Meet ‘Officer Smiley’
With emphasis on community policing, Santa Fe force puts one of its friendliest faces on downtown beat
Joshua McDermott wears a .40-caliber pistol on his hip and a smile on his face.
The 30-year-old police officer, a former Marine Corps sergeant and born-again Christian who has a knack for rapping and making people feel at ease, has become the face of the Santa Fe Police Department downtown, where he is affectionately known as “Officer Smiley.” Officer Smiley?
That’s a big 10-4. “This guy is one of the coolest cops in town,” said 19-year-old Merced Francisco, a motorcyclist who was hanging out on the Plaza late Thursday night with his friends.
“Cool” and “cops” don’t often cross-reference for some people, but McDermott’s force of personality — think Vin Diesel meets Tom Hanks — is the talk of downtown, a high-profile beat where worlds can collide. For some cops, it’s not a dream assignment. For Officer Smiley, it’s just another chance to make a new friend.
“He doesn’t come down here and harass us,” Francisco said. “He
“This guy is one of the coolest cops in town.” Merced Francisco, 19
actually comes out here and talks to us and shows us that we’re not just hoodlums out here, that we’re actually good people, so we like this guy — Officer Smiley.”
The feeling is mutual for the good-natured and talkative McDermott, who, along with his partner, Michael Chavez, jumped at the chance last year to work the downtown beat, which McDermott says gives him the opportunity to put community policing into action.
Community policing is generally defined as a law enforcement philosophy that allows officers to work in the same area, build relationships and take a proactive approach to crime.
“This job offers me an opportunity to help people and love people, and I love to protect people who are in need and can’t protect themselves,” McDermott said.
“I don’t mind going to take a report. I don’t mind going to calls,” he said. “But I became a cop to make a difference, and this job allows us to be more proactive than [patrol officers are] allowed to be because we’re short staffed and our call volume is large. We’ve got a lot of good police officers that love to be proactive, that love to go out there and stop stuff before it happens. We just don’t have the manpower, so this is one of those positions where we can.”
McDermott’s positive attitude and passion for on-theground police work hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“I absolutely remember Officer McDermott. How could anyone possibly forget him?” former Santa Fe police Chief Patrick Gallagher, who is now the chief of police in Las Cruces, said via email.
“His law enforcement approach is the personification of community policing,” Gallagher wrote. “Not only is he approachable, he truly cares about the community he works in, and it shows. Just as all good cops do, he is adept at leveraging our community relationships with effective, proactive law enforcement. Please send him (and all of Santa Fe’s Finest) my best regards.”
Though McDermott is affable, he is no pushover.
“What I found out as a police officer is that no matter what you do, no one is going to be happy,” he said. “But the important thing as police officers that we have to remember is that we stick to our morals and that we’re always doing the right thing, whether it’s popular or not.”
McDermott somehow increased his popularity, and certainly notoriety, a little over a week ago. When a downtown busker violated a city ordinance by locking his piano to a bench at Cathedral Park, it was Officer Smiley who wrote the citation. Then, he helped the offender move the piano, posing for pictures for a reporter along the way.
His ability to defuse a potentially thorny situation received plenty of notice.
For his part, McDermott said being a police officer “is not just about taking people to jail.”
“As police officers, we’re direction givers. We’re moms and dads. We’re unlicensed psychologists. We’re paramedics,” he said.
The son of a pastor and a beauty salon owner who later became a health coach, McDermott grew up in Rockford, Ill., about 90 miles west of Chicago.
“That’s kind of where, I guess, I got some of my people skills,” he said.
“I grew up with white people, black people, Hispanic people, Asian people,” he said. “The only thing we all knew is that we were all poor. … It didn’t matter what color you were. That’s kind of where I get my appreciation and love of people.”
Judging from the responses he got during a recent high-energy and high-five-laden 10-hour shift, the love is largely reciprocal.
As he navigated the city’s downtown area, McDermott hugged and fist-bumped a diverse group of people.
“Y’all behave and stay safe, OK? Give me a hug,” Joni Brenneisen, who works as the faithful presence coordinator for Christ Church Santa Fe, told McDermott after the two met on the Plaza, where they joked about how police spokesman Greg Gurulé eats all the cookies she regularly drops off at the police department.
“I will make sure that you get your cookies, OK?” Brenneisen said before walking away.
“My belly thanks you,” McDermott replied.
“I can tell,” she replied, laughing. “You’re looking like my husband.”
Regardless of appearances — McDermott is on the muscular side — Officer Smiley’s work has earned him high marks from SFPD’s brass. Acting police Chief Andrew Padilla called McDermott and his partner ambassadors for the city.
“Obviously, they’re also there to deter crime and make sure that everyone is safe,” he said.
But Padilla called McDermott “a man of a different breed” and said he has a “loving heart.”
“He’s very outgoing,” Padilla said. “He loves to interact with people, doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from.”
Padilla said McDermott and Chavez exemplify what community policing is all about.
“That’s what we’re trying to instill in every officer,” he said. “It’s not just him and Michael Chavez that are focusing on community policing. It’s everyone and anyone within the police department. ‘Go that extra effort or step. Get out of your police car and knock on some doors and speak to people and let them know that you’re that officer assigned to that specific area, that you patrol it on a regular basis.’ ”
The police department assigned two officers to work in the downtown area a year ago after a series of muggings and other crimes that worried city officials. Tourism, of course, is one of the city’s biggest economic drivers. The officers were supposed to be assigned to the downtown area during the peak tourist season, but “the need is there so we kept them in that status,” Padilla said.
McDermott is a big fan of the acting chief, saying he leads by example.
“He’s a former Marine, too,” said McDermott, who served almost five years in the military, where he did “a lot of disaster relief stuff ” in the Asia-Pacific region.
McDermott said he was inspired to enlist partly because of a school resource officer in Rockford, Ill., who had been a police officer in the Marine Corps. While McDermott loves working downtown, he dreams of someday becoming a school resource officer.
“I have a passion for helping young people,” said McDermott, who became a youth pastor in 2013, the same year he was “saved” at a church his late father started.
McDermott, a married father of two, is a natural around children. He carries a bag full of stuffed animals in his police cruiser to hand out to children he encounters on the beat.
At the end of his shift Thursday, he spotted a couple walking on East Marcy Street with two young children, a boy and a girl.
The young family, visiting from Bordeaux, France, received a warm welcome from McDermott, who gave them his card and instructions to call 911 if they needed help.
“I got something for you guys, if it’s OK with Mom and Dad,” McDermott said, before giving each of the children a stuffed animal and playing with them, tossing the stuffed animals back and forth, much to the children’s delight.
“Can we just take your picture?” the children’s mother, Stephanie Froustey, asked McDermott. “You are so nice.”
“Yeah!” replied McDermott, who offered to turn on the emergency lights of his police cruiser before posing for pictures. “You guys are here from France — we’ve got to do it right.”
Froustey said she’s unaccustomed to police officers like McDermott.
“French policemen [have] a very bad reputation. They are here just to give tickets and nothing else,” she said. “In France, [they have] a very bad image.”
So, what does Froustey think of McDermott?
“We love him!” she said. “Oh yes.”
“Well,” McDermott said, “I love you guys.”
Contact Daniel J. Chacón at 505-986-3089 or dchacon@ sfnewmexican.com. Follow him on Twitter @danieljchacon.