By Jeff Kenney Staff Writer
CULVER — Wayne Bean’s 25th anniversary on the Culver police force passed quietly on Oct. 1, 2007, which seems appropriate enough.
Bean’s tenure as both chief and officer has not been characterized by a great deal of shouting and noise; instead, Culver’s town marshal has been on the job, quiet and steady, through the years.
Not that those years were always uneventful. Bean, who was sworn in as an officer in 1982 and became chief (technically town marshal) in early 2000, has seen everything from the exciting to the just plain odd: “I came across this car guy parked outside of town who came running out of the car without any pants on,” chuckles Bean, recalling an incident several years ago. “That was one of those picturesque moments. You run across a lot of different things.”
“(Another) interesting time was a long time ago: we went to assist near Bass Lake, there was a guy with a gun…they thought he was going over to shoot his parents. (The police had) cornered him in the back yard…we had a standoff from about two in the afternoon ‘til about four in the morning. We surrounded the guy, and he had a semi-automatic handgun. He had threatened to commit suicide, and they were trying to talk him down…I had one of the guys here bring over a stun gun. We discussed it amongst a few of us. We didn’t want to have to shoot the guy; it was nothing that warranted deadly force. He kept going back and forth against the garage. I said, ‘I think I can get this guy, but I need a stun gun.’”
“He finally went over and sat down next to this garage with his back against the wall. They kept him talking, and I came up alongside planter, leaned across and zapped him, and grabbed his gun at the same time.”
Bean recalls a number of colorful cases in Culver. “The bank was robbed here a couple of times. We’ve had several arsons over the years since I’ve been here. When I first started here, there was a murder out here where the school playground is now. One guy bludgeoned the person to death.”
“People think stuff doesn’t happen in a small town,” notes Bean. “It’s just not on a daily basis like a big city. It’s slowly moving in here to the point where you don’t know your neighbor anymore. If you go to South Bend or Chicago, you don’t want to know your neighbor! (But today) a lot of people here don’t know their neighbor.”
Bean notes that the days of the lone town marshal being the entire police force – which was the norm for decades in Culver – are gone here. “At one time, several years ago, (former town marshal) Don Mikesell used to do it (that) way; he was here from 1946 to 1966. But people don’t realize back then you were lucky to have one car per family. Now every family has one car per individual. Crime was less.”
Wayne Bean grew up in Culver and graduated from Culver high school. He first became interested in becoming a police officer around 1979, when he was already out of high school. “I started working part-time in 1980 for the department as an officer. You always look at the excitement side of it. It’s a job that, even with a small town, there’s always something different. It’s not like factories or other jobs. Not that our job sometimes isn’t like that, but you can take the same kind of a call and it could be unpredictable. Something as simple as a traffic stop can turn out to be a felony arrest…most people are good people, but it’s the one that you find that’s the true criminal. That’s rewarding.”
In 1982, Bean joined Culver’s police force full-time. “I was sworn in by Marizetta Kenney on Oct. 1, 1982. When I first started here, there were three of us. About three and a half years after I started, (the) laws changed and the town was forced into hiring another person. We used to work 60 hours a week; that was our 40 hour schedule. Adding an extra person made a big difference.”
“When I started here, I (had gotten) laid off from McGill manufacturing. I believe I made $2.50 an hour (as a police officer)! I started here and was in the middle of the law enforcement academy and got called back to work at McGill. So I had to make decision: do I want to stay here as an officer, or make $5,000 to $6,000 more per year? (Staying on the force was) fortunate for me; you see where Mcgill went! But at that time, you didn’t know that…I made a decision to stay. I could have left and made more money.”
In late January or early February of 2000, the town of Culver was seeking a new police chief. “The town council can appoint anybody they want as chief,” says Bean. “I showed an interest, and they basically came to me…I felt I probably had been ready a long time for that.”
So Bean made the transition to town marshal, which meant managing the police officers under him as well as a budget. But it also meant being the one people search out to take care of their problems. “When somebody wants to complain about something, they always want to talk to you. I feel like I’m a people person; I get along with most people. Not everybody’s going to like you, but an ability to deal with people is probably a good portion of your job. That applies whether you’re a patrolman or a department head.”
An inevitable challenge is having almost the whole town as one’s longtime neighbor. “It makes it more difficult in a small town where everybody knows you. You want to make everybody happy, but sometimes it’s unfortunately not possible…sometimes people just need to air their problems and don’t always know who to turn to. You try to direct them to the help they need.”
Bean says that he hopes people realize there’s another side to the dreaded police pull-over that many people experience. “When the police stop you, people don’t see the safety side of it; there is a safety side to everything…we’re the ones who have to try and keep further tragedies from happening. People have to understand we’re human like the rest of them.”
“My door’s always open. The big misconception is we’re always the bad guy…we don’t always like to feel like people are getting arrested or ticketed, but sometimes that’s what we’ve got to do. And why do people feel differently about it when it’s someone they know than someone they don’t? It’s the same result.”
“We’re kind of in a job that they either like you or they don’t,” muses Bean. “The police either help you, or they’re taking something away from you.”
Over the past twenty-five years, Bean has seen changes, though many have been so gradual, they’re easy to miss. “I’ve seen a lot of (officers) come and go here, seen a lot of town councils come and go.”
Bean recalls one familiar face in Culver who worked with the department for over 40 years, that of the late Eunice Schrimsher, who passed away in 2005. “She was like family,” he says.
What else has changed? “Probably the biggest change I see, the most drastic, is a lot in the last three years, and that’s the housing and the people in town. (Culver has) faded away from more a commercial community to a tourist community. We went from gas stations to restaurants.”