Picking up the pieces of the force
GLOUSTER, Ohio — The worn-out radio crackled, and a dispatcher’s voice pierced the quiet inside the cruiser: An officer needs assistance. He’s requesting lights and sirens. Can you get there?
Until that moment on Wednesday, police Sgt. Kevin Lemon’s only call of the day in
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this sleepy little coal town in Athens County had been to take a report from a man feuding with his ex-girlfriend over a cellphone that had been stolen.
But an investigator with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources had happened upon suspected marijuana plants on a rural property while checking out a littering complaint.
The man who lives there had become agitated and argumentative. He had shut himself inside, and a relative warned that there could be trouble.
The closest deputy sheriff said he was probably 15 minutes out, so it fell to the officers from Glouster, about 4 miles away, to help.
Lemon floored the aging Ford Crown Victoria. As it whipped along the narrow, winding and bumpy back roads, its tires and engine quickly grew so hot that you could smell them. He arrived first, and two of his colleagues followed.
Along with the ODNR investigator, Lemon talked the guy out of the house, handcuffed him and put him in the back of the cruiser. A deputy arrived a few minutes later and took over.
It all ended peacefully and underscored the importance of the officers who work in the little burgs of this Appalachian county that’s carved from rough terrain that often makes getting anywhere quickly a problem, even for law enforcement.
It was a dose of good news and just the shot of adrenaline that the Glouster officers — four men, all younger than 30, make up the department, and three of those work only part time — each needed. It had been a rough few days.
Their chief, Lucas Mace, was arrested on May 23. He faces 12 criminal charges, five of them felonies, and the mayor suspended him without pay from the $32,000-a-year job on Monday night.
Mace is accused of, among other things, sneaking out of work to change a tire on a car belonging to a woman who was on the run from drug charges — a woman he’d been dating.
“It’s been stressful, but we’re pulling together as a team,” said 26-year-old Glouster native Ryan Nagucki, a part-time officer serving as interim chief. “We all have the same goal of starting off fresh with a professional attitude. We’re going to earn back the respect of this community.”
Miles Wolf, the mayor of this village of about 1,700, runs a flower shop in the mostly empty downtown. The bowling alley, the movie theater and the pool hall are long gone. Economic development is little more than a pipe dream in a town with a $210,000 generalfund budget.
That doesn’t stop Wolf from selling its charms, though.
He talks up the spaghetti supper, where it seemed that the whole community came out to aid an ailing firefighter. He boasts that the high-school football stadium — where the Trimble Tomcats clawed their way to a Division VII state runner-up finish last year — is full for every home game.
He praises the hardworking residents, many of whom make a living working sunup to sundown at Buckingham Coal Co. just up the road. He points out that there are five churches and no bars.
He’s proud of how the village has been able to keep its police force, even in lean budget times. Voters approved a property-tax levy two years ago that brings in about $30,000 to help cover the costs, and Mayor’s Court brings in an average of $20,000 a year.
It’s not full time, and there isn’t always an officer on duty. But, as Lemon pointed out, the officers live in the village, and when there’s trouble, they generally show up whether they’re on the clock or not.
But Wolf knows that isn’t what everyone’s talking about these days. Now, from Tammy’s Cutting Edge salon to the Little Italy pizza shop, everyone wants to know how this happened. How could a longtime officer whom Wolf picked as chief do what Mace is accused of? How is Wolf going to make sure the police department now does its job?
The mayor shakes his head and sighs. He looks tired as he recalls his cellphone ringing as he returned from a delivery of graduation flowers on May 23. It was Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn: We’re about to arrest your police chief. Get ready.
“It was a painful day for me and for the village,” said Wolf, 48.
That means something coming from him. He’s a former policeman and probation officer. “This is painful for the badge.”
The call hardly came out of the blue, however. Wolf had called Blackburn weeks earlier about a rumor he had heard: that perhaps Mace had let a suspected heroin user go free in March when he should have arrested her, and that perhaps Mace was now dating her.
Wolf was unprepared, though, for Blackburn’s news that things had escalated. Blackburn alleges that Mace, knowing that authorities were looking for 23-year-old Hillary Hooper on May 22, took her to dinner, took her to his home for the night and then helped her run from the law.
Two of Blackburn’s investigators arrested Mace at the police department the next day. He posted a $10,000 bond to get out of jail and on Monday night was at the Village Council meeting with his attorney. Both declined to comment on the case, but Mace seemed relaxed. He chatted with the fire chief and even cracked a few jokes.
Wolf calls it arrogance. He said he knew that Mace had blemishes: There had been rumors in the past, and Mace’s personnel file shows that when he was a captain in the department, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation had looked into whether he had stolen money from an inmate. Nothing criminal came of it.
But the mayor said that when he appointed Mace chief in September 2012, the man who by then had worked in the Glouster department for 12 years swore that everything would be OK.
“Luke promised me he would do right by this village. He promised me that he’d make us proud,” Wolf said. “Now, I know he thought he could abuse his office. I’m disappointed.”.
Interim chief Nagucki missed Monday night’s council meeting. No one would be there but the mayor and council members anyway, he figured, because everyone else would be at the alumni baseball game at the high school, and he was supposed to play second base. Such things matter here. “This is my hometown. We all take a lot of pride in Glouster,” said Nagucki, who earned his law-enforcement degree a few miles away at Hocking College and has been on the force for six years.
In charge of the force for less than seven days, he cleaned house last week, figuratively and literally. On Wednesday, all four officers were on duty — which never happens. What they did was both therapeutic and necessary, he said. Together, they mopped the floors and dusted the shelves and filed paperwork. They replaced a dead battery in one of the cruisers, and they popped on new windshield wipers.
And they hit the streets. No more sitting around the office waiting for calls. They’re walking downtown. They’re stopping in at businesses. They’re showing up at places even when they aren’t needed. They’re looking to stop trouble before it starts.
In 2011, before the former longtime chief retired, the department handed more than 1,300 calls a year. Last year, it handled 725. Morale has stunk, and reputations had sunk, and Nagucki said that’s going to change.
“We’re going to show our presence out there,” he said.
The village residents seem to like this new attitude.
The man whom Lemon helped with the theft complaint said he appreciated someone coming right out. Each customer at the mayor’s flower shop talked of how the officers are going to get past this scandal. A couple of teenagers sharing a cone at the Dairy Queen said they hoped that maybe now the cops will run the drug dealers out of town.
It’s not quite Mayberry here — a man beat his father to death with a hammer last year — but the police are more likely to receive a barking-dog complaint or a theft call than anything else.
It doesn’t matter what the call is, said Officer Jacob Kenworthy, a part-timer who had been on the payroll (at $8.50 an hour) less than a week when his chief got arrested. The police are supposed to help, not hurt, he said.
“We’re public servants, and it’s the little things that matter,” Kenworthy said. “People want to know that someone is going to help them resolve the issue and that we’ll be there when they need us. That’s what we’re going to do.”