MikeMooreMedia
Richard Hester, Madison Police Chief 08.30.24
Mike Moore, media podcast now with the chief of police in Madison, Richard Hester and the chief is in our studios here. Hey, chief, how you doing? Good morning, Mike. How are you? I'm doing great. Well, we've got a lot to talk about. First time we've really set down and had a kind of face to face conversation. Yes, sir. I want to find out a little bit about Richard Hester. Who are you? Well, I'm 52 years old. I was born in high point. I went to Appalachian State University, graduated in 95. I started with high point police department the week after I graduated college, actually. Oh, wow. Spent four years at high point. Had a great start to my career there. I was in the canine unit and was lucky enough to be trained by some really quality people and came up under a really good environment and high point. I decided to move to the highway patrol in 1999. I was in the 101st basic school. Graduated January of 2000 and came up here. Rockingham County was my first duty station. I've been a resident of Rockingham County ever since. I got promoted the first time in 2007 and I've bounced all over the state over the years. I've worked in Halifax, Northampton County as a sergeant of Alamance and Orange as a sergeant Durham and Granville as a sergeant and came back to Rockingham in 2013 as a sergeant. 2014 I was promoted to first sergeant and moved to Forsyth County. I say moved. I didn't physically move, but I worked out of Forsyth County, Guilford County, casual in person and then Rockingham as a first sergeant. In 2021, I was promoted to Lieutenant and finished my career out of Salisbury and Trupee. Retired in 2023, August of 2023 and was hired by the Madison Police Department August 28th of 2023 and I've been here ever since. Wow, not much of a break between Salisbury and Holmes. Time flies when you're having fun. You've seen a lot of changes too over the years haven't you? Technology was especially. I can remember when I first started we were still using carbons as far as writing reports and what not. We thought we were big time when computers were in the car. There's been a lot of changes. When you talk about carbons with kids today, what are we talking about? Press hard, several copies. That's CC. It's held over to emails and stuff. It looks like carbon copy there. Where are we with the technology in the Madison Police Department? What do you have there? We do have in-car computers. We're looking to revamp a lot of the technology and really try to get Madison into the next century. We're a little behind in a lot of things to be quite honest with you. We're looking at trying to get some grants and trying to upgrade computers and printers in the car. It costs money. It does. It's not cheap unfortunately. We're looking at upgrading some radar units and things like that. Vehicles is a big issue for us. We unfortunately haven't had new cars in the last several years and our fleet's got a lot of miles on it. We're trying to get our vehicle fleet up to par. Like you say that costs a lot of money. You're looking at roughly just rough numbers. 40,000 if you can get a good deal on a vehicle and you've got to outfit it. You're looking at 50,000. By the time you have one rolling on the road. How many cars do you have on the road right now? We've got 18 positions at the department. Right now we've got 16 bodies. I'm out of cars at this point. We need a couple of cars. We've got a few Durango's is what we're going to go to as the fleet vehicle. We've got those on the order. Hope to have those November, maybe December, worst case scenario. Okay, great. Let's talk about your divisions in the police department. What all do you have? Well patrols are backbone. So we've got three lieutenants in the department. I've got two lieutenants over patrol and I've got one lieuten over to detective division. The lieuten over detective division handles a detective under him and the SRO's and also we have part-time animal control that we split with Medan. Our two patrol sort of lieutenants handle the sergeants under them and then the officers under them as well. Above that we've got one captain Kevin Jones. He's the assistant chief. Kevin retired from the SBI back in January and I was lucky enough to steer him to us after that. He's a good member of the team right there. That's the best tag team part and I've ever had in my life. He is fantastic. I can't say enough good things about Kevin. Hope Martin is our evidence technician. Again, I can't say enough good things about her. Fantastic asset to the department. She teaches nationwide in the evidence community. She was just in Houston earlier this week. Really? Yeah. Wow. She's been in San Diego, Houston. I need to sit down and talk to Hope. She's smart. She's on top of it. But she wears a lot of hats in the department and has really been a huge asset for us. Yeah. Okay. You've got some good people there. We do. And it's hard to find good people. It is in this day and especially in law enforcement. We talked off air but kids really aren't getting into this like they did 30 years ago. I think some of the last BLET classes at Rockingham have had 10 to 12. Graduating maybe nine. You may have a couple that decide it's not for them or wash out during the program and it's a lengthy program as well. Yeah. But the public service is just not on top of the radar for a lot of kids nowadays. Mm hmm. It's a tough job. It is. It is. You live in a fishbowl in the law enforcement community. Mm hmm. You know, in your personal life and in the professional life. Sure. Everything nowadays is taped on camera. Yeah. You know, everybody's got a cell phone with a high quality picture and camera built into it. So everything's documented at this point. Everybody's ready to call you out on that one little thing that goes wrong. They are. So you have to know your departmental policy and you have to know law and you have to have good character and good morals and you need to do the right thing when nobody's watching because I promise you somebody's watching. Yeah. It's exactly right now. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, the police department certainly so important. Are you out on the street to get out much downtown and all around or try to community policing and things like that we definitely want to do community policing. That is our backbone philosophy at Madison. You know, we have a small community, 2500 rough residents just as a rough round number. Mm hmm. We've got a large aging community. So, you know, we've got a growing community as well. Oh, yeah. We've got some apartments and some different things in the work that's going to raise our our resident population probably by about a thousand within the next year or so. Mm hmm. So we've got a very growing community over there. And that's going to continue to grow and move forward. Western Rockingham County just set for some on in place for some good things. It is. And it's just a good community. People are realizing that now the school's a good up here. The air's cleaner. The grass is greener so to speak. Yeah. But it's just a good place to live and raise kids and go about your business. Sure. Yeah. Okay. You mentioned just a moment ago SRO's. Let's talk about that and school resource officers. And where are you in your department? We in the town of Madison, we covered two schools. Western Rockingham Middle School. Scott Smith is our SRO there. He's been there. Scott's been with the department. I think since 2006, everybody in town knows him. Mm hmm. Just a just a great ambassador for us. We also have Dillard Academy in the public school. Joey Robertson just came over from the sheriff's department. Another good man. Very good man. Joey was actually my training officer with the Highway Patrol. He retired as a first sergeant about nine years ago. And Joey went with the sheriff's department after his retirement. And now he's with us. But Joey's quality guy. Yeah. Really lucky to get him. But he's a Dillard Academy now. They're going to love him over there. Yeah. Oh yeah. They will. School off to a good start. Yes. So far so good. Traffic was a little bit of a, you know, hiccup this week. They've got the new metal detectors for the kids coming into school. So that backlog things a little bit. Yeah. As far as I know, no issues that we've encountered. I talked with Sean Gladio the other day and things are going pretty pretty well. And it'll, it'll iron out as far as the time getting in another building. Yeah. Things go on. Yeah. Would you have ever thought 30 years ago that we'd have metal detectors in schools? No. Never, never entered your mind. No, not really. But you know, so much has happened over the last 30 years. You've got calling behind and you know, other things you can go on and on the list continues. And that's unfortunate. But you know, you have to adapt and and try to circumvent problems. And that's one way to do it. Yeah. And you know, that kind of makes me think about let's talk about being prepared about, you know, I do this monthly podcast with Rodney Kate's, he's coming up next week, always the first Wednesday in the month. Then we talk about being prepared for emergencies and disasters and all those things. Same with the police department. You've got to be prepared for anything, schools, situations or a plane that crashes and in town or whatever. You try to prepare and then hope the day never comes. And we've talked about that a lot with our town manager as we're trying to revamp the department and purchase new things and get ahead of the curve. And you spend a tremendous amount of money in the hopes that you never use it. Yeah. Right. In all honesty and every department's like that. Sure. Yeah. Just because you're a small town doesn't mean you won't have big events. No, no, it has to prepare for that. Yeah. And that brings us to training. You know, I don't think a lot of people realize I don't. I have an idea, maybe vague idea of what it takes to be mentioned by L.E.T. classes, RCC. But the training and it's ongoing. I mean, it's more than people realize, isn't it? It is. It never ends throughout your career. And if you get to the mindset in whatever fields you're in, if you get in the mindset, you know everything and there's nothing else to learn, then you're a failure at that. There's always something else to learn. Yeah. We have state mandated hours of training and certain blocks of instruction each year. And then we're going to try with Madison to go forward with that and an additional like defensive tactics and driving verbal judo, which is interaction with people and de-escalation. That's a huge thing in law enforcement. Verbal judo. Wow. I've never heard that phrase. It's kind of a de-escalation tactic. If you're dealing with someone that's irate or upset and just trying to defuse the situation. Without having to go hands on, that's the last thing we won't have to do. Yeah. You mentioned Sean with Rockham County Schools, Gladio. I did a story the other day and something that he'd put out about this very thing with teachers. And they've gone through some some teacher, some training this summer apparently with this situation and sexual assaults and all of that. So yeah, our teachers are in the same thing with training. That's exactly right. And if you can de-escalate a situation, everyone's better off. But you get emotionally hijacked as a good term to use. Everybody can get emotionally hijacked. And when you do that, bad things can happen. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I wanted to talk about this. You mentioned you had some experience in your career early on with Canines. Canine Unit. Let's talk about yours because you got some good news here recently. We did. We've actually got a grant from Purina for $15,000 to revamp our Canine program. Unfortunately, Brian Patterson, his dog Murphy passed away a little over a year ago is right before I got to Madison. Yeah. Unexpectedly, Murphy was a Malinois and a fantastic dog from all accounts that I've heard. We also had a second dog, a narcotics dog named Dan. He was a black lab. He just recently retired. He kind of aged out. Paul Pulliam was working him and we retired Dan a couple months ago. I think you were at the ceremony. Oh, yeah. The monthly ceremony. Special. Yeah. Brian Patterson's son had some kidney issues and Brian donated a kidney to his son, Gabriel's about 20, 21. There's a whole other story right there for us. There is. That would be a good person for you to get on at some point. But you talk about a quality guy. They don't come any better than Brian Patterson. Just a family, godly man. Yeah. But he's a great asset for us. We're kind of waiting to pull the trigger on the new dogs until Brian gets back to work. Okay. He's actually starting light duty next week, which we're glad to have him back in the building and back around everybody. It'll probably be December, January before Brian's back in uniform. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to wait to pull the trigger on getting the new dog. What I'd like to do is get two new dual purpose dogs, meaning they can try to do drug work, building searches, article searches, the whole gamut. That's our goal. Brian is also a trainer, which will enable us to buy more of a green dog and let Brian train it up. Oh, yeah. So that'll help. And then we could use some of that money for some new equipment for the canine program. Yeah. But yeah, that was a great asset from Purina. Yeah. So thanks again to them. Yeah. Thank you Purina for that. Yeah, $15,000 grant. Yes, sir. Yeah. So so that's kind of coming soon, first of the year maybe. And so to willing. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Okay. Well, we'll we'll keep track on that. Yeah. Hopefully, hope we'll do a news release or we'll have something on that with the new dogs. Absolutely. Important to have that canine component in the police department, is it? They are a great asset from an officer safety standpoint to drug detection. I mean, for PR, it's great with the kids, certain dogs, you know, certain dogs you could have as far as a community service type thing and get to schools and talk about drugs. Yeah. You know, if you can capture the kids' attention through the dog to give the message to stay away from drugs and whatnot, that's an asset as well. That's not something you can put a put a measure on how successful it is, but it puts something positive in a child's mind or an adult, but for that matter, you know, to hopefully avoid that. Yeah. You've mentioned a couple of key people and you said some very positive things about them. What does it take to be a police officer, someone in law enforcement today? What what attributes what qualities do they need? For me personally, one of the things that drew me to law enforcement, I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself. Okay. I wanted to be a small part in a big, big team that is moving in a in the same direction and that's very difficult to get people to do in general. You know, the military is big on that, but I wanted to make a difference and I know this sounds cliche, but I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself. I wanted to to have a feeling that when I when I went on that night that I made a difference in the community and I think that's important and now I'm speaking for me personally. I think overall that's a good attribute to have. You've got to have character, you've got to have discipline, you've got to to want to look after others before yourself because you have to in law enforcement and especially in supervision and law enforcement and supervision anywhere for that matter. But I think those are the key attributes. Thank you for sharing that. How did you actually get interested in law enforcement? What was there one particular thing that he'd do into this? Probably in college, I was like a lot of young kids trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life. My dad built houses and I had grown up in the summers working with my dad and I knew that wasn't the route I wanted to go. But I think the law enforcement, just that team environment, I had a couple of relatives that were in law enforcement that were a lot older than me, but I'd hear stories and hear them talk about things and I thought, you know, that would be a lot of fun. I think I would enjoy that and that I did my intern when I was at Appalachian with High Point PD and I was hooked after that. Yeah, okay. Well, you bring so much to the table, you've only, you've been with Madison now, how long did you say it's been? It was the year of the 28th. It's a year. I was thinking it was two days ago. Yeah, we're right at your one year anniversary, so I was thinking it was August, September, so yeah, you just said it. Yeah, so happy anniversary. Well, thank you. Yeah, I'm glad you're here. Time flies when you're having fun. I'll tell you. And you came into some, you inherited some things there in that department, but we're in good shape now. Well, thank you. You've come through some challenging times there. I think, and I'm not trying to tuke my own horn by any means, but I think the department needed an outside perspective. Yeah. We'd had internal chiefs for the past 30 some years. And I think Kevin and I, the captain coming in and just giving kind of a fresh perspective and being vocal about some things that needed a change of help. And our mayor and aldermen and town manager has been fantastic. Good support. Yes, sir. Of course, making things happen. We could not do it without them, but it's truly a team effort in Madison. It's not just the department. Yeah. The department works well, public works. It's a good environment. It's just a partnership all the way around. It is. It is. Okay. Well, while I'm glad you're there, we're glad you're there. Well, thank you. And I'm glad you're here. Thanks for coming in the studio to do this today. Yes, sir. Anything else we need to mention or maybe let's, I know your Facebook page, website, all of that. We kind of refreshed that here just recently. We've tried. We've had some issue with Facebook. We do have a town Facebook page, but the department had a Facebook page in the past. And we've had some issues getting that up and running again. So we're struggling through that. Yeah. I would like to put a plug in for if you're interested in a career in law enforcement, come talk to us. We've got a couple openings and act fast because we're going to get filled up and Lord willing, we're going to have a waiting list to get over there. That's our goal. Yeah. You said you've got what 18 slots and you got 16 filled. I've got two positions open at this time. Yeah. So yeah, we're looking to make moving on a good quality person. Okay. So are you taking applications? How does that work? We are. You can contact the department or you can go on the town web page and contact us through that. We are sponsoring through BLET. We do have a lateral sign on bonus $3,000. Currently, we're the top starting pay in the county. Oh, wow. Yeah. So we've made a lot of movement in Madison. Like I say, the Alderman and the mayor, they're fighting for us. They want to see good things happen. Well, you know, money's tight everywhere with town boards and counties and everything else. So it all comes back to that and you know, pay and benefits and all of that doesn't mean. Yes. The working conditions in Madison are great. I can't say enough about our community and they love us. They support the police department. We've been out to lunch numerous times. People come up, thanked us, bought our lunch. Yeah. It's you don't see that everywhere. You're very fortunate. We are. We are very fortunate. Very fortunate. The town the town is very supportive of this police department. Yeah. That's great. And we have to guard that with our lives until everybody every day, you know, we've got to make good decisions and we need to keep doing the right thing for obvious reasons. But for that support as well. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Wow. This has been great. I'm so glad we could have some time together. Get better acquainted here, Chief. Yeah. So give us the maybe the main phone number or whatever. Is that we'll just close with that maybe. Okay. And while you're before you do that though, so where are we in the Facebook page? Is that still kind of being revamped and we'll have that up soon and? Yes. We've we had one and then they they disbanned. They brought it down. I'd say disbanded, but they took it down. So we've struggled through that a few times now. Yeah. And you know, I've tried to get that one point and you come up with another Madison, you know, Madison, Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. Yes. So I was looking yesterday kind of preparing for this a little bit and I thought, well, I don't know these people. Oh, this is Madison, Wisconsin. No one. Yeah. Okay. Our main phone number for the police department is 336-548-6097. Okay. Again, 336-548-6097. And you could ask for me or the captain, Captain Kevin Jones. And we'll be glad to talk to you about applying with the department. Okay. I know at one time, the county was handling calls and stuff like that. Now if we call that number, we call 336-548-6097. Will we get the Madison Police Department? Daytime hours, that is our business phone. Okay. After hours, you could call the communication center and it'll route you to the officer. Of course, for a call, it'll route it to our officers, for a call for service. Yeah. Okay. All right. It's been great. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. All right. Getting better acquainted here with the Chief of Police for the Town of Madison, Richard Hesterb, a year this week in that position as Chief and but bringing years of experience to that position. And a great team there. So thanks to the Madison Police Department for their good work. And thanks to you for your support. Again, that main number there is 336-548-6097. You can find out more about what's going on at townofmadison.org. That's their main website. [BLANK_AUDIO]