New chief hired for Saltville Police Department

Marion --

BY DAN KEGLEY
Staff

Rob Hall is returning to his native state as he begins next month as chief of Saltville’s police department.
Reached “amid boxes” in Twisp, Wash., where it was just after 10 a.m. Thursday, Hall was packing for the long drive from the northwest. Depending on how the trip goes, he anticipates being on the job July 15.
Saltville officials announced last week Hall’s succession of Steve Sturber, who retired after 35 years in the Saltville Police Department.
In a press release, Town Manager Mike Taylor said the “lengthy process was successfully completed by the Saltville Police-Fire-Rescue Committee to insure the correct choice and recommendation was delivered to the council for its consideration. Chairperson Vince Maiden who is also an elected Councilperson wanted a screening process that was fair to all parties, and to insure professionalism and integrity were the key words in this process.”
Chief Rob Hall grew up on the Civil War battlefield of Salem Church in Spotsylvania County. “He put himself through college by washing dishes, making pizzas, working security and building interstate highways, among other things,” the release said.
Hall holds a degree in Applied Arts and a Master of Arts from the University of Connecticut and a second master’s from the University of New Orleans.
He taught for 11 years on the secondary and college levels until he left education to write freelance and pursue a career in law enforcement. Hall is a regular contributor to PoliceOne.com, and author of “Rape in America: A Reference Handbook” (ABC/CLIO).
Taylor said in the release the council’s 6-0 vote to hire Hall “illustrates a full measure of confidence and trust in him.”
Hall acknowledged the appointment comes with challenges in improving the public’s perception of the Saltville department.
“There is an image problem,” Hall said, one he said he learned about before he interviewed for the job.
“One of the things I did was to come to Saltville a couple of days early,” Hall said. “I took a day and a half going around town, talking to people and trying to get their feedback about the police department and the town. There is a significant portion of the population, from what little contact I had -- there is an image problem and a fair amount of skepticism. I understand that. That’s a logical outcome for the circumstances.”
Those circumstances include legal problems for former officer Jamey Puckett who was charged with two felonies – misusing his town-issued cell phone in Smyth County and lying on a federal firearms consent form in Washington County. He’s since pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor theft charge in Smyth County, while the felony in Washington County was certified last week to a grand jury. He’s been transferred from the town’s police department to the Department of Public Works.
Hall does not include lawsuits against another officer in the equation. “That’s a different fish,” he said.
Saltville officer Randall Brickey is the defendant in twin multi-million-dollar lawsuits pending in federal court. In January 2009, a traffic stop ended with Brickey arresting business owner Larry Jackson and his entire family in their driveway and charging them all with obstruction of justice.
In his first opinion on the matter, Judge James P. Jones wrote that he found no probable cause for the obstruction of justice arrests.
On May 2, the Jackson lawsuit in federal court took a turn for the worse for Saltville.
When Judge Jones originally ruled on the suit, he determined that the claims against Brickey could continue, though he dismissed those against the town. Jones wrote that the Jacksons had not convinced him that their arrest resulted from an institutional lack of training or a department-wide indifference to the rights of citizens.
But the Jacksons revised their complaint, adding specific examples of others in town who had been hauled to jail for similar slights against police officers. They noted that Brickey had not undergone any type of law enforcement training since 1989, and had been fired from several departments before he was hired in Saltville.
Jones reconsidered his prior ruling: “… I will now allow the action to proceed against the municipality, based upon the new factual allegations,” he wrote.
Hall said the negative opinions of his new department held by many will take time to change.
“There’s no immediate solution, no quick fix,” Hall said. “I’m a firm believer in the old adage ‘talk is cheap.’ It’s going to take more than verbiage. We have to build with a portion of the population a base of trust.”
That begins with the chief, according to Hall, who said he’ll go out into the community, meet with citizens and groups so they can get to know him and he their concerns.
“Until I know what the specific problems are, I can’t fix them,” he said. “It’s going to be a learning process for me.”
Hall said he will also learn the way things have been done in the department, from procedures outlined in the departmental manual to how things are actually done.
“If there’s a problem we will fix it,” he said. “I have no problem thinking outside the box. Things needs to evolve. Things need to improve. Most everything can be improved and we will be looking for ways we can improve.”
Hall has experience in rebuilding relationships with the public. Two and a half years ago and early in his tenure in the central Virginia town of LaCrosse, Hall partnered with a Southside Virginia Community College to create a community survey administered by the college that later compiled the results.
In a Feb. 1, 2008 story in the The News-Progress in Mecklenburg, Keith Corum wrote the survey let the public and businesses “express, anonymously, their opinions regarding various aspects of the police department and how it is perceived in the community on a day-to-day basis.”
On the subject of department officers’ professionalism 69.2 percent of those polled approved, 60 percent agreed with the direction the department was moving, 70.3 percent said the PD’s reputation was improving, 75.4 percent said the department merits confidence, according to the story.
The survey, again handled by a local community college, will be a technique Hall will employ in Saltville, he said. “That will help me understand public perceptions.”
Hall said he plans two surveys, one soon after he arrives on the job “to establish a baseline,” and a second one about six months later “to see how we’ve done.”
Hall was available for the Saltville job because his latest position was not a good match, according to reports in the Twisp, Wash., area. While Hall was still in the probationary period that the mayor extended as he talked with people about the new chief, the mayor let him go.
Local media cited police officers’ unspecified complaints about Hall to questions about arrests Hall did not make and other decisions. But for Hall, the mismatch came down to cultural differences.
“The East Coast way of doing things did not gel with the West Coast culture,” Hall said.
He cited a case also covered in the Twisp media about his suggestion that the town adopt an ordinance prohibiting abusive language after a store clerk reported being severely accosted verbally by a man using offensive language.
“Abuse is abuse, whether it is physical or verbal,” Hall said. “In Virginia we have a law to deal with that, the Curse and Abuse Law. Washington state doesn’t have that. A local prosecutor confirmed that no law fit the circumstances, but suggested the town could pass an ordinance” whose $50 fines would deter future incidents.
Hall agreed, and newspaper account said the chief’s proposal “caused a bit of a stir.”
Hall called it a “firestorm. You’d have thought I burned the constitution or stoned the flag.”
As he tells it, the incident revealed how “Virginia sensibilities” did not fit a harder-edged Washington town.
Saltville’s release about Hall’s hiring said he began his law enforcement career in 1994 as a volunteer with the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office that hired him on Jan. 1, 1995. Four months later, he would be five blocks away from the Murrah Building when it was blown up by a truck bomb in what was called an incident of domestic terror for which Timothy McVey was executed.
“That incident defined many things for the rest of his life, including his dedication to law enforcement,” the release said. “In the years that followed, Hall has served as a patrol deputy, drug investigator, homicide investigator in capital murder cases, investigations supervisor, assistant chief and chief of police. He has continued to teach at law enforcement academies throughout the Commonwealth.”
His own words come less easily when asked for an example of what changed for him as a result of that that experience.
“It was…formative,” he said after a long pause.
After another he said, “Life is awfully short. Bad things happen to good people, innocent people. You come to appreciate how sacred life is, and not to be taken for granted. I also saw the value of seeking the proper resources after traumatic events.”
He talked about the elevated incidence of divorces, suicides and other indicators of the psychological toll of the bombing.
“The scars of such an incident run very deep,” he said. “It’s important for folks to understand that,” even police officers who feel tough but are impacted in some way by every accident and incident they work.
The Murrah bombing’s aftermath “increased my ability to sympathize and empathize with people who have gone through tragedy. It made me a better person, a more aware person.”
Hall in the release said he looks forward to working with Smyth County Sheriff David Bradley and his Washington County counterpart Fred Newman and their offices. It said he is excited about being able to work with the local departments of Glade Spring and Chilhowie, which are the closest to Saltville, but is looking forward to working with all agencies in the area, and especially coordinating efforts with the Virginia State Police.