July 20, 2006

Officer Al Pierce is retiring after 15 years with the Yellow Springs Police Department.

By Lauren Heaton

The hardhat, the list of village residents by street and the plastic-protected copy of the Village ordinances are just a few of the tools and information stashed in the front seat of car 110, the one that Yellow Springs police officer Alfred Pierce drives. Not many other officers carry a whole office in their cruiser, but Pierce, who retires next week after 15 years with the department, needs all the resources available to be as helpful as possible to the public, he said in a recent interview. It’s part of the community-oriented policing approach he has found successful because it gives people information to make choices about their behavior.

“No one starts off wanting to do bad,” he said. “People really want to come around; they really want peace.”

As a 1972 graduate of the Antioch College social work program, Pierce said he had a save-the-world attitude toward solving social problems that carried him from his work as a child welfare caseworker to a career in law enforcement using similar listening and counseling skills. He worked for 13 years with the Central State University Police Department before joining the Yellow Springs force under Chief Jim McKee.

McKee practiced law enforcement with the understanding that many of the activities that lead to a violation of the law come from social problems, Pierce said. State and federal laws need to be enforced, he said, but as first responders, police officers and dispatchers can resolve many issues through preventative response to the smaller complaints, such as barking dogs, neighbor disputes and doing house checks while people are away.

“I’ve seen it work; I’ve had success at working through people’s problems without using the law,” he said. “You can resolve these things before they escalate into more serious issues.”

That’s where the ordinances and other easily accessible information about the law come in. Pierce will often open his three-ring binder with the Village code and show a resident exactly how he or she happens to be transgressing the law. He has often dealt with youth that way, using the occasional incident with a skateboarder on the sidewalk as an opportunity to start a dialogue about the subtle elements of a crime.

“I’ll ask them, ‘Did you know that if one believes physical harm can come to them they can request a charge of menacing?’ and the kid’ll say, ‘What?!!’” Pierce said, giving the impression of a grimace. “Or the men with their pants half way down their legs and their hands in their pockets, I ask them if they know they could be accused of public masturbation, and they go, ‘What?!’”

Local youth have handed out surprises of their own, too, such as one year when Pierce cleverly stationed his cruiser at the high school on the night of the senior prank and the next morning found that someone had papered his car.

Pierce’s ability to relate to people and talk to them has also helped him with more serious incidents, such as in September 1997 when he was called to respond to a resident who was holding a woman and a baby at gun-point in a store in King’s Yard. According to Police Chief John Grote, who was then a co-worker on the force, Pierce was able to talk the offender into letting him take the baby and prevented anyone from being hurt.

“Given the magnitude of that situation, he processed a lot of things going on very quickly. He took charge of the situation and kept things safe and in control so that it didn’t break down,” Grote said. “Al’s got the gift of gab. He could engage people and de-escalate situations, and you could feel the tension ease.”

Pierce’s job hasn’t always involved crime prevention, and often what he’s enjoyed most are the little things he could do to help people, such as giving directions, helping stranded motorists or handing out brochures about the different places to shop and eat in town, he said. He always tried to provide his service with a smile and be courteous, even when he had to arrest someone, he said.

“It’s hard sometimes, but I’m deeply rooted in the belief of Jehovah God, and I send a daily request for guidance to help me deal with our human problems, my own character flaws and hopefully be a fair person,” he said.

The obvious challenge with being an officer in a small town, Pierce said, is that he has to enforce laws that people, many of whom he knows, are violating. It is also a job that takes credibility, he said, living off-duty under the scrunity of the public and going by the same rules he enforces. “People might not like your law enforcement, but if they know you’re credible, they can bear it,” he said.

Pierce’s meticulous nature is well known throughout the department, and it’s one of the traits Grote said he will miss most.

“Al’s very thorough; when he would take a report everything would be very complete, and he always had the phone numbers and contacts, the numbers of contacts, and the numbers of contacts of contacts — which sometimes you needed!” Grote said. “Ask him about any incident, and he can flip through his notes and tell you it was an orange car with a dent in it. . . . It’s truly going to be tough to lose him.”

According to Grote, Pierce has been offered a part-time position if he wants to come back, but the department has not decided how it will fill the full-time officer’s position. When Pierce leaves, the department will have just seven full-time police officers.

Yellow Springs is changing and becoming more expensive, which, according to Pierce, will adversely affect the village police force, as well as other benefits of a small town, such as an independent grocery store, small retail businesses and local industries. The calls local police can take time to deal with, including someone locked out of the house, mental health calls and domestic altercations, won’t be the kind of incidents police from larger jurisdictions will answer, he said.

“Officers in other counties are dealing with the letter of the law instead of the spirit of it,” he said. “We should pause and take a serious look at the implications of altering institutions that have served us well.”

After renting a house in town for nearly 30 years, Pierce and his wife bought a house in Xenia six years ago. They have enjoyed raising their three sons, Alfred, William and Andrew, in the village, he said, and they are proud of how the Yellow Springs schools prepared each of them for the accomplishments they have earned.

“It’s been a wonderful experience for me professionally and personally to work in this village,” Pierce said.

But being a first responder takes a lot of energy that Pierce feels is best left to younger officers. At 58, he feels he has other work to do in the human service field, and he also intends to work on his family’s genealogy, which he started 15 years ago and to which he has charted 3,000 names.

It’s the same thorough and dedicated energy Pierce has brought to work each day in Yellow Springs that prompted a recent letter from a local resident who thanked him for stopping by her home to see that she was all right.

“Often people just want someone to hear them,” Pierce said. “You get more with honey than vinegar sometimes.”

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com