your prostitution issues requires your vice captain, lieutenant, whatever you whatever the commander is to say: ‘This Thursday, we’re doing prostitution. Next Thursday we’re doing we’re doing drugs. Task Force Agent Smith.’ Get me five guys and they will get you the five guys, and then you do it.”

SPRINGFIELD PD UNDER FEDERAL INVESTIGATION FOR ABUSE

6- “So let’s talk about this. What’s the elephant? Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. So the (United States) Department of Justice launched a pattern and practice investigation into alleged excessive force in the Springfield Police Narcotics Unit prior to me being there. Right. As a result of that, there was a federal grand jury, there was a federal thing with up didn’t result in any convictions. And then there was also the civil suit which determined some problems that determined some structural problems in the Springfield Police Department. So the biggest problem was improper documentation. And if you wrote a report and I this might be egghead policing a little too much, right? There was no centralized reporting repository for use of force information. … So we couldn’t find the records. That was that was number one. They were able to find that everything was substantiated, but it should have been quicker and actionable. And the number two of these in these issues came because of lack of proper policy, lack and lack of proper training and a lack of infrastructure to to keep to keep up with these things. … We’re in the 21st century with use of force, reporting and training and it took outside eyes.”

Mayor Joshua García and Personnel Director Kelly Curran

STRATEGIC PLAN

7- “And then the biggest, then the big three up the top, the big three up the top with the important ones, the strategic plan, the community outreach, the building, the partnership with the trust. And the third one is escaping me now. But it’s known it’s there, but everything working toward accreditation. If we work towards accreditation, you’ll never have a consent decree and we have to work towards certification as prescribed by post and it’s my assertion if post was enacted 15 years ago, the Springfield Police Department wouldn’t have a consent decree because the state is mandating what we all we should and. … I believe that that if should I be the police chief, that’s my guide to how we’re going to work through things because the heavy lifting is done. It identifies the strengths, threats, weaknesses and opportunities that we have here that you have in your police department.”

SLUMLORDS

8- ” We have to identify these landlords and we have to let them know you’re not going to live in Newton and your $4 million house and have derelict properties in Holyoke or you’re going to be in Housing Court everyday.”

KNOWING PEOPLE BY FIRST NAMES

9- “Officers have to get out of the cruisers and meet the people who live there. What I’ve noticed in policing is the technology has been a double-edged sword. A lot of these younger officers, they can they could find Whitey Bulger with Facebook. However, they don’t know. They don’t know the guy who owns the gas station on their beat by his first name. And so we have to get the cops out of the cruisers and out of the house and making those contacts with people. Police leaders have to come to community meetings. It has to be zero on a first name basis with as many folks as you can.”

LEADERSHIP

10- “The clearest indication that there’s no discipline in the police department is, is when you start to see the appearance of the officer on the street deteriorate, very important things with discipline. It has to be consistent and it has to be equitable or else it doesn’t work. Everyone has to be held to the same standards.”