Page 12 THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – Friday, June 26, 2020 The Sounds of Saugus By Mark E. Vogler H ere are a few tidbits that you might want to know about this week in Saugus. A super “Shout-Out” for Marsha Bishop It’s always great to hear about senior citizens who quietly work behind the scenes, doing what they can – without any notoriety – to help their fellow man or woman. Janice K. Jarosz, a longtime journalist and occasional contributor to our “Shout-Out” feature, is recommending that a heap of praise be dumped on Marsha Bishop. “For several months I have been hearing about a woman at Laurel Gardens who goes out of her way to help her ASKS | from page 11 and we outlawed them over 25 years ago. It’s hard to believe that they’re still going on out there [Minneapolis]. Every state is diff erent. Q: Locally, what are the biggest challenges on your plate? I guess you have the traffic unit that has been funded and planned for over a year? A: Yes. It’s been a year or over a year and a half since the citizen’s group [Citizens for a Safer Saugus] formed on social media. I know we worked with the manager and the Board of Selectmen, and one of the things we came up with were the speed monitors that you see – there are four or fi ve of them around town. There is one actually right here on Hamilton Street. And those have seemed to have a pretty big impact. Q: I like the “Thank You” response you get when you slow down to the speed limit! A: Yeah! It seems to have helped a lot and done the job, along with our officers out there enforcing the traffi c regulations. Q: You have to get your feet wet, but how soon do you think that the traffi c unit – the three-person one that was talked about at Town Meeting – and the funding approved will be in place? A: We were looking to get it in place sooner, but we had some unexpected retirements, so the extra manpower that we had planned for that kind of got taken up into patrols. We’ve got four graduating from the Police Academy in a couple of weeks. And then we are going to send three more starting the Academy at the end of next month. When these four graduate, they will have to go through a full trainneighbors – taking them to doctor’s appointments, bringing them shopping, help in cleaning up their apartments – I heard that she never says ‘no,’” Janice wrote me in an email this week. “I thought she would be a good choice. I called her last week and told her I heard great things about her and how she helps out with those disabled or in serious need of support.” Janice marvels at the fact that Marsha, though experiencing some health issues in her late 60s, goes out of her way to help folks. “Marsha surely deserves a shout out. I have only met her once but know so many people she has helped. Please give her a shout out.” No problem. Let’s hear a loud round of applause for Marsha. Hopefully, her good deeds become contagious. Want to “Shout-Out” a fellow Saugonian? This is an opportunity for our paper’s readers to single out – in a brief mention – remarkable acts or achievements by Saugus residents, or an act of kindness or a nice gesture. Just send an email (mvoge@comcast.net) with the mention in the subject line of “An Extra Shout-Out.” No more than a paragraph; anything longer might lend itself to a story and/or photo. Go see an outdoor movie at Kowloon Do you have the COVID-19 blues? If you do, maybe it’s time to go see a movie – outdoors – at ing program. That usually takes a couple of months. We will evaluate the situation when they get off of field training and see where we are at. We’ve actually got another retirement coming up, I think next month. That might put us a little behind the eight ball, but I think at this point, with these four guys coming out [of the Academy], it should put us really close to starting something. Q: And this is one of your top priorities? A: Yeah. It’s a priority. We want to give them a little fl exibility to do not do just traffi c, but maybe some other things – maybe some other community outreach type stuff, so yeah, we don’t want to pigeonhole it as strictly a traffi c unit of guys out there writing tickets. Obviously, we’re going to be dealing with the traffi c issues. That’s a primary part of what we’re going to be doing. Q: So, will it be a select assignment of offi cers to a unit or will there be people rotating in and out? A: Again, we haven’t fi gured it all out yet, but most likely it’s going to be a unit. Right now we actually have guys who work in a traffi c capacity. It’s just not a unit. Q: Have you had time to fi gure out the hierarchy of the department? A: I don’t know if you’ve heard – the manager had an organizational study conducted last year. The fi nal draft isn’t finalized, but they did make some recommendations, and I’ve read through that, so yeah, I think you will see some subtle changes. Q: Now, is Lt. Ronald Giorgetti staying on? A: Yes. Before Chief DiMella he was the assistant chief. And he was the interim chief for the last two years, so he’s back as assistant chief. Q: So, he’s going to be your Number Two for the foreseeable future? A: I don’t want to commit to anything right now, but he’s certainly qualified to do the job, and he’s been doing it for a while. Q: He’s been preparing the Police Department budgets now for several years. A: Yeah. Again, I don’t want to commit to anything. Q: Everything else pretty much set? A: So, the job I came from in training, that’s a job that we’re going to post shortly, and someone will be appointed to do that. Once again, given the environment, this is a pretty important position. It’s not just the training itself, but the documentation that needs to go in it – it’s huge. We’re an accredited department, so the accreditation people want us to show them that everybody is accredited correctly. The new legislation that’s coming out – they’re going to be certifying police officers and recertifying police offi cers every three years, so once again, the training records have to be up to snuff and have to be shown in order for the state to recertify us as individual police offi cers. Q: You’ve had a chance to go over the statistics and trends? A: Yes. Q: Anything that you find alarming or of concern – unCOVID-related, that is – if we didn’t have the COVID-19? A: Yes. Identity theft was always a problem, but there has been a specific uptick in the IRS thing, but as far as over the course of my caIT’S MOVIE TIME! This 22-feet-high-by-40-feet-wide movie screen is set up in the parking lot of the Kowloon Restaurant for folks who feel like enjoying a movie outside at the restaurant’s Car Hop & Drive-In. The drive-in will debut next Tuesday night with the popular 1982 science fi ction fi lm titled “E.T. the ExtraTerrestrial,” which was directed and coproduced by Steven Spielberg. (Saugus Advocate photo by Mark E. Vogler) the Kowloon Restaurant Car Hop & Drive-In in the northbound lane of Route 1 in Saugus. The Kowloon Restaurant, reer, I think one of the biggest trends we’ve seen is with psychologically impaired people. When I started here, there were a lot of state institutions. And I think a lot of those state institutions closed down, and they opened up community group homes throughout the town, so you have that, and we deal with those group homes quite often. As I said, at the beginning of my career it just was very rare, and now it seems like a regulartype thing – at least every day – where we are dealing with people, so we have provided a great amount of training over the last couple of years, and our officers seem to be doing well with it. So, looking back over the last 25 years, a couple of things have really come to the top – dealing with identity theft and the psychologically-impaired. Q: In recent years I know your department has been active in the “Dementia Friendly Saugus” program. A: Yes. And that’s been going way back; we always had some way to address it or keep a database – things like that and whatever we can do. Q: So, what about the situation of Kevin Nichols, the veteran police offi cer and longtime fl eet maintenance mechanic who wanted to work up to age 70 instead of retiring at age 65? [Nichols turned 65 on April 10.] A: Last I heard, it was up at the State House and they were waiting to vote on it. I know they weren’t voting on anything for a while because of the COVID. I’m not sure what the status was. I heard a rumor it might have gotten kicked back because of some language issues, so I don’t know where it’s at now. which is owned and operated by the Wong family, is set SOUNDS | SEE PAGE 13 Q: So, is he still on active duty as a police offi cer? A: No. What happened was the state hadn’t voted on it by the time he turned 65, so he had to leave. But according to him, that doesn’t mean that it’s a done deal – that he can’t come back. He seems to think if they vote for it, that he can [return] to the department. We’ll see. I don’t know exactly what’s going on with that. Q: I did see him when he left the auto shop, and he was in regular uniform for a couple of weeks. A: Yeah. He was, but I think what happened was they had hired his replacement [as police department mechanic] in anticipation of his leaving. That person was already hired. I know there was a short transition that he worked with the new guy. I don’t think the town anticipated him staying this long. Once the new mechanic was up there and transitioned in, his last couple of weeks he worked on the street here. Q: Anything else that you would like to talk about? I know it’s early in your days as chief, but you must be thinking about some things. A: Just that I want to continue to move the department forward. This has been a progressive department over the last 10 years, and I want to keep it going that way. We got accredited, which was a big deal. I was a part of that. We stepped up an increase in training over the last 10 years. I want to keep that going. Sometimes there are mandatory changes and sometimes there are changes that you think about yourself. I think in the next couple of years, we’re going to be dealing with the mandatory changes coming from the State House.
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