You can excuse Beaver Hills and Edgewood if they conclude they have a curse when it comes to top cops.
For the fifth time in two years, they’re saying goodbye to a district manager in charge of their Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills (WEB) policing district, home to one of the city’s most active citizen management teams. A district manager acts as a liaison between police and neighbors on public safety issues and supervises the patrol officers in that part of town. Shea is one of 10 district managers in the city.
Lt. Stephen Shea (pictured with Alderwoman-elect Claudette Robinson-Thorpe at a September meet-and-greet at the substation) is leaving the post — and the police department he has served for 22 years — by month’s end to take a private security position.
Consider the historical record:
• January 2008: Kevin Costin replaces Steve Shea. Shea, a popular WEB manager, can no longer hold the post because of a department rule requiring district managers to be lieutenants.
• July 2008: Sydney Collier replaces Kevin Costin, who retires six months into his WEB rotation.
• Jan 2009: Leo Bombalicki replaces Sydney Collier, who leaves for a post in Richmond, Virginia.
• September 2009: Bombalicki is promoted to captain, and a new perch in the department. Stephen Shea, now a lieutenant, returns to head WEB. WEB applauds.
• December 2009: Shea accepts a job as “director of security at a private school,” he says. He plans to work his last day this month and officially retire in January. Police Chief James Lewis said he plans Monday to begin discussing a possible successor.
Is it the water at the substation?
Meeting Sought
WEB stalwart Francine Caplan wished Shea well Monday. She also said she and her WEB neighbors want to meet with the chief to seek an end to a closing of the revolving door of top WEB cops.
“Some of us are getting kind of angry now,” Caplan said. “Not at Shea, although the system that promotes these guys [requiring managers to be lieutenants] — once they get promoted, they get their pension. Then they’re out of here.
“I’m not saying that people can’t go on to greener pastures. But enough’s enough.”
WEB needs a “steady hand,” Caplan said. Each time the police leadership changes, neighbors, business owners, and aldermen need time to develop a relationship with the new person and bring him up to speed on neighborhood priorities like lessening noise from the police firing range, reviving the Whalley business district, improving Beaver Pond.
The continual shifting of top cops “discombobulates some of these things,” Caplan said.
“All of us were thinking about calling for a meeting with Chief Lewis about this. Because enough is enough. Here we get Shea back again. We just wanted somebody steady.”
Lewis said Monday he’s happy to meet.
“I don’t know that much can be done about it. It’s just a series of events, I think,” Lewis said of the departures. “But I’m always willing to talk about it.”
“Shea was good. I worked with him for about a month. We really connected,” said Ward 28 Alderwoman-elect Robinson-Thorpe. She said she hopes the department includes the area aldermen in the selection of Shea’s replacement.
WEB activist Eli Greer noted that “if the chief decides to go back west,” another shift in leadership positions will probably loom in the department.
Greer said WEB will miss working with Shea. “We hope the best for him. We look forward to inculcating the new district manager to continue the
systematic downturn in crime” the neighborhood has experienced in recent years.
Shea, who’s 47, said Monday that he’ll miss WEB, too.
“It hurts me. A big part of my heart is there,” he said. He called the security job offer “a wonderful opportunity for me. It’s good for me. It’s good for my family. It will be a second career for me.
“Being a policeman was the greatest job I ever had. It’s time to move on. Never in a million years did I think it would happen this quickly.”