HomeMy WebLinkAboutStephanie Simpson Oral History
City of College Station
Heritage Programs Oral History
Interviewee: Stephanie Simpson
Interviewer: Brooke Lisenbardt
Date: November 15, 2017
Place: City Hall in College Station, Texas
Project: The City of College Station Oral History Collection
Transcriber: Tiffany J. González
Abstract
00:00 Brooke Lisenbardt (BL): My name is Brooke Lisenbardt. I am College Station’s Historic Records Archivist and the interviewer. It is 2:05 p.m. on November 15, 2017. We are conducting
the interview at the Municipal Court off Krenek Tap Road.
0:28 Stephanie Simpson (SS): My name is Stephanie Simpson. I’m Information Services Manager for the College Station Police Department.
00:35 (BL): Great, thank you. To start the interview, tell us when and where you were born?
00:39 (SS): I was actually born in Bryan, Texas, on November 24th, 1958. My mom and dad had moved from Dallas to College Station in 1955, after they got married. Their first residence
was a duplex on Foster Street. My dad came down here, he graduated from SMU and he got a job at the radio station, he worked for KORA Radio, and in his part-time, he was also a polygraph
examiner. My mother, when we were younger, she had a job at Tastee Freez that was located about where the Sonic is on Texas in north College Station, it was a little drive-in that was
there.
01:21: BL: Was it ice cream?
01: 21: SS: It was Tastee Freez. It was like a Dairy Queen. It was called Tastee Freez and it was Howard Duff, I can remember that name because I remember her talking about Mr. Duff
– before was the person there. I got an older sister who was also born in Bryan and a younger brother, same thing. He was born in Bryan, as well. My brothers and sisters both live here.
My
mother is still alive, she lives in the same house, my mom and dad moved into four months before I was born, on Tanglewood in Bryan. My brother and sister still live in town, as well.
02:03: BL: Can you talk a little bit about your education background?
02:07: SS: Sure. I went to first grade at St. Joseph’s Catholic School in Bryan, and second through sixth grade I went Sul Ross Elementary in Bryan. My class was the last sixth grade
class to actually graduate from an elementary school. The year after that is when the integration came in and they consolidated a lot of schools from seventh grade – all of the seventh
graders in Bryan went to Anson Jones Elementary or it wasn’t called elementary it was Anson Jones that was just seventh grade. Eighth grade we went to Lamar – that was the name of
the other one on Villa Maria. For ninth and tenth grade, I was at Stephen F. Austin, which used to be the high school in Bryan, and then I went to Bryan High for the rest of my grades.
I graduated in 1977.
03:06: BL: Do you remember much about the integration aspect or your perspective or thoughts when you were a student?
03:14: SS: It was a much longer bus ride than it had been before, but not much more than that. I mean that’s about all I remember. I remember more of the growing up in Bryan and College
Station area. My mother, she’s the oldest of three girls, and her mother and her two sisters moved in with my mom – with her and my dad. And my grandmother, was actually a part-time
clerk at Jones Pharmacy used to be on the corner of Lincoln, the corner of Texas and Lincoln, I think it’s a bicycle shop now. It used to be Jones Pharmacy, it was a little – it was
a pharmacy that’s what it was, over there at Eastgate. And there was – boy I tell you, my dad working at the radio station, he had press passes so we used to go to Skyway Drive-In,
which was located where the Tejas Center or Manor East Mall where it used to be located. It was either there or the Circle Drive-In that was located at the old Mud Lot after the Circle
was gone. The Circle Drive-In was in the Northgate area. And our theaters, we had the Campus theaters that’s there on the corner of University and Boyett. And of course, there was the
Palace Theater that was downtown as well.
04:42: BL: Lot of changes.
04:44: SS: Lot of changes. I went to, I was in Distributive Education in my junior and senior year of high school which means I worked half a day. My first job I was a grocery store
at Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store that was the one located where Café Eccel is now. It’s in the building that was just north of that. We had several Piggly Wiggly’s in town at the time.
Over here where the Vista Academy is now that used to be a K-Mart Discount Center and next to K-Mart, I guess it would be on the northside of the building was a grocery store called
Lewis and Coker and Piggly Wiggly eventually bought out Lewis and Coker. And through my years in high school and working part-time at Piggly Wiggly, I think I worked at four out of
the five of them because they just kept moving me around from one to the other. There was also the one where I worked at that was located where World Market and Jason’s Deli is now
that center, which started out as a Gibson’s Discount Center. And it was like it had an inside mall to it if you will. It was glass and closed you could get dropped off there and there
was little stores in between Gibson’s s.
06:01: BL: Is that a hangout place?
06:03: SS: Uh. It was just like little shops, it was similar to what we had up in Bryan called Townshire. Except this one was much, much smaller but it had the glass front, you didn’t
just walk up, you went in through glass doors, and the shops were independent. The grocery store was on the north end of that started out as a Brookshire Brothers and Piggly Wiggly
bought out Brookshire Brothers, and when I was working there, it was actually a Piggly Wiggly, it wasn’t Brookshire Brothers anymore. Piggly Wiggly had bought them out, I worked there,
I think that, I was going to A&M at that time. When I graduated from high school I went to Blinn for two semesters and then I transferred to A&M.
06:50: BL: And when?
06:51: SS: That would have been in, I graduated in 77, so summer of 78. When I transferred to A&M, and so, I was at A&M from 78 to the fall of 80. In the fall of 80, A&M thought that
I needed to take a break because they didn’t think I was really too much involved in school. So I did. I was working part-time, most people say that’s when they kick you out because
you’re on scholastic probation. They just said, you need to hang out, stay away for a semester and we’ll see. In the meantime, I had already been working, I worked in the office at
night at the Bealls store at Manor East. And uh, I was still working there part-time, started the year before, and so, when I didn’t go to school, when I was no longer in school starting
the spring of 1981. I was working part-time, I realized I was going to need a full-time job. And I was 22 years old at that point in time. And one of my very best friends, somebody
that I literally had known my entire life. When my mom and dad bought their house, his family was already living across the street from us. His dad used to be Tower chief out at Eastwood
Airport. The Clay family. My friend, Bobby Clay, we would refer to him as Burr. He was a police officer for College Station Police Department. He had actually started out as a dispatcher
when the police department was located where the old central fire station is when it was – that is where the police department was located down there. He started out as a dispatcher
down there. Eventually went and became a police officer, worked out of the Sherriff’s Office, but he had come back to College Station. And he called me to let me know that they had
a clerk’s opening at the Municipal Court. I went down and talked to Lt. Bernie Kapella and he pretty much offered me the job on the spot after I talked to him. I told him I needed
to give a two-week’s notice, and so, I did and my first day of work was Monday, June 1st, 1981.
09:26: BL: Well. So that was how you ended up working for the first. Can you go through the first, what did you do in your first job with the City?
09:38: SS: When I was hired as a municipal court clerk, I was actually working at the front window. There were two of us working in the front window for the police department. We took
money for the tickets, that’s what we did. Now this is before computers. Everything was paper. Um, we would get the tickets in the morning from the Officers from the day before, we
put all of those in alphabetical order and we filed them all in a filing cabinet up front. This is when the police department moved down to where it is now on William King Cole, but
it was just the one story part.
10:17: BL: When was that?
10:18: SS: Um, I think it was in maybe, 74’ maybe? When that one had opened. But I had gone to work for them in 81’.
10:28: BL: It had already been there.
10:28: SS: Mmhmm. My friend started, he started as dispatcher down there but then they opened up the one story building down on William King Cole. So that’s what my first job was and
I did that for three months. There were five people that worked in the office. There were two in the front window taking the ticket money, setting up court dates, there was one that
we referred to as a docket desk. That was where we actually recorded every citation by hand into a docket book and that’s where tracked all the information on the ticket whether it
was paid, the citation number, the officer name, the violation, the violator’s name, the due date on it, whether or not they had gone to court. This was the computer system if you will.
It was all done by hand. And I did the front window for about three months and then got moved to the docket desk. So the docket desk was entirely different. That was nothing but handwriting
pretty much. You were responsible for keeping up with the docket book and for sending in all the conviction notices to DPS. To make sure that if you had a speeding ticket that was going
to be put on your record. That’s what the conviction notices were so after the court dates we filled out conviction notices and we would mail those off. That’s how the stuff would get
on your record. And I was there about three months and at the time there was a records technician and a records clerk that worked in the back. We were all in the same office it was
just an open office, two in the front window, one at the docket desk that was over by the side. The court clerk and an assistant court clerk and then records was back in the corner.
There was a desk and it had two people that worked there. And the woman I don’t remember what her name was that was working as a records technician, she left and John Kennedy, he was
Lieutenant at the time. Came and offered me the job in Records. And he said would you like to do this, and I said, “Absolutely, I would do that.” And so, I started doing Records on
January 1st, 1982. And the first day I went, what did we do? We had a murder that day. So not that’s funny or anything else like that. I thought it was ironic that my first day in records
we had a murder.
Records was a lot different than Courts. Courts only dealt pretty much with the citations at the time. Yes, there were some arrests that were made usually when the people bonded out
of jail they didn’t have to set up a court day, they just paid their bond and get out of jail and never show back up. So it was a little bit different than the way its changed. So we
move to Records and like I said, still no computer systems. So if you had filed a police report, we had three or four files that had 3x5 blue index cards and we would go through these
cards, they were all in alphabetical order, we would go through these cards and we would look to see if you had a card. We would pull up if you had a theft report. We’d see your name
on top of the report, we’d go through the cards, if you didn’t have a card in there, we would pull out a brand new card and put it on your report and then do that for every name that
was on that report. If you had a card, we would pull your card out so that we could add that particular offense to that blue card. So we kept our files. That’s how we did it by name.
We typed everything up, we would, that’s how we would find something by name. We also kept 8x5 index cards, white index cards by location. We would have every location the same thing.
Once from the reports, once all the blue cards had been taken
care of, then we would go through and get the location off of the police reports. And go through the index cards and see if there was a location, if there was, we would pull that card
out, type the information from that report from that card and file it back. That is how we found if somebody how many burglaries we had at this location, we could pull it and we could
tell them how many we had. Uh, we made copies of every report and had those filed by offense classification. If someone wanted to know how many burglary of vehicles we had, we could
pull out that one folder and count them up for the year. We would know how many we had that was our computer system. That’s how we did it. And we kept track of all the statistics as
well. So we did all reporting, all the state reporting, the uniform crime report for the state, and all the other in-house statistical reports on the crimes and the offenses and things
like that.
15:43: BL: I want to go back to you mentioning that your first day there was a murder. Can you tell us a little bit about what process you would have to do as a Records Technician?
16:00: SS: Yes.
16:02: BL: To go through that process.
16:04: SS: What does it involve? Or something like that. When the report gets turned in from the patrol division and the process still pretty much hasn’t changed. The reporting format
has changed but the process is still roughly the same. But patrol officers go out they take the report, handwritten report, paper turn it in, they have it approve by their supervisor
and then their supervisor put it in a basket, give it to Records. Records would go through and do exactly what I said. We would take the victim’s name, we would take the arrestees name,
suspects’ name, whatever. We would fill out a blue card for each one of them, on the back of the blue card it would have the date and the report number and what the offense was and
then we would put a code on there. If the card had an “A” on it, on the back, then we knew the person had been arrested. If it had a “C” then we knew they had been a complainant. “S”
was a suspect. And all that was on the back of their blue card. So we would do that for the cards, we would do the location and then we would make a copy of it for our file. If the
case was a pending case, we would make a copy of the report for our detective division, we made a copy of the front page for our blotter sheet on the front window. And we’d make a copy
of the report for administration. We would want to get copies. There were some Monday’s that I could spend 4 hours at the copy machine. Of course, they weren’t as fast as they are
now. We made lots and lots of copies and then we would record the offense on our statistical sheet. We kept everything by hand, it was all tick marks back then. And we would have it
all broken down, pretty much in penal code order. If we happened to get an offense that was a real unusual one something we didn’t get very often. Then we would just add to it as we
went. Put everything in alphabetical order, penal code order, we put a lot of stuff in the penal code order. We would complete the finger print cards, there were two finger print cards
turned in, we would type up all the information on both finger print cards, and then the finger print cards we would mail to crime records in Austin. That how we would put the information
on someone’s criminal history. We also had to fill out a white sheet and a green sheet that were the dispositions and we would do that at the same time. Now this is what we did if somebody
had been arrested. This was the only difference. If there was an arrest then we would have to do the fingerprint card so it could get to crime records in Austin. And
then we would do the disposition cards at the same time. That was when the case was finally disposed we would have to go back pull those cards out of their arrest packet and then put
in the disposition. Anything I guess really back then I think FBI was taking in anything other than a class C misdemeanor. Now the FBI will only take felonies. It used to be that the
departments could contribute directly. It would go to crime records, crime records would shift it to FBI. But we were doing the disposition forms and the arrest forms on all offenses
it’s just they were putting on any Class C’s on someone’s criminal history. Not at FBI. I believe DPS, the crime records used to, they don’t any longer. They only keep the misdemeanors
and the felonies, and FBI will only take the felonies.
19:49: BL: When did that change, do you remember?
1951: SS: I don’t.
19:54: BL: I was just curious about it.
19:57: SS: No, I would imagine that as time goes, and you get more and more arrests are happening. We seldom would arrest females before and now sometimes I think some months we arrest
as many females as we do males. Just a different change in times is all. I would imagine the FBI probably has enough to do with just felony offenses that can’t keep up with everything.
And like I say, crime records in Austin does take the Class B and Class A misdemeanors as well. That’s how the information would get there. Oh and we would also make sure that the prosecutor,
Records was responsible and still is responsible for insuring that those cases were filed with the prosecutor’s office. We’re the ones that send that stuff down to either the county
or the district attorney’s office. That what we do with those as well.
20:56: BL: With the Records has that been your only or after your first position has been the position been your only maintained?
21:06: SS: I moved to Records and there was two of us. I was actually the records technician, meaning I kept the tick marks and the record clerk was actually the one that went through
and typed up all of the cards for everything. In 1984, we got our first computer it was called Nixdorf was the company name. My supervisor at the time was Bob Norton, he actually started
out as a patrol officer but was tasked with coming up with the computer system, computers were becoming for everybody a thing to get. And because of that we needed more personnel. We
were approved three new positions in Records. So there was myself, I was promoted to records supervisor, and we ended up having with the three new positons, four records clerks, that’s
what we had in there. And because we didn’t have any room, we were all in the same little office. We pretty much worked shift work. We would come in and do the 6-2 shift and then 2-10
because we only had two computers. We had five people in there trying to work on two different computers so we would assign people going around different jobs, where the computers weren’t
needed. These were the big old box computers. They were really terminal stuff not like having a desk top that’s not really what it was so but yeah, that was 1984 is when we started
putting stuff in the computer system.
22:49: BL: I just lost my questions. That’s okay. Can you take us a day or take us through a day in your position. Or do you feel that we’ve already talked on that?
23:02: SS: I think we’ve probably talked on that. I can go back from being records supervisor, we always, I always reported mostly to a lieutenant. Marvin Byrd was Chief when I was first
hired, and he remained Chief, I don’t remember when he started. I do know we hired a new chief. Mike Strope came in after Chief Byrd and he was hired by William King Cole who was
our City Manager at the time for a very short time period because he ended up passing away. And so, but I always reported to lieutenant when Chief Strope came in, he pretty much liked
this changing the lieutenants around, and so, lieutenants would go just so they could get, I guess perspective on all the areas of the police department. Make sure they had been in
the Detective Division, communications, and the jail, with records, patrol with all of it so that they would be more well-rounded. Now by that point in time, 1987 we moved into the
new two-story building that was attached, they had done remodeling, we got to move into the new building. I was still records supervisor and we had under Chief Strope we first became
accredited from CALEA an accredited agency. That was a huge get for the department. And Chief Strope left, I believe in 1992, and then of course, Ed Feldman who had been Major Feldman
then was promoted to Chief. Chief Feldman was my chief from 1992 until 2004 December then he retired at the end of 2004 , first part of 2005 is when he had retired. I served under
him longer than anyone else and it was a growing time for the community and everything else. The 80s were filled with – believe it or not – a lot more horrendous sort of crime than
what we really even have now. Yeah, times were a little bit different. There’s three patrol shifts. They work eight hours a day. They rotated shifts, but you know, doing the best you
can with what it is you got. To this day, Records still has a supervisor and four clerks. The same amount of staffing they had 1984. When Chief Feldman in 2002, I believe, is when Scott
McCollum was my Lieutenant at that point in time. And he was promoted to Assistant Chief somewhere around that 2001/2002/2003 whatever, somewhere around that time. And they civilianized
the position, I wasn’t given a change in title while I was still records supervisor. I finally was made manager somewhere around 2003 and 2004 something like that. I was given additional
assignment of having the evidence function in 1998 and so I acquired evidence then and that came along with one other person and yeah. That was how we did things.
26:32: BL: Can you talk about your experience then with how the process works with being in charge of evidence?
26:41: SS: Um. We had a rough time in evidence because when I got evidence in 1998 is because there was a young lady who had been working in there and found out she had been helping
herself to some of the money that had been submitted. And she was terminated and she was terminated and Chief Feldman Feldman came in and gave me the good news that I was going to get
to have evidence. It was fine. It was no big deal. We did a complete audit of the evidence room and went through trying to find anything else we could and kind of tarnish your reputation
some. You don’t know what kind of effect it might have on any sort of pending cases or past cases, if you know. It may have just been money but the fact that someone had been tampering
with the evidence was something difficult. I think at times to overcome but as a result
of that we changed up some stuff. We started – we went to a three part submission form to where, now remember, I could run the print out, get you a print out of everything that was supposed
to be in evidence. But it was only be as good with the person in evidence put in the computer. So, to do more double-checking to make sure we were getting as much as we could, we went
to a three part submission form and I got one of those parts to where I could do routine random audits on everything to make sure stuff, that stuff was being entered the way that it
was supposed to be entered. And in evidence, do you want me to go through what we do with the evidence?
28:23: BL: Sure.
28:23: SS: Uh, we have a bank of 15 lockers in the hallway right by the evidence room. A couple of them, one locker is a really big long locker and then we have two other ones half that
size. And then we have three on each other the other rows. Officers would come in and we also have a drop slot at the door. Officers come in. It’s a key kinda like what they used to
have at airports and stuff in a locker, coin or token in there. We have the same system. And then they dropped the keys in the drop slot. And every morning when personnel comes in they
clean out the lockers. And sit-down and take your submission form and compare your submission form with what you have in front of you and you date and time, and order to maintain the
chain of custody of the evidence, you put the date and time of the location of where you removed the evidence and your initials on that. And go through that whole process of doing that.
There are some months, I’ll be honest, but there are some months that we could have anywhere between 1,200 items had been submitted of evidence and at that point in time, we only had
one evidence technician that was doing it and as a result, of course, we end up busting at the seams with the amount of evidence. That we have in there. And then we have locations.
Once the evidence came in, we would store it in a location, a location on the tag that the officer had on the item. One tag per item, unless it was something that could have been combined.
We recovered a sack of clothes, we didn’t have to do those separately, we could put all of them in one bag, so that would have a tag. For everything that had a tag, it would have a
location. And so we had shelves that we put stuff in, and we put small article files that we would store things. And then we would have bins where we stored things. We had refrigerators
in there and then we have a small closet in the back right now that we refer to it as our vault. And it has a key access card, the door is, it’s a sealed door. And that where we keep
our high risk items. We keep all of our guns, jewelry, drugs, money, all of that stuff is maintained in the vault. And we have filing cabinets and all sorts of things. And when I tell
you it’s a closet, there’s not a whole lot of room in there at all. We did have one of our former crime scene people. He actually built a gun rack for us to put in there for the long
guns, all of the hand guns that we recover go into gun boxes. The gun boxes take up a whole 2-3 rows that are in there in this closet area that we refer to as the vault. The problem
is the difficulty in getting rid of stuff that’s the biggest problem that you have. And that’s why you end up with a storage problem. It’s not – I know people always wonder what is
it that you do with all this stuff you get in there. And it’s amazing how some of that that has changed over the years. At one point in time, the city ordinance was that we had to have
a council person witness the destruction of our guns and we could spend two days down at the shop behind the police department. Those guys would go through I don’t know how many
different saw blades trying to cut all that stuff up. The council people would have to sit there with us and witness all the destruction to it. It was very difficult, we would at some
point in time, we would take all of the drugs on the cases that had been disposed, and I’ll get back to that in just a minute, but there were times we had used the large animal clinic
incinerator. We could use that, but then it got to point where they didn’t want us to have any paperclip, no paperclips, no staples, no plastic. They would only take organic stuff.
I’m telling you, you get a whole lot more things in drugs than any of that. We end up having to find alternative sources for that sort of stuff and I think some people might be amazed
at what we do to get rid of that. For the high risk items, especially drugs, drugs and paraphernalia and guns, we need to have court order on those. And any sort of illegal weapons.
One point in time switchblades were illegal. And I don’t believe they are anymore. I think they’ve changed some, the laws recently changed from what illegal knives are, but if it been
deemed a weapon then we would have a court order for that. And if the sitting judge or the person who heard the case didn’t return a court order to us within thirty days of the case
being disposed, then we would file paperwork with any judge. And have the judge sign-off on the court orders. But we still needed to get the court orders on the property. Today, we
have a place up in Waco that graciously, it’s an auto salvage place in Waco that graciously destroys all of our guns for us when we have obtained our court orders, we still have to
have them verified by personnel outside of our division. And we don’t have to have council people go with us anymore. The drugs, for a while we were taking them to incineration operation
in Anahuac – that’s between Houston and Beaumont. They had billed themselves as the largest incineration operation in the southwest and they would take anything. Dealing with the drugs.
You don’t want your personnel having to open up any of that stuff. We don’t want to go through that and especially not today, when you have to worry about just touching things like
fentanyl, you don’t want your personnel messing with any of that. So and depending on what the drugs are they may have had to gone to the DPS lab, we have gotten them back in envelopes.
We didn’t want them having to open any of that stuff. It stays sealed, it stay sealed up so when the person is doing the verification they can see that no one in evidence has tampered
with the seal. They can verify that and it can go in a box. We can haul it to the operation, the incineration place, throw the boxes in and be done with it. But they would take anything
that we had. So they would take any of the syringes, steroid bottles, paraphernalia stuff, anything like that – that we could not destroy. They would take for us.
35:36: BL: I mean, I think it’s interesting for people to hear about it, because this stuff that most people, I don’t think consciously think about the process of having to deal with
evidence or what that process looks like.
35:51: SS: At uh, one point of time, we did purchase our own incinerator, if you will. And the apparently police departments are exempt from some of the EPA regulations to be able to
use these burn barrels. And we have a burn barrel we do use on occasion. When we have stuff that we have to destroy, but the outfit in Anahuac is no longer available to us. And it is
very difficult to find – call around and ask places or other departments “what do you do with it?” We found that there was an outfit that we were going to try to use up around Dallas
somewhere. We pulled up their website and it was a burn barrel and it looked like it was in somebody’s drive way. Former police officers that have started this operation to get rid
of drugs, we kinda of giggled
and said, “We’ve got one of those.” It takes time using the burn barrel. Whereas before, yes the time, we would spend to Anahuac never take just one. Always go in a marked vehicle. Always
make sure your employees have on some sort of shirt or something, that identifies them as being part of the police department, because you certainly don’t want them getting pulled over
with a truck full of dope in the back. You don’t want that happening.
37:16: BL: No, wow.
37:18: SS: Yup.
37:19: BL: [Pause] So we already talked a little bit about some of the changes. Are there any additional changes that you’d like to talk about such as growth or I know other things that
happened with the City or in your position?
37:45: SS: Oh. I sit back and think about a point in time in 1981 there weren’t any laws about smoking. And I could remember people smoking in that office. All the paperwork. It’s amazing
when I think about it. When people smoking at the front window waiting on people. Smoking during interviews. You know things that you would think now to be “how dare would anybody do
anything like that.” And it was normal. It was – you know –there was nothing to it at all. You know, of course, now the City employees no smoking. Now I don’t know if there’s many that
still work that still smoke anymore. It’s just not something you see, which is a good thing.
38:28: BL: Right.
38:29: SS: But yeah, that’s a huge change that I’ve seen as far as in the office goes. But uh, there’s, I think my opinion is that the crime has certainly changed. We deal now with a
different type of crime that we didn’t used to deal with. Of course, it’s hard not to remember all of the tragic cases that we had before, we used to say back in the early 80s that
a lot of it had to do with the oil boom that was going on at the time. It brought in a different sort of element to town..
39:11: BL: I know North Dakota is facing that as well.
39:14: SS: And you know but it was a different kinda. I think sometimes people now, it’s thinking that when you hear about us having a murder or shooting now, it’s “Oh, Lord, you know
it’s a crime ridden area.” I can tell you that there are years we had five murders in one year and some of these, these were horrendous, not that any murder is not bad, but it seems
to be anymore that we have such a – it’s not just College Station, I think it’s police departments all around. Such a huge, huge increase in all of the drug related crime that is going
on. I think the – if I sat down and printed out all the robberies we had, I think the majority would be related to some sort of referred to as “dope rips ” the shootings the same thing.
That part has certainly changed over what it was before. But, um, I don’t know when the last time was when we had a young girl murdered over by Bayou woods in 94/95 and we had – even
before that. I wasn’t working in the police department but a really gruesome one on Harvey Road back in 1979, they didn’t find out who was responsible for that until 1983. He did receive
the death penalty but had his ex-wife not contacted the Sherriff’s office about it, it would have gone unsolved this whole time. Um, but like I said, there had been some gruesome ones
over the years. And other really bad traffic fatalities one of those in 1999 same year as um, bonfire. Um, it was the there was a group of
students out on Highway 60 that were going to some sort of frat party or something like that. They were walking on with traffic and not against traffic and a kid fell asleep at the wheel
of the pick-up truck and went along and hit them . There were six young people killed in that one incident. There’s always been some sort of tragedy stuff that all of us, that many
people think these are the officers but I got clerks that have to sit down and read that stuff and go through it. The evidence people that have to handle the evidence that comes out
of those. And or be releasing the property to families who have lost these. It’s sometimes, it’s um, it can be really draining on someone.
42:22: BL: Yeah. I can imagine. I mean. So how often do you receive records roughly in a day? Is it just continual throughout the day?
42:35: SS: It is, it is now. Um because we just implemented a new computer system. We got the first computer system in 1984 and then we changed systems in 1991. And uh we kept that same
system. We took an upgrade on that in 2003 and for the first time implemented FBR meaning field base reporting in 2007. And the field base reporting actually brought the mobile data
terminals MDTs into the police cars to where the officers were doing their reporting electronically and not writing them all out. Now we had a combination of both sometimes – they would
do paper depending, sometimes they would do an electronic online FBR report. When we went to the new system, we went, our CAD went live with it in August 2016. And then we went live
in records on the RMS side on August of this year. We’re still waiting on evidence, the evidence module being installed and that’s supposed to bring barcoding to evidence for the first
time. And hopefully that will help, if nothing else more for the disposal of items because you should be able to pull things. Doesn’t mean you’re not going to still have to do the research.
The research is still going to have to be there. You’re still going to have to go through and find out if you got dispositions on anything before you can destroy it. And if you’re lucky
when you look up on – when Brazos County implemented the justice web judicial search either one of those terms you want to use for it. To where you could find these dispositions online
as well as the forms, you could find court orders online and everything else. And that has been a huge, huge for us, it has really helped out facilitating getting that information.
Getting the court orders. We didn’t have to wait to on prosecutors to send us anything anymore. Soon as they could get those stuff scanned in we could find it.
44:45: BL: Nice.
44:46: SS: That was a good deal for them to do that.
44:49: BL: So when did that happen?
44:50: SS: I’m not for sure when the county implemented that but its been in the last ten years or so.
44:54: BL: Okay. So certainly changes regards to reporting.
45:01: SS: And now there is no paper.
45:04: BL: Okay.
45:05: SS: The officers have no paper anymore. The detective, no paper anymore. Everything is done electronically. So records and soon as it is submitted instead of waiting. Records
used to only process reports once a day. We would do it every morning. And so there would be a cut off time we were scanning stuff. We started Laserfische in 2002 and that became our
record repository, if you will, and we would put a scan date on those to make sure that the detectives didn’t miss anything. Maybe a report didn’t get turned in until two days later.
You don’t want to put by report date on there because they would have already looked at those reports. So we put on the template a scan date so they could search by scan date, and we
would have a cut off time in the mornings. It would say, “Stopping reports now.” We would let them know and after that anything that was entered after that or scanned, we would use
the next day’s date for that to make sure. And now Laserfische we’re not adding to that, Laserfische. We are adding all attachments now to the new system. And they can process reports
now whenever they want to, anybody before you couldn’t see a report unless it had been approved. Now you can, I believe, have access to see the report, it might be a draft if it hasn’t
been approved. But you can at least see what’s been done on it or maybe hasn’t been done on it. [Laugh] But we file all the cases electronically now, we upload everything to the prosecutors
to the county, the county has an FTP site that we upload the cases to and they have separate upload areas. Separate folders, if you will, for the county prosecutors and for the district
prosecutors. Those items are separated.
47:08: BL: So, kind of going along with the changes and this is different, but going back to the growth and changes in crime and focus on drug related crime. Um, how do you see the student
or the growth of Texas A&M being involved with that?
47:26: SS: Oh my gosh. This is just going to be my opinion on this sort of stuff.
47:30: BL: [Laughing]
47:31: SS: If I need to I can run to the office and run some stats on it for anybody, I think.
47:38: BL: You can just add it. [Laugh]
47:38: SS: Yeah we can just add it to the list. Unfortunately, as with anything and I realize we talk about the open records and not all of this stuff is public information, if you’re
talking about the document. But I can tell you from having read some of these reports, a lot of these reports over the years. The kids that come up here, it is amazing, especially since
I think so many come from Houston. It’s amazing at the number of them that leave their doors open at their homes because their friends might come over and they don’t have a key. So
they just leave their doors open. They’ll leave their $1,200 purses filled with cash in their car or you know, it doesn’t matter how many years it is that we have tried to tell them,
“Don’t leave that stuff in your car.” They still do. My point being, this is a target rich environment. The students makes it a target rich environment for criminals and they end up
stealing a lot of their stuff. Let’s face it. That happens. But it’s also I think the drug, the bit with the drugs. I grew up in this town, there were always talks about having marijuana
somewhere around or things like that and I’m sure there were other things. You really didn’t hear about them. Now you have to worry about the fentanyl and the type of drugs that if
you get it on your hands it can actually kill you. That’s scary stuff. And it’s always in the news about the oxycodone and the benzodiazepines that people are taking.
The overdoses that we will have and the combination, the deaths from the combination of alcohol and the drugs on these kids is amazing. It’s unbelievable and that I do believe has increased
significantly with this unlimited amount, of kids coming up here to College Station. I don’t know but my guess would be that problems up at Northgate, a lot of those stem from you have,
people who are selling to the people who have the money up there. And that’s a problem. I think a lot of time, some of these dope rips we get into, is that we get a hold of some students
who think they found a way to make some easy cash, and they got some friends that can hook them up with some dope, and they’re going to decide they’re going to sell it until somebody
else says, “No you’re not. This is my area.” And yeah. So it’s, that has definitely been a huge increase and a change and I don’t know, you know there so much of a push to legalize
marijuana and I don’t know if it’s just because we have become much more tolerant of that stuff or what? I think it causes, brings other problems with it, it just does. And I don’t
know where it will go with that I don’t think I’m really necessarily a fan of any of that sort of legalization. I’ve talked to people in my realm going to a conference, talked to some
folks who worked in records and a police department in Oregon who legalized it. Of course, in Oregon, in order to be one of the growers or providers, you have to be licensed by the
state because the federal government never changed the laws, so you cannot deposit any proceeds from drugs into bank. People keep that stuff in their homes, well when you have to have
a state license for it, guess what? Your information, your address will be public information, and so, all the people know where all the money is. They have seen a tremendous increase
in burglaries in their area because of that.
51:58: BL: Yeah that something to that I don’t think that many people think about.
52:03: SS: The other thing is that the traffic accidents. The traffic congestion. Whether it is I don’t know. I can remember when Texas Avenue was four lanes when there was no University
Drive East. Washington Baptist Chapel you were already out of town when you hit that. But the traffic congestion, I know they’re talking about changing up on 2818 already. Um, I think
a lot of time we should look at the roads maybe before we start with the development. You end up dumping a lot of this stuff on the roads that just can’t take it. I think Barron was
a good example of that. We had all of the residential areas that went in but Barron Road was still just a two lane bumpy road. Maybe sometimes we need to look at that different. The
bit with accidents have changed as well. Our officers you can go back and look at the budgets over the years. You don’t always get all the officers that are always needed. I think some
people would be surprised to find out that the officer that takes a call at the Shell station across the street from Wing South is also responsible for responding to a call out in Wellborn.
And that’s a huge territory to do it. That’s the growth, that’s the annexation that’s everything that is compounded on top of that sort of stuff. The traffic accidents if you went in
and did a count and did the statistics, I’m sure they’re showing that it is going down. But as TexDot took over accident reporting from DPS used to be ones that used to have the accident
reports. And TexDot took that over a couple of years back. And they also went to where – we’ve also been doing reports online reports now for a couple of years through TexDot’s crash
system. Now we will still enter in information, shell information, if you will, about the accident. So if somebody comes in and had an accident we don’t have to go send them the crash
website. We can look it up for them and print it out for them and give it to them like that. Uh, there’s always been a point in time regardless whether it was DPS or TexDot
that there were some crashes that you didn’t have to report. It was as if a police department did not fill out a report then you were required to do a blue form. They don’t even require
blue forms any longer. And the, uh, you look at it, we used to work a lot more reportable accident now. The staffing to do it is not there. But yeah, everyone knows about the phones
and the people on their cellphones and having wrecks, I’m sure on any given day, you can sit back and watch the number of people of still on their cellphones. It’s crazy. It’s just
crazy.
55:16: BL: Yeah and taxing too.
55:19: SS: Yup. As the driving.
55:21: BL: Was there any talk because with the ordinance because the ordinance was there and then its not. I guess because of Texas.
55:32: SS: Um, I think the ordinance of College Station passed was a very good ordinance. It was stricter than what the state passed but the state supersedes. The state ordinance is
going to supersede what we have and what we had in place. I think our legal department, our police department, our legal department worked really good to gather to pass a good ordinance
and I’m sorry that the state didn’t take some examples that the cities had done. But a lot of time the state does something and legislature will pass something and they don’t understand
the burden they are putting on other people. Um to do. They did the same thing when they, not saying that it need to be done but um, when they implemented the the racial profiling
it had to become mandatory they start defining what Tier 1 data is versus Tier 2 data. And now this year it went into effect because of the Sandra Bland Act now we report Tier 2 data
as well as Tier 1 data. That has to do with whether it’s an actual citation of whether a warning was issued.
56:40: BL: Okay.
56:41: SS: But I think the way the law was written that um, I don’t know how accurate any of those numbers really are personally because the way that it was, was it’s because of the
traffic stop was made or you have an arrest, a traffic arrest that’s made and a traffic citation is issued is one that you would report. Um, I don’t know why they had to throw in the
bit about the arrest in there. I think it could just be the citation you have written did any of this happen? That’s not really the way that it is. I think a lot of our past racial
profiling reports, 2002 or 2003 is when we started doing those. Um, having to comply with those that those are probably available some here if anybody ever wanted to look at them and
do a study on them.
57:37: BL: I might write that down and look it up. Um, is there anything you want to add on changes that you. I mean we can always of course go back to it. But if not we can move on.
57:52: SS: Besides our uniform colors. I know you talked about social changes. Um.
57:59: BL: Oh. It can be any changes.
57:59: SS: Well officers used to wear brown uniforms and cowboy hats. They don’t do that anymore, they went to navy blue.
58:07: BL: Yeah!
58:08: SS: They used to have on brown uniforms. Part of the uniform was the cowboy hats. I think for the majority they all wore cowboy boots with them. And then they went to navy blue.
58:19: BL: I’ll have to see if there are any photos that we have.
58:22: SS: I’m we do somewhere down at the police department. At one point in time we still had the whole uniform.
58:28: BL: Oh really.
58:29: SS: We still have the whole brown uniform.
58:31: BL: I wonder if I can go get my nice camera.
58:35: SS: I bet you can. Of course, most recent now is that we’ve gone to an all Tahoe fleet. Going from whatever they used to have one year they had Dodges, Crown Vics, where the more
popular ones we had some Impalas one year and the color schemes have changed on the vehicles over the years at the police department. It comes up with a whole new generation of officers
and they want something else or something new. Their uniforms used to be part wool, you know you figure down here in this weather, they lasted longer.
59:18: BL: (Laugh) Yeah.
59:14: SS: That’s right. And I am certainly an advocate in this area – just me – but those officers out there working accidents in the 100 degree weather and they’ve got on these uniforms
– whatever they can do, whether it’s the dry weave (sp?) or something like that, that’s got to be a tough gig for them to do.
59:34: BL: So long to with the heat.
59:42: SS: They um, they have always been near and dear to my heart.
59:48: Yeah, um. Okay, so um, moving on then. Do you. Can you tell us a little bit about the relationship between your position or your tenure with the City and Bryan?
100:03: SS: With Bryan Police Department or with the City or? Just as a side note, don’t know if it really matters or not but my sister is a records – was a records supervisor for Bryan
Police Department as well.
1:00:18: BL: Are you serious? Oh wow.
1:00:22: SS: In fact, she still works in records down there. She hasn’t been employed with the City as long as I have but she’s got twenty something years in. It’s almost like the same
sort of job that we’ve had, that’s unusual I think. But um, most of the stuff in my job I was always tagged as the liaison between the prosecutor’s office and the probation office.
We do a lot of dealings with probation, adult probation – they do pre-sentence and post-sentence investigations. I’ve worked hand in hand with our legal department regarding open records
requests and things like that. They are such a great group to work for and I’ve always been liked that. Um, the prosecutor’s downtown, adult probation, I’m sure there are some other
ones in-between there
that we deal with. Of course, there are exchange of information between the police departments and university police department things like that, that go on. But um.
1:01:30: BL: Is there.
1:01:30: SS: We make sure and honestly, when there was a law that was passed a couple years back referred to as the Morton Act that affected police departments, mostly prosecutors though.
And what it did, this had to do with the Williams Accounting case (sp?) and the way I’ve understood it, is that before the Morton Act, your prosecutors could be held civilly liable
for – you know – cases that someone had been wrongly convicted of something. And maybe they had withheld some evidence.
1:02:16: BL: The prosecutor. Yeah.
1:02:19: SS: The prosecutor. That they could be held civilly liable and with the Morton Act, it made them criminally liable for that sort of stuff. And I met with a prosecutor, they
put a lot onto us because they are counting on us to make sure we give them everything it is that they need so that they can release it to any of the defense attorney’s that ask for
it. As a result of that we ended up with a new position. Evidence has grown. I have two evidence technicians now but as a direct result of the Morton Act, I ended up with a digital
evidence technician. And that’s the person that is responsible, we were inundated. Things that we never had to do on a regular basis before this Act made us have to do them. Which means
we were having to making copies of 911 calls for all the arrests we were having to make, copies of all the in car videos, all the body camera videos when those came available. Printing
out all the cad notes. We had to make sure that those prosecutors had everything that we had. And you know, that puts a lot on you when think that if you don’t do your job then somebody
else can be arrested for it. And of course, the open records have always been a bear to do with. But you know, um, but our group does a great job with all of it.
1:03:49: BL: Is there a different relationship when working with Brazos County? Or Texas A&M? Or is it fairly similar?
1:03:56: SS: Yeah, I think it’s fairly similar. You know, they don’t have, um, with A&M, I’ve worked closely with A&M because of the Clery Act information. And A&M is responsible for
reporting those sorts, particular offenses that happened on any property or adjacent properties, adjacent to the university. And of course, everything knows that the university has
offices, they have an office over at Tarrow, they have offices over at Graham Road, there’s the GERD over on Graham Road. So they have to have those statistics for wherever they may
have property within College Station. And so that’s a point in time, we sit down and have to run through and run stats for them, every single year on all these different locations.
So we can report to them, so they can report accurate information for Clery. We also have other schools that, it’s not just because we got in the SEC, we have other schools that when
they come down here and their students stay the night, more than one night, or whatever it is in one of the hotels, I will regularly get letters from them requesting: We need to have
records check for the crime at this location during this time period. And so, I’ve done that, for -- I can’t tell you for how many universities that have been here over the past several
years. So we have go through and check.
1:05:30: BL: So that’s football teams and just people?
1:05:33: SS: Anybody coming down here for pretty much anything. I know that University of Alabama is one, we had some from California, I don’t remember. I’m sure I got them saved somewhere.
Some of the letters I’ve done. But um, yeah they need that information for Clery. So we give it to them. You know, that is what we do. We are there to give anybody some sort of information.
I think that and between a lot of momma’s and daddy’s calling wanting to know what areas are safe for their kids to move to, are some of the most repetitive requests we ever get. Of
course, we have a standard answer, “We can’t tell you where it’s safe. Crime happened to anybody and any place, any time, but we can give you a list of the offenses and you can make
your own decision on whether or not you want to live there.” So that’s what we do.
1:06:21: BL: I can imagine. Has that increased? The parents calling police department for that information?
1:06:30: SS: I don’t know that it’s necessarily increased, it’s just always been there.
1:06:37: BL: Really?
1:06:38: SS: You know, you’ll always have some parents that want to know. Uh, I will tell you that the population explosion in College Station isn’t necessarily all just students.
1:06: 48: BL: Right.
1:06:49: SS: There was certainly points in time years before when you could say, this is where the students were living. I mean, when they first started developing everything on south
Holleman. I think those were all student areas. I don’t think you can say that anymore. I don’t think it’s just students that live in those places anymore. You kinda, sit back and think
about it – everything west of Wellborn Road – let’s go south of University, will exclude the university property itself. But south of University. Um, west of Wellborn.
1:07:22: BL: Mmhmm.
1:07:23: SS: To, oh, I don’t know until the part where you get – to the part where the City didn’t necessarily annex. Like where Great Oaks is, out there. Majority of that, 95% of that
is all, is all, multi-family dwelling. It’s all apartments. It’s all apartments and/or duplexes. That’s all it is. It’s a huge concentration. I would be confident in saying, at one
point in time, the majority of people that lived there were students. I don’t think you can say that anymore. I don’t think necessarily, yes we’ve had a huge increase in students, big
increase in what we’ve had in the past. But there’s been an increase all together because, because of the prosperity in this area. We’ve been very, very fortunate, that’s been one of
the greatest things about working for the City all these years. I truly have never worried about being laid off. I mean, we’ve always had work to do. We had something to do.
1:08:21: BL: I have a feeling it’s going to continue for a while in that direction.
1:08:28: SS: I think you’re probably right.
1:08: 31: BL: Yes. Um, so what, so speaking of which, um. What challenges and/or accomplishments have you, do you feel you have faced during your time here? Or just city wide, you can
talk about challenges and/or accomplishments?
1:08:53: SS: I think for the challenges certainly is staffing. The managing to get adequate staffing. When you think that just in records alone, we have four clerks and a records supervisor
today. My position used to be a lieutenants position, okay. I just got the supervisor’s position back. When I vacated that position in 2002 or 2003, I was made a manager. I didn’t get
that supervisor position back. It was me and four clerks. I’ve only had that supervisor position back for the past three years. And when you think that’s the same number of people that
were doing the work in 1984. And it’s not because we haven’t needed additional people. We certainly have. I mean, I know there are things that we haven’t been able to do such as keep
up with the records retention schedules that the City has put out. We just most often don’t get rid of anything because of the amount of time that it would take us to sit down and go
through everything. So we keep it, we are now scanning it in, so we can get rid of the originals. Um, but that by far staffing has been. Though no fault of anyone. I’m not saying that
administration or anybody else. Certainly it’s just not the records area. It is uh, staffing I think, in any sort of municipality. It’s just a difficult thing to do. There is always
money that cities have go to spend elsewhere. And we are experts at doing more with less. And I think that goes for every department in the City. I truly do. Um, I can’t think of any
department that has never just stepped up and done. I can sit back and think about all the times the Parks Department has been out there to assist whenever we have the police memorial.
Or the Streets Departments when we were doing the games and the game day trials. And the amount of cooperation from department to department that it is, that we got it’s admirable.
I mean it truly is but I do believe we have become experts at doing more with less. And like I said, there are always roads that need to get fixed. There’s always, you know, water treatment
plants that have to be brought up to standards again. Always money. Nothing is for free. There’s nothing that’s cheap. You know? And yes, it’s hard for Council to decide if they are
going to raise taxes but um, I live in College Station. Born and raised in Bryan. But um, ever since I got married, which I got married late in life, I’ve only been married for ten
years. My husband retired from the police department as a Lieutenant and uh, so I’ve lived in College Station since then. So I mean I’ve got an interest in this as well. We own a home,
we have to pay its taxes and all. And I just don’t think you can put a price necessarily on safety. And not just police, but its fire and it’s everything else. I think fire department
is great, it’s a national standard they can go in, they got a formula that they work based off, like insurance ratings to where they have hard and fast data that shows. They build those
fire houses that they get them staffed. You’ve got to. I mean, it doesn’t help you to build it, if you don’t have anybody to put in it. And there’s just not that same kind of formula
for other areas. So you annex and you get more land and there’s not always the people when you know. City annexed everything out on the east side of Fitch, out there, but you know,
it was the road area. But eventually that is all going to buildup and it’s you know, in the area that it’s going to develop. There will be people moving out there. Same thing with the
Wellborn area. And that sort of growth affects every department. It’s going to affect sanitation, water, electric, it’s going to affect everybody. Everybody. And I certainly don’t have
any solutions to it. But I know that it just gets more and more expensive to buy things. And sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and pay. You’re just gonna have to do it.
1:13:42: BL: For the services.
1:13:43: SS: Yeah. Because we are, we are providing services. And you know, the thought of having to cut some of those. For somebody that has been here as long as I have the idea that
there are some services we can’t do anymore. We’re just not going to provide for the citizen, I don’t like doing that, I don’t like telling somebody, “no, sorry, we can’t, we can’t
do that anymore” something like that, it’s just not – we should be able to do whatever it is that we need to do.
1:14:16: BL: So what about accomplishments? For you or the City or?
1:14:23: SS: Um. Well. I took advantage when the City first started doing the education reimbursement. I think I mentioned earlier about A&M telling me I needed to take a break. And
I did. I took a break from 1981 to 1989 and because the City implemented this education reimbursement. Um, I started, I went back to school and worked part, I worked full-time, went
to school part-time.
1:14:53: BL: Yep. Oh goodness.
1:14:53: SS: And it took me three years. I was going spring, summer, fall, and I did that until I finally graduated with a degree in history in 1992.
1:15:03: BL: Wow. How nice.
1:15:05: SS: So. And the only reason it was history is because I was not on probation for history. (Laughing)
1:15:09: BL: (Laughing) Okay.
1:15:10: SS: I had taken a lot of elective classes in history as well.
1:15:13: BL: Okay.
1:15:14: SS: But um, and that was another benefit that the City gives us that anyone, any employee can take advantage of and sometimes they don’t. Even if you don’t have intentions of
getting a degree, get into college take some classes, it’s only gonna be for the better. But it is, it’s a benefit that we get. But I think that’s probably, my husband probably doesn’t
want to say that, that’s my biggest one, but that’s the one I did alone anyway.
1:15:43: BL: I mean yeah. Working full-time and going to school part-time. That in itself everyday doing that is an accomplishment.
1:15:50: SS: Well as things would have it. My husband was actually working at the police department when I started there in 1981. He had already been working there and then he left to
go back and get his degree. He went to Sam Houston. This point in time, when he was married and everything else. He left and I honestly couldn’t tell you. He came back 87’, 88’ something
like that and um, he gets divorced and one day, were sitting around after Staff meeting and it was like, “well when do you want to go out?” We had been friends.
1:16:30: BL: Right.
1:16:30: SS: I’d been friends with him and his wife, you know. And ex-wife. (Laugh) But um, we uh, we started dating and didn’t. And you know, it’s difficult when you’re working together.
1:16:44: BL: Mmhmm.
1:16:45: SS: And both of us were supervisors/managers. He eventually worked his way up. Worked his way to a Lieutenant. And I don’t know, we, I’d have people call and ask me where he
was during the day. And I would say, I don’t know? Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, I don’t keep tabs on him. You’ll have to go somewhere else. But we dated for eight years before we
ever said anything about getting married. It was kinda sad, I don’t want to say the only reason we did, we lost Major Patterson. Um, and when you sit back and you think, we’re not getting
any younger. And Major Patterson wasn’t old and that was devastating for us. That um, that he had passed away. That, oh and, my husband had gone to the FBI Academy, he was gone for
three months and maybe I just missed him a whole lot. But uh, we got married in February 2007. So I was 48 years old and first and only time I had been married. He’s tremendous. He’s
back working as our volunteer coordinator for the police department. I think he works more hours up there than I do. But he is quite a volunteer. He’s also president of the food bank.
He does a lot for this community. I’m very, very proud of him and what he does.
1:18:09: BL: That’s sweet.
1:18:09: SS: In fact, he already pulled out the volunteer paperwork wanting me to sign-up for the police department.
1:18:13: BL: Now that you’re gonna retire.
1:18:16: SS: Now that I’m retiring. He wants me to come back and volunteer. I’m sure at some capacity I will but there are some thing I would like to see get done. Not at the office.
I’ll go do something elsewhere for them.
1:18:30: BL: So do you have a favorite part? That you have working with the City?
1:18:36: SS: You know. I don’t know how many people could truly sit back. I don’t want to get teary eyed. (laugh) I liked all of it.
1:18:49: BL: Mmhmm.
1:18:51: SS: Every single day. Yeah completely grown-up, from 22 to 36 ½ years later and you know, when I’m retiring and I leave 2,000 hours of sick hours in the books. I’m one of those
that has always come to work, always enjoyed my job, working with the people that I’ve worked with.
1:19:22: BL: Mmhmm.
1:19:23: SS: I can’t say that there has ever been a dull moment. Now I’m not saying it has always been fun and games.
1:19:30: BL: Right.
1:19:30: SS: That’s not what I’m saying. But there’s never been a dull moment. There has always been something that was interesting. Something that was going on, something that needed
to get done, that you do it. You just do it. And as far as civilians go, I had two of my best friends, Cheryl Weichert was the staff assistant for the chiefs. She was there when I
started and she retired in 2015 and she worked for 36 ½ years at the Police Department as well. And then Ronnie Horcica was our technical coordinator for the police department. He
handled, Ronnie could do anything, he handled everything from the, he knew where all the power switches were for everything. All the breaker switches.
1:20:14: BL: Oh goodness.
1:20:15: SS: He had been in dispatch. He knew everything about the radio and everything else. Ronnie retired in March of 2016 and so it’s my turn now. But um, we’re all still very close
to one another. I’m not the only one that has spent this amount of time. There have been others before me that have been every bit as dedicated and have had the same feelings for the
place that I do.
1:20:42: BL: I mean that’s amazing to get to that and be able to have that. I’m sure it’s bittersweet.
1:20:51: SS: Absolutely.
1:20:52: BL: Yeah.
1:20:52: SS: Um. But like I said, it’s hard when you say, I’m done with this, I’m throwing the towel. I can’t stand to do this anymore. I don’t want to go to work. No, like I said,
there’s always been some challenges, it hasn’t always been fun and games. But my gosh, there’s never been a dull moment. There’s just has never been a dull moment.
1:21:15: BL: That’s great. And you’re now married to a former colleague.
1:21:20: SS: Yep.
1:21:20: BL: So.
1:21:20: SS: And he’s got an office upstairs in the police department. (Laughing)
1:21:23: BL: (Laughing)
1:21:24: SS: And the police department has a bright future. Shoot. Even the City does as a whole. The police department and the City both looking for new buildings, to get things done
and built. One of the chiefs asked me, “I thought you’d want to move to the new building?” I kinda laughed and said, “I moved into this building when it’s new. I’ve already done that
once before.”
1:21:45: BL: Yeah, it’s off my bucket list. (Laughing)
1:21:47: SS: Off my bucket list, absolutely. (Laughing) It was off my bucket list, but you know, we’ve always had some great chiefs. We, like I said, there’s been some sad times. We
lost Major Kennedy, the one responsible for putting me in records way back when. He passed away in
1991? 1992? It was one of those days. I’m ashamed that I don’t remember but Assistant Chief Patterson passed away on the exact same day in 2005.
1:22:17: BL: Oh goodness.
1:22:18: SS: And if I remember correctly. It was June 22. Both of them, same day. Major Kennedy had a heart attack on Krenek Tap Road when he was out running at lunch. Assistant Chief
Patterson passed away at home one night. And uh, very tragic for us to go through as a department. Very, very difficult. Both of them great men. The Lieutenant responsible for hiring
me, Bernie Kapella, he passed away a couple of years ago. He was the one that brought the, had our first police robot. Um, at the police department. But he’s also the one that started
the Easter egg hunts. And when we started.
1:23:04: BL: Those are pretty successful.
1:23:04: SS: Oh yeah. Back before we had the Bush library, we’d do them at Central Park and whatever else. But uh, he was the one responsible for starting that and I can’t tell ya how
many Easter egg hunts we’ve participated in over the years. You know, to the point that we want to leave that for the younger ones anymore. (Laughing)
1:23:26: BL: (Laughing) Yeah. But I know those, that’s a big benefit to the community, I think.
1:23:33: SS: I think everybody enjoys it. I think everybody enjoys it. It has gotten huge and I think the police department has less and less to do with it. But I think that’s because
you know, the Bush library takes over. It’s good. It’s good for the community. Regardless of who is doing it. But I just want to make sure that everyone who may listen to this, may
want to know that Bernie Kopella was the one who was responsible for doing that. And that John Kennedy was the one responsible for getting me into the records area for that I am truly
grateful.
1:24:10: BL: So.
1:24: 11: SS: I can’t leave out the very first boss I had for that, Bob Norton. He was the one that brought the first computer system to the police department.
1:24:18: BL: Right. Mmhmm.
1:24:19: SS: Sure did. Sure did. I think I worked for eight different chiefs, Marvin Byrd, Mike Strope , Ed Feldman , Mike Clancey Michael Ikner , have we had that many Mikes? In between
is an interim it was um, Chief Whitmire and Chief Capps and now Chief McCollum .
1:24:43: BL: Wow.
1:24: 43: So. Quite a different chiefs that we’ve had.
1:24:47: BL: And those changes. Um, so can you, so you were involved with the police department during several major events, if you will that occurred in College Station. Um, so can
you provide your reactions or things that you remember about bonfire, for example?
1:25:09: SS: Yeah, I can remember about bonfire. I can remember the page coming in. And us getting the page about bonfire. And our people who were out there working with the command
center, whatever you want to call it, the tent where they where they were pulling out the kids. Then bringing them, laying them. How that just, ya mean. It was tragic. I mean this was
not something that was over and done with. I’m sorry I don’t want to have to make this sort of relationship. You have a fatality accident or go out to a scene of a murder, you’re working
it that scene. You know and then they come and they’re still pulling bodies out. Ya know, out hours and hours later. It wasn’t over yet. And um, we for historical purposes, even though
that was something that was primarily handled by the University Police department, our crime scene is the one that went to it. And Tony Kunkel was our crime scene person at that point
in time. And we, I think he was the one mostly, I could be wrong on that between him and our other detectives, we were in an assist position with the university to do that. And uh,
anything that we had I think the report we had was just, was labeled it as an agency assist. But anything that we have in evidence based off of that, we still have, and it is marked
in a box. I had them do that.
1:26:49: BL: Mmhmm.
1:26:53: SS: Back, I don’t know. I was already over evidence when that happened. So um, I just said this is, it’s never to be destroyed. So whatever it is. And I don’t worry about that
because it’s in a box, it’s in there in the room and it says that, that is where it’s going to stay. I don’t know maybe one of these days, you might want this stuff. We can bring it
to you.
1:27:13: BL: Well yeah. I mean. If that’s something you’re.
1:27:16: SS: I think the fatality accident of those six kids. I can remember one of the officers telling me that it looked like a war zone out there.
1:27:23: BL: Oh gosh.
1:27:25: SS: With just. You know. Shoes and clothes and glasses and bodies, just everywhere. I feel so sorry for the guys that are out there doing it. It’s not easy to see pictures or
have to read statements and you know, knowing that there are tear drops all over some of those statements that are coming in. But for the people that have to go out and work those things.
Um, and how that can wear on them, time and time again. You know. The newspaper never reports how many suicides we have and I think some people would be absolutely surprised. At the
number of suicides and/or deceased persons just even if its natural deaths that our department responds to, our crime scene responds to, our detectives respond to, our officers are
out there. And this is, a frequent occurrence. A frequent occurrence. Or when you have the, or when you’re talking about the big things that happen. Anytime you have a murder that goes
on we had uh, I think it was 94? May have mentioned one of them earlier. We had within a span of 48 hours, we had two capital murders cases that happened. And you know, going from one
to another, completely unrelated. One was back when College Station actually had an adult bookstore. That was down there, just north where Denny’s is. I think Fuego is there now. (Laughing)
But um, a guy that was uh, walking down the street in the middle of the night and (inaudible) went in there with a shotgun, and took out the night guy at the bookstore, and stole his
truck. Caught him. He received death penalty on that too. And then the young lady that was killed over at her house on Bayou woods in College Station but you know, that’s pretty rough
when you’re doing two scenes like that. And the one with her, not saying that the other one getting shot was not a bad one either. But she was
actually shot in the head and set on fire as well. And uh, what I think was really tragic about that is her brother lived across the street and he was out there. I can remember reading
this on the report about how um, he was out there hollering for her, trying to see if she was in the house or whatever else. There wasn’t anything he could do for that. Brother and
sister that were killed not too long ago, maybe eight years ago or so, um, there all tragic. There all tragic. They all leave a mark on anybody that has anything to do with them. And
I have just cannot say how much admiration for the people that do that. Day in and day out.
1:30:35: BL: I, I mean it’s, it can be, yeah.
1:30:41: SS: Yeah it can be.
1:30:42: BL: Very trying.
1:30:42: SS: It can be. It can be. It certainly can be.
1:30:47: BL: Um, so. To change, I guess a little bit, um.
1:30:51: SS: Do we need to go to something happier now?
1:30: 53: BL: Well. (Laughing)
1:30:57: SS: Lighten up the mood a little bit.
1:31:00: BL: Well maybe. (Laughing)
1:31:01: SS: I can start telling you the funniest things we’ve ever had submitted to evidence. But I probably shouldn’t do that. (Laughing)
1:31:07: BL: Um, so I actually wanted to address the annexation of Wellborn. And see if?
1:31:13: SS: Okay.
1:31:15: BL: But it’s not as happy either. But it’s slightly better than?
1:31:20: SS: I think it’s just because we don’t. It’s the, the police department usually does a beat analysis to draw the lines. Run the stats for all the reporting areas. We got, like
I said. A new computer system. I really don’t know. I’m not hooked into that. I knew I was going to be retiring and so I tried to really back off on the new system a lot. But um, um,
I know that with the annexation of Wellborn that is one particular beat. It’s the same officer that goes to the 7/11. I’m sorry, the Shell station across from Wings South has to be
the one responsible for answering the calls in Wellborn Wellborn as well. And we all know how that has grown in there. But every police department faces staffing challenges and its
not for a lack of trying, it’s not because of no support by the city, that’s not it either. But um, there’s turn over all the time, whether they don’t really know what the job is about,
they get into it and decide they can’t do it or what? But when you think about bringing in somebody that’s not a certified officer, and how long it takes before he can get to the street,
eighteen months or something. And if you’re down officers, how long that takes? Somebody is having to back up for me, somebody is having to cover some part of the street. But um, yeah,
it uh, I think it’s tough.
They did get because of all the calls at Northgate. And I haven’t been young in a long time, but I don’t go to Northgate at night, but um, I hear it’s a wild place. And because of that
we ended up with College Station tourism and entertainment police unit that’s up there. They’re the ones on the bicycles now. I think we had a sergeant with six officers but um, and
you know, same thing. Those guys are up there working every weekend. Every weekend on that. And at some point of time, they are going to get tired of doing that too. I don’t know? Every
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night.
1:33:50: BL: Even more than that probably. I, to be honest, I don’t really go to Northgate much. I’ve maybe only been there a couple of times.
1:34:00 SS: I think the um, the carpool organization is absolutely one of the best. That this town has. I don’t know if anybody out there listening would know, but the guy that started
carpool, Jeff Schiefelbein , was actually arrested by College Station Police Department for a DWI. And that is what he did .
1:34:24: BL: In response?
1:34:24: SS: What he set up in response to that. And it has been, it was amazing of it was what he did, recognizing that it was an issue or problem. And those kids, it is one of the
biggest organizations that the kids really want to be involved with. That and the onset of Uber has helped our numbers as far as DWIs go. But um, it’s sad that in this day in age, they
are out there the way they are. They are still out there.
1:34:55: BL: Right.
1:34:56: SS: They are still out there.
1:35:01: BL: Okay, so now are there any, before we kind of go to some conclusion questions. Are there any other topics or things you would like to address?
1:35:14: SS: Such as? Yeah, no, I probably addressed enough. We can always get my phone number at the end if somebody wants to call me.
1:35:23: BL: You can call me up later and say, “Oh I want to add this.” (Laughing) Um, which is fine.
1:35:30: SS: I think it’s great that the City even does this. I think this is a tremendous thing. I appreciate the opportunity.
1:35:36: BL: Oh, you’re welcome. Um, so, on happier notes. What do you hope to accomplish in the future after, and you retire November.
1:35: 49: SS: November 26 is the end of the pay period. That’s my actually official last day. I had selected November 24th because that’s my birthday. But my last day of working is this
Friday on November 17th. So. And to accomplish in the future? I have my mother. I’m very fortunate my mother is still alive she lives here in town. My husband’s parents are still alive,
they live in town. I think they were one of the first ones that when we. That is another change. I’ll jump in there quick.
1:36:21: BL: Yeah.
1:36: 23: SS: We’ve had a tremendous influx of former students that have come back. A lot of old Aggies. I think in fact that trend may have started somewhere along in the late 80s.
I can remember one point in time that I said the median age in College Station was like 23.6 and we couldn’t ever keep any young people around here because there weren’t any young people.
I don’t know if we can still keep them because there’s a lot of old people around here.
1:36:47: BL: Right.
1:36:47: SS: Because we are. But that is a great group of citizens when you think about it. Do have and want settle down here in College Station. And I’ve talked to many people before
and they went to school here and they started having a family, this is where they wanted to come back to. Even if they were going to be commuting back and forth to Houston. Um. Anyway.
But my husband’s parents they were some of those. He was originally from Halletsville and his parents moved up here when he started working back up here. I think it was back in 1984,
but they are both still alive. And I have a feeling I will be spending a lot of time with them. Welcome time with them. And never having any kids of my own. I’ve always been very involved
in my nieces and nephews and now it’s their kids that I like to have around. So um, the City has recently started giving us a volunteer-parent eight hours and I’ve taken full advantage
of that. I’ve been to Grandparents Day more than once. (Laughing) So, I’m very involved with all of them. I’m a member of Bryan Rotary Club. And um Treasurer. And I have been for nine
years or so. (Laughing) So I stay busy doing my service organization stuff as well. And then uh, Scott and I travel. Our main bucket list is that we are going to hit all 50 states.
We’ve only got seven to go. And we’ve got the two hard ones out of the way. Three hard ones, four hard ones. Whatever you want to say. We only have the upper tier left. So those are
the only ones. Oh and Delaware. We don’t know how we missed Delaware. Delaware is the only one over there. But we’ve gotten the other ones, just those. Top tier states up there. I think
a total of seven we have left.
1:38:34: BL: Okay well. Good luck with that then.
1:38:36: SS: And like I said. With my husband, he, uh the ultimate volunteer he is. He serves on with the chamber, he goes to Washington, D.C. with the chamber every year. And um, with
the food bank, he is, because they were going through a whole new building. He has served as president for the past two years with the food bank. He’s very well, very much involved.
I don’t see that changing at all. And then we go to pretty much, we can do Aggie football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and softball. So we stay very busy going to Aggie sports.
We like going to the baseball tournaments as well. It’s about the only out of town ones that we will do with the Aggie baseball team. That was our second date. It was Aggie baseball.
We enjoy Aggie baseball. (Laughing)
1:39:34: BL: Well, baseball is one of my favorite sports.
1:39:39: SS: We have a lot of fun with Aggie baseball. We’ve always had fun at Aggie baseball.
1:39:44: BL: Um, last question. What advice would you give to people interested in working for the city or working specifically in your position? Or with the police department so you
can respond in a variety of ways. What advice?
1:40:04: SS: For the police department? One of the things I try to press upon new hires in there was that, we needed to treat everyone kindly and with respect. When you think about it,
no one that comes with the police department, has a reason to be happy. They’ve either been involved in a wreck, had something stolen, had something hurt, got arrested, got a ticket.
It’s not because not like you’re gonna need help. Sure. You get the teachers that bring the cookies from the students that bake things and people who will drop stuff off for the police
department all the time, yes those are happy. When you’re truly having to provide a service and so that’s something I had always told the ladies, gentlemen that worked in the front
window at the police department. That’s what the records does, we are the main receptionist there for the police department. Is to bear that mind when somebody comes in because there’s
no reason to snap back, just because there not happy about something. And you know, you have to understand that, you have to understand that, and that should not change the customer
service, you provide to somebody. And you need to be more understanding with them. Um, that’s the advice I would give anybody, make sure you do that. Um, cultivate your contacts. There’s
no reason to be cloistered away from anybody within the city. It’s very difficult anymore because the city now divvies up the money between departments to go have their own little parties
and things. I can remember, a point in time, when the city would have an awards banquet for everybody that came to it. Um, I know City of Bryan has, they do two a year. I would love
to see the city go into something like that because it gives you, not just you get to meet people other areas, but the bigger the city gets, you need to know who to contact. I mean,
something as silly as we get into a traffic sight at the police department, we’re not supposed to get a traffic sight in the police department. But let’s just say we get one, somebody
brings one to the police department or a police officer brings one in, you need to know who to call. You need to call streets department, you need to tell them can y’all come get this
sign. But if you don’t know that, you know, it used to be I could call Lee, call Lee (inaudible). Somebody’s gonna come get this sign. But you can build your contacts, you know who
to call. And with the city not doing anything as a unit, it’s difficult to do that. It’s difficult to do that. I had one of the girls who work for me come into my office, and I turned
around picked up the phone and made a phone call and I got through it, I hung up. She looked at me and said, “I don’t know of anybody else who knows who to call whenever we come in
here.” I said, “It’s years in service, but it’s also from cultivating your contacts and that can be both internal with the city, in the department, know who it is who you’re working
with, know who you need to call in the city, outside of the city. Whoever it is you need help with.
1:43:17: BL: Yeah I feel. I think that’s similar, I’m in the City Secretary’s Office Department technically, but being housed here due to space constraints. Um, so yeah, I definitely
think that’s advice for many people because most people never see my face typically, since I’m not at City Hall. Um, and I stay typically in this office, so um, I think that’s good
advice.
1:43:48: SS: I would like to see. It would be nice if the city ever did something like that to get back to where, you know. And like I said, this is not blame or anything. Um, everybody
is busy,
everybody needs staffing. I have no doubt about that, but you know we had a point time, when HR during public employees week, HR had the ability, we’d send balloons out, you could write
little cards to anybody within the city. Tell them what you were thankful for them and HR would run around and deliver these. And they were all these little hand written notes that
you could send to somebody. Legal would help you out or the City Secretary’s Office, or you know something like that. But I think anything like that now, wouldn’t necessarily be easy
to do because nobody knows each other anymore.
1:44:35: BL: Right.
1:44:36: SS: The bigger you get, the more that, that happens. But while you’re still small enough to do it, I think that you probably should.
1:44:45: BL: Mmhmm. I think that’s great advice. And actually something that I may talk to, “Oh, (inaubile).
1:44: 57: SS: You shouldn’t just wait to get an email and go “who is that?” “I don’t know who that is.” Making sure it has CSTX at the back of it, so you know who it’s coming from.
1:45:03: BL: I contact you, like “this is who I am.” I’m not a stranger.
1:45:08: SS: Right.
1:45:08: BL: I mean, I am a stranger but I work for the city.
1:45:12: SS: Um, and to, like I said, cultivate your contacts. There’s always somebody out there that’s going to be more than willing with the city, to help you out, to help you do stuff.
I can’t tell you the number of times, I’ve called on legal or in Public Works or City Secretary’s Office, or something like that to help me with something we had going on. You know,
I work so closely with legal because of information, open records requests, we get so many of those that come in. We get so many of those that come in and some of those requests are
horrendous. They are so time consuming and I’ve been very fortunate that they let me handle, mine don’t have to get filtered through City Secretary, they come directly to the police
department because of the volume that we get. And when somebody says, I want to get all the reports that involve so-and-so, now it doesn’t mean they are going to get those reports,
but I can pull it up and this person can have 30 reports under their name. And so I’m having to go through and print them all out and finding the depositions on all these cases, to
get everything prepared for legal so they know what kind of brief to write for the police office. Um, that I don’t know how legal manages to keep up with that stuff, I truly don’t.
It is unbelievable, w have had some TMZ outside the lines, NFL people, yeah. We’ve gotten, of course, we never hit on Johnny.
1:46:47: BL: (Laughing) Oh, I’m sure, you’ve gotten quite a bit of requests for him.
1:46:53: SS: Oh, we did. We did. When Johnny got arrested, he was arrested more than once.
1:46:59: BL: Right.
1:46:49: SS: When he got arrested, we had, we had people calling about him on a regular basis. But then when he was fixing to graduate before the draft, we had people coming down there
checking up on him and other teams that were wanting to find out about him.
1:47:12: BL: Mmm.
1:47:12: SS: We sure did.
1:47:14: BL: Wow.
1:47:16: SS: They would want to know more the details of stuff. You know. Things that happened.
1:47:20: BL: Do they have a legal basis for that? No.
1:47:23: SS: Yeah.
1:47:23: BL: No. But remember, public information or Open Records Act, has to do with documents, just like when a detective is working a case, he can sit there and tell you that you’re
a suspect and this is what the other person has said. They can vocalize anything that they need to it’s the document itself they can’t release. But if they wanted to tell you anything
about him. So in an investigators opinion, if somebody came in and asked him an opinion about something, then he is more than welcome to give him his professional opinion.
1:47:54: BL: Mmhmm.
1:47:54: SS: About it.
1:47:55: BL: Interesting. I’m learning so much, that I did not know. Which is part of the reason why this is so fabulous because we’re getting a lot of different perspectives and experience
from different positons and areas, and um, things that I wouldn’t never have known.
1:48:19: SS: I know when I finally submitted my retirement letter, I made the comment about having “unwavering support” in that is what I’ve always had every supervisor, lieutenant,
assistant chief, major chief that I ever worked for, um, sometimes I don’t know if it was because they trusted me or there wasn’t one of them what wanted to have to do with records.
You know? And for some people, it is quite a boring subject, you know. Who wants to keep track of all the paperwork?
1:48:49: BL: I think well, historian partly. I think it’s interesting. So. (Laugh)
1:48:54: SS: I have to, I don’t think I would have lasted this long if I hadn’t been.
1:48:58: Right, Yeah.
1:49:00 BL: Well, um, to wrap up. Are there anything else you’d like to address?
1:49:05: SS: No. Just anybody that listening out there, know the city has been very, very good to me. The employees need to be thankful. I’ll will tell you TMRS retirement is a great
thing if you work long enough. You know, it truly is.
1:49:21: Yes, I’ve heard that from others.
1:49:24: SS: It’s really is. And that city doesn’t have to do what they do. They don’t have to do the 2-to-1, and they do. And it is, it is, tremendous. It is, I’m very, very grateful.
1:49:37: BL: Mmhmm. Well, I want to thank you for your time.
1:49:43: SS: Thank you for listening.
1:49: BL: Your contribution, and the dedication you’ve had to the city and the police department. Um, we greatly appreciate you coming in here and um, having this interview, so that
we can add it to our collection because it’s very valuable.
1:49:57: SS: Am I going to get editing rights? No, I’m just kidding. (Laughing) You know, I will not go back and listen.
1:50:04: BL: No, well, we can talk about that afterwards. But um, thank you again, and um enjoy your retirement.
1:50:11: SS: I will do that.