Emporia Police Chief Mike Heffron said he will miss Emporia when he retires Friday and moves to Albuquerque.
Heffron was born and raised in Emporia and spent most of his life here. Although he will miss Emporia, Heffron said he is looking forward to a bigger city.
“Emporia is a great place to raise a kid, but you’re kind of restricted in outside activities,” he said.
Heffron started out at the Emporia Police Department as a reservist in 1975 and went full time in 1976. Before coming to the Emporia Police Department, Heffron spent some time in the military. Over his career, he’s spent time in both the Air Force and National Guard.
“I’ve been associated with the department for over 31 years,” Heffron said. He has been chief for 5 1/2 years.
And Heffron has seen a lot of changes in both the department and law enforcement in all those years. The biggest change has been technology.
“When I started, to turn on our red lights you had a toggle switch,” Heffron said. “You had a knob to turn on the sirens.”
Today, the cars’ computers manage the blinking patterns of the lights and the camera automatically goes on when emergency lights and sirens are turned on.
Back when Heffron first started, he said that it took anywhere from three to four minutes to an hour to run a plate. There were no computers to run a plate through. The officers now have laptops in their cars.
The 911 center was considered space age, Heffron said. Everybody used typewriters. Today, everything is computerized.
When he was working for the department in 1993, Heffron said there were only four computers in the department. Today there are more than 50 and the department has an IT person that can’t keep up.
When it comes to law enforcement, Heffron said, the changes are just as obvious.
“The officers can arrest a lot quicker,” Heffron said. “The officers have tazers now. We have not had a serious injury to an officer since before we started carrying tazers and we rarely have to use them.”
Officers all carry personal cell phones with them now too.
Heffron said it has been interesting to see the police logs over all the years. Some names that show up on the log now are grandchildren of people he used to work with back when he was starting out.
“You look at the log and it’s the same names,” Heffron said.
Heffron has learned a lot in his career in law enforcement.
“I’ve learned that there are two sides to every story and don’t believe the first one you hear,” he said. “You also have to remember that there are a lot of nice people out there too, you just never run across them.”
He’s also learned that nothing is as it seems to be, Heffron said.
“Don’t believe anything you read until you check it out,” he said. “You can’t assume anything. Ever.”
While he’s retiring from Emporia Police Department, Heffron isn’t retiring completely. He is going to help his son manage his car wholesale business, which spans across several states.
tknaak (inactive user) says...
The photo of Mike and his brother Rick is possibly my all time favorite that has run in the paper.
December 14, 2006 at 3:40 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )