Officer John Dowd retires after 42 years, hands legacy to five sons on the force
By Mark Melady
The Worcester Telegram
WORCESTER, Mass. — One recent night the police dispatcher put out a routine call: “Officer Dowd on the air?”
The response was a virtual roll call. All the officers Dowd were on the air patrolling the northeast sector that night — Thomas, Michael, Daniel, Paul and Eric Dowd. Riding herd was Dad, the only rank that mattered.
Police Officer John Dowd, who practiced community policing long before it was a federally funded concept, was ending a 42-year police career that included stints in a special undercover unit, on the vice squad and as a hostage negotiator. But his longest memories and deepest attachments belonged to his many years patrolling the city streets — most often between Hope Avenue and Granite Street — and he wanted to do it once with his sons.
So for one overnight shift — known as the “last half” in WPD parlance — the northeast sector became Dowdsville. Son Eric, who joined the force this summer and is assigned to the service division (the officers out on the street, patrolling their routes), rode with his father.
“We had the department’s most veteran officer and the most junior in the same car,” Officer Eric Dowd said.
It was the kind of night Officer John Dowd liked — a lot of calls, things to work out, people to talk to, and no one got hurt.
“The thing about John,” Police Chief Gary J. Gemme said of the senior Officer Dowd, who recently retired from the force, “he always brought calmness to chaos.”
He did so with such evident joy and satisfaction in his work that five sons followed him into policing; a sixth son, William Dowd, has taken the exam and hopes to be in the next police academy.
“He loved every second of his job,” Officer Michael Dowd said. “I always wanted to be a police officer. In kindergarten when my father came to speak to my class, he had his uniform on and I had my little police uniform on.”
“He always talked about helping people,” recalled Officer Daniel Dowd. “This is a job where you get to help people on a daily basis, and you’re not stuck in an office under the fluorescents.”
Once the second and third Dowd sibling joined the department, it seemed inevitable other brothers would follow. Attending police academy graduations sealed it for Officer Paul Dowd.
“Every time I saw my brothers walk across the stage to get pinned, I just had a greater urge to join,” he said.
John Dowd first got the urge to be a police officer as a teenager watching and talking to the officers working high school dances. His interest was so keen he that bought a converter for his car radio that enabled him to receive police calls.
He and his friends chased the most intriguing calls, one time coming upon a police officer getting the worst of a fight on Main Street. “He was having a hard time,” Officer Dowd recalled. “We jumped in and got the guy off him.”
Officer Dowd did not come from a police family. He grew up on Shirley Street in Main South, the second oldest of five children. His father was a lineman and later a pole inspector for the telephone company, while his mother stayed home to care for the children. The rules of the road laid down by his parents, Walter and Helen Dowd, were simple and few: Be respectful, be responsible and care for others.
“My father used to tell me, ‘Remember one thing, son: If you’re with a friend and you only have enough money for one cup of coffee, buy it for your friend.’ ”
He realized those were not empty words as a teenager when he asked his father for money to go out one night. His father gave him $5. “I figured out later that that was his spending money for the week,” Officer Dowd said. “So that week when the other guys at work went for coffee and doughnuts, he stayed in his truck. That’s how he was — always there for us.”
John Dowd played center at South High (class of 1961) and later at what was then Leicester Junior College (now the Leicester campus of Becker College), winning a regional title.
“We were playing in Binghamton, N.Y., taking our warm-ups, and I had just thought, ‘This will be the first game my mother doesn’t see me play,’ when in walked my mother and sisters,” he said. “They had taken the train up. Coach (Paige Rowden) made sure they went home with us.”
Many years later, his son Michael, who played basketball for Anna Maria College, would have a similar experience when his father drove through a blizzard to New Jersey to watch his son play in the college Division 3 tournament.
By then, John Dowd knew he wanted to be a cop and joined the Worcester department in 1966 after completing the police academy.
“I loved it from the start,” he said, though the work would never be as easy as one of his first collars. It came while walking Grafton Hill on the Fourth of July that summer.
“A guy saw me and took off on a dead run,” Officer Dowd recalled. Curious, he pursued and caught the man. “He had an outstanding warrant. If all criminals took off running when they saw a police officer, it would save a lot of investigation.”
In 1969, he married MaryAnn Roland, who lived on Providence Street and was someone he had been eyeing at dances. They produced eight sons and now have six grandchildren. The oldest son, John, works in computers, and Kevin, a Harvard University graduate, is assistant director of the Safety Council. The other six at early ages began acting like Johnny Law. “They’d see a strange car in the neighborhood and not only write down the registration but make and color.”
“She ruled with an iron fist,” Officer Dowd said of his wife. “She told me, ‘I’m their mother, not their friend.’ They were very competitive growing up. They challenged each other. Still do.”
During his 42 years in police work he has had death threats from those he arrested, including one so serious that he was put under police protection. “This guy was getting out of prison, and he told people he was coming to Worcester to kill me.”
He didn’t tell his wife, but she saw a cruiser parked in a vacant field near their home one night and wanted to know why it was there. “That was a little touchy.”
Officer Dowd was one of the first hostage negotiators on the department, training with the FBI. Talking people out of a barricaded house or down from a roof relied as much on his native ability to read people and to communicate as it did on formal negotiation training, he said. “I just thought I could do it,” he said.
He recalled a Dudley man who held a gun to his head, threatening suicide. They started talking. He discovered the man loved his daughter and hated his father.
“His father had left his mother with 16 kids,” Officer Dowd said.
At one point, the man raised the gun to his head and said, “I’m going to do it now.”
Officer Dowd, who had dry mouth from talking under such stress, pulled out a pack of LifeSavers, took one for himself and offered one to the man, who accepted.
“I told him if he killed himself he would be no better than his father. In a short time your beautiful daughter will be a beautiful bride and you won’t be there to walk her down the aisle. He had his head down while I was talking. Then he offered to give me the gun as long as I didn’t handcuff him.”
Chief Gemme and Officer Dowd patrolled together on adjacent routes for a time. “He always brought a lot of knowledge to whatever the situation was,” Chief Gemme said.
While Chief Gemme said Officer Dowd exuded calm, he would use his great strength if necessary.
“At 65, nobody would want to tangle with him,” the chief said. “He had the physical skills to handle anything that came along.”
Lt. Robert Lotsbom put it another way. “You wouldn’t want to get close enough for him to put his hands on you. He grabbed me by my moustache one night.”
Thirty years ago, Lt. Michael L. Vacca and Capt. Stephen D. Rhieu were Burncoat neighborhood adolescents who sometimes stayed longer on the street corner on a summer night than Officer Dowd thought advisable.
“He’d chase us off and tell us to go home,” remembered Lt. Vacca. “He treated us like he was a parent. He treated people with respect,” Lt. Vacca said, “and he got a lot of respect back.”
He served with Capt. Rhieu’s father, the late Capt. Davis Rhieu.
“He really is the father of community policing,” Capt. Rhieu said. “He was practicing it before anyone thought of it. He talked to people. He was nice to people. He knew what was going on. He got a lot of information because he treated people that way. We’ll never see the likes of him again.”
“You have to always remember that you’re there for the people,” he said. “You have to talk to them. I had little ‘offices’ throughout my beat — places where people knew I would be — and they’d come in and give me information. You really get close to people. They become like family. You get invited to baptisms and weddings.”
He said arrests are only one measure of police success. “There are a lot of good things you can do out there that have nothing to do with arrests, things you can do to prevent crime from happening.”
In the lobby of the police headquarters in Lincoln Square is a plaque in the name of retired Deputy Chief Paul F. Campbell to honor Worcester police officers who demonstrate the attributes of a water carrier.
The inscription on the plaque reads: “In an American Indian tribe the water carrier held one of the most important and respected positions and was essential for survival. In this police department the water carrier represents continuity, longevity, resourcefulness, and an unshakeable commitment to the men and women of the Worcester Police Department.”
Officer John Dowd is the first recipient of the Paul Campbell award.
“There isn’t anybody that better represents the water carrier than Officer Dowd,” Chief Gary J. Gemme said. “He supports his brother and sister officers. He’s dedicated to his family and his community. He is the best role model we have for young officers.”
Copyright 2007 Worcester Telegram