question why did you want to become a police officer can say since i was a very young boy i always wanted to be a police officer and the reason why is so that i could help people ok a lot of help people police academy time i went to the massachusetts state police academy at the time they were doing a municipal police academy and i went there for twelve weeks i lived there from monday through friday and we were very happy when friday came not too happy when monday came back but we were there for twelve weeks and we had a live there at the academy in framingham but now today the absolute goal for six six months but they don't live at the academy they can commute daily but that's the difference from a number of years ago when i started to what it is today wow how long have you been a police officer and been the police officer and how well i was a police officer twenty seven years when i went before coming to belmont and i've been here now eight years oh yeah well what's your daily life in the workplace it's always interesting to me and i as i say you never know what you're going to find from whether it be e mails and telephone calls just people that want to talk to you you know we've had a lot of people that just come in and just say i need to talk to the chief and we have a discussion so my day is always different can honestly tell you that it's never the same but it's something that i truly enjoy and truly love as as a profession there's no other job i don't believe that is quite like being a police officer unique day that i can what kinds of equipment now we have a variety of different equipment the main piece of our equipment is our radio so that we can communicate with back at home on control and plus to communicate with each other and then obviously we have a number of tools that we utilize for to do   the position we have to two different models that we fed our members with and it's the twenty three other twenty seven model twenty three a model twenty seven i ever use your taser before we do not use tasers in belmont we don't carry we don't carry tasers there may be something in the future but right now we do not have any police dogs do have we have one we have one we have canine graham and  corey taylor is his canine handler this is the first actual canine in the history of the belmont police department and but we were very fortunate one of our residents donated made a donation to the department because of the need and also the believe that this was a great asset which it truly is i mean the having the canine in the ability and hence is our ability tenfold whether it be we're searching for  missing children someone that's committed a crime or are evidence of when a crime is committed we can also track but graham has been tremendous a tremendous asset for us sometimes i have it off but the pants on the circumstances my position is i'm on call twenty four seventh's so if there's a circumstance a situation i need my attention they call me and that's part of my job to respond was the fastest route as you go on your cruise so what's the fastest route have to go on microsoft that's a good question i really don't know to be honest with you because usually i keep my eyes on the road and i don't usually look at the  some lights in the dashboard there's some lights above my memory so that people can see when i come up if i don't if they have to get out of the way to move to the right so i can activate those lights they have strobe lights in the headlights and also i have a if they don't stop then that's a citation but what we always try and do is we try and i ask people what the reason what's going on in their life at that time why they didn't stop at the red light i you know sometimes i explain to the offices there could be something going on in that person's life that they need to you know get to ospital for a family member or somebody you know they need to get somewhere but the red light might have been they might not have noticed it so we want to give them the benefit of the doubt and we ask them why you know what's going on in their life at that point perhaps how does that feel being back you just feels all right  on off the top of my head i've seen people do it have been with the loop with what happens when somebody gets arrested while what happens is they come in through the side door and then we process the person who is arrested now we could do pictures from photographs and fingerprints and then we contact the bill commissioner depending on the circumstances and the charges and then the bail commissioner will tell us what needs to be done from that point there by law we have to hold the evidence for when the person goes to court and then once they go to court will determine what we need to do with the evidence sometimes great job out there and they're out there patrolling so i truly believe that if first and foremost if people see the officers out and about the community they have a very good feeling a very good  but that also sends a message to the people that want to do commit crimes if they see the police officers out there that something that they don't want you know encounters so hopefully they go someplace else and not here in some of the things you do to keep the community safe well a big part of our job is to making sure that community knows what the expectations are of us the police department i often say to people you know what you're our eyes in areas if you see something call us if you hear something or you see you looking around and you see somebody that doesn't look right in your neighborhood call us we would rather come and check that person out and make sure you know a lot of times the last they're looking for a certain person and they be the wanted into the neighborhood and they're not sure where they should be so as i say a lot of times of people just make that phone call and let us know will come and we'll check them out to make sure they're who this supposed to be there maybe just last and will point them in the right direction what i call it comes in how many officers do you have to send that it depends on the call depends on the call and it also depends on how many officers we have available but we usually do not send less than one officer to a call what happens when nine one one call and then well we have again some very good call takers we have a nine one one disc communication dispatchers who are very very well trained and they do a great job their job is to get as much information as they can so that they  can further and relay that information out to the officers responding as you know since from the other night we also dispatch fire and police and the m f so if we got a call for the fire department the same thing applies all that information that they gather they want to relay out to the offices in the firefighters out in the field so that they can have the as much information as they can to answer the call to get to take breaks on your job so we get to take breaks yes yes we try and you know it's sometimes it can be very very tough sometimes you don't get the you don't get to have your lunch when you want to while your dinner sometimes a lot of different things come into play as we tell our offices they're always on call so if by chance you just sit down to have your dinner and we've got a serious call you've got to go so a lot of times dinner a lunch is left on the table rotate in three shifts twenty four seven around the clock can you name all of your police officers yes i can do you want me to yes there's forty eight of them and then i rather not  like golf when it's nice and by like football i like hockey like baseball i like you know like i said to sit down relax and watch a good watch a good game what said i think you know what i enjoy all of them because you know it gives me a chance i mean as i say i've been doing this a long time and over those years there's been a lot of holidays that i've missed  because of my job i was on nights for eighteen the is so i did a rotating schedule and that meant a lot of times that i was not home but now in my position most of the time like in joyed the holidays unless we have a major emergency but again we have great people so they're out there doing what they need to do and that helps me do what i need to do so but no i think i like them  i like them all what is your favorite food favorite food to eat well i got to tell you honestly my wife is a terrific work so whatever she cooks for me i usually is always good what is your favorite part of your job just the nature of the job itself as i said earlier it's just always changing i can honestly say that two days and never the same as i say to my offices we're given the opportunity first and foremost to help our community to be the the safest community can be but also to help people that need our help and that i take that very seriously and i  important part of our role as public servants and protecting our community well there's so many different aspects of my job that i love and i hope to continue doing it for many years but