Cop’s cop Manz calls it quits
Veteran officer always seemed to be in middle of the action
Brad Manz was 24 years old when he became No. 874.
The number has remained stitched on a patch on his chest ever since, up until last Friday, when he finally turned in his gun, gear and equipment, retiring after more than 35 years as an Edmonton police officer.
“The (badge) numbers are in the 3,400s now,” he says. “That’s a lot of numbers between me and the junior fellows.”
Most of Manz’s time has been on the street: A beat cop who spent nearly all his career in patrol or traffic, and had a reputation for finding himself in the middle of the action. It happened all the time, whether stopping at a gas station as it was being robbed, finding someone seriously injured in a park, or turning onto the same street as a sexual assault suspect was being pursued by other officers.
“I don’t know whether it’s fate or anything else, but I always seem to be in the right place at the right time,” Manz says. “Whether it’s a sixth sense built in, I can’t say. But things always evolved when I was working. It’s something that occurred all the time.”
In the traffic collision unit, the most serious cases always seemed to happen on Manz’s watch, and for about two years, virtually all of the city’s worst accidents happened when his crew was on shift.
It happened so often it became a grim running joke, part of the black humour that goes along with the job. One day, other officers put up a pic- ture of the Grim Reaper with Manz’s face on it.
Policing has changed dramatically in the past 35 years, and the department Manz is leaving is far different than the one where he began. He remembers the yellow American Motors Ambassadors officers used to drive, bare-bones cars that didn’t have air conditioning or power windows, just a dispatch radio and a single light on the roof. Reports were typed on typewriters, and technologies such as DNA and electronic databases, which would revolutionize policing, were a long way off on the horizon.
Manz has the scars of his career, a crooked nose broken several times on the streets, a knee injured in training, and the indelible memories of the job’s most challenging moments. He remembers the boy who fell through the ice in Mill Creek; the woman he watched jump off the High Level bridge. The man who was stabbed in a bar fight and died in Manz’s arms.
“Everyone has a job to do and you do it, but sometimes it’s difficult,” Manz says. “I don’t know how many death notifications I’ve made in my years. Maybe over 100.”
Standing at the scene of a fatal car crash a few weeks ago, Manz was frustrated to be attending yet another accident caused by speed and drunk driving. Another preventable death among many Manz has seen.
“I can’t think of too many collisions that wouldn’t have been prevented if people chose to do the right thing,” he says.
After 35 years of shift work, Manz says he is looking forward to spending nights at home, to not missing any more birthdays, anniversaries or holidays.
He is ready to hang up badge No. 874. Now, when he sees someone driving without a seatbelt, he’ll just try not to worry about it.
“My wife has already talked about that,” he said. “She just told me to breathe deeply.”