New chief has big shoes to fill

Published 11:09 am Thursday, March 5, 2009

This is not a fairy tale, but once upon a time, there was a night when only two peace officers were on duty to cover the entire Mower County.

They were Adams Police Chief Gordon Briggs and Grand Meadow patrol officer Michael Gehrke.

True story, according to Briggs and Gehrke: no Mower County Sheriff’s Office deputy was available for patrol that evening.

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“This was the night Mike and I figured out we went over 100 miles at over 100 miles per hour that night on different calls,” Briggs said. “It started when we got a call to go to a domestic problem at LeRoy.”

“We went flying down there, Code Three — red lights and sirens,” Briggs said. “After we got there, we got it settled and cleared the scene.

“We headed back to our respective towns, and we no more had gotten back when we got sent Code Three to Waltham,” he said. “So, away we went again from one end of the county to another, extreme south to extreme north.

“We went Code Three to Waltham from Adams and Grand Meadow and took care of the problem,” he went on to say, but the night was not over yet for the two officers.

Gehrke returned to Grand Meadow and Briggs drove to Adams only to be summoned to another emergency at LeRoy: a domestic incident involving a knife.

Briggs and Gehrke raced back to LeRoy and with the help of an on-duty deputy took care of the second LeRoy emergency and returned to their respective communities, chatting on the radio about their wild night protecting and serving the public.

Just another “busy night” in the life of two small-town officers.

They watched each other’s back then and now that has changed.

Briggs has retired as the Adams police chief, ending a career spanning four decades. Gehrke is replacing him.

Two men, neighbors in the work place with badges and guns, as well as a shared philosophy.

“Mike didn’t need any advice from me, because he polices like I do,” Briggs said at a retirement party in his honor Monday, Feb. 23. “He’s an exceptional officer, and I know he’s going to do a good job. All I could tell him is to keep policing the way he has.”

When he retired — officially Feb. 25 before leaving on accumulated vacation — Briggs was the senior lawman in Mower County. Nobody had served longer than he.

At the retirement party, Adams city officials were there as well as Adams residents. So was Mower County Sheriff Terese Amazi, sheriff’s deputies and police officers from other communities.

The occasion doubled as a welcome-to-Adams party for Briggs’ replacement, Gehrke.

What makes the work of a small-town police officer so difficult — excluding the fact that today’s criminals are better-armed, maybe smarter and taking big city crimes into small towns — is the fact the officers are themselves neighbors of the people they must arrest.

They see them in the grocery store, at school, in church — everywhere in small communities.

There’s no place to hide from the public’s scrutinization in the fish bowl of attention of a small town.

And each day they report to work, they wear a badge and carry a gun and handcuffs.

Being a small-town officer can be a lonely job even when everybody knows your name. Authority figures do that to some people.

A man or woman with a badge can find themselves lonely in a crowd.

Briggs said he has always had a partner in fighting crime.

“All these years I’ve been a police officer, Jesus Christ has always rode shotgun with me,” he said, not at all embarrassed to witness his faith.

He has drawn his sidearm in the course of duty, but, he said, “thank God, I’ve never had to fire it.”

And if anyone thinks Briggs has second thoughts about leaving the career he has pursued for so long, let them think again.

“This is my retirement,” he said of his exodus from the Adams Police Department. “I plan to pursue my wood and leather crafts and visit various crafts fairs. It’s over.”

A master craftsman at both wood and leather projects, Briggs arguably could have chosen a career in something other than law enforcement.

However, he said choosing to wear a badge for so many years was predestination after hearing what a friend told him about being a law enforcement officer.

“A friend of mine in the U.S. Army, who became a police officer in Peoria, Illinois, said the greatest satisfaction in the job was contributing to the community,” Briggs recalled.

That’s what he did for 42 years.

‘So long, Chief Briggs’

Briggs is a native of Rochester who grew up in a family with a brother and two sisters.

His father, a long-time employee of Rochester Dairy, is deceased. His mother, a seamstress and upholsterer, survives.

His wife, Terry Josephson, is from Austin. Together, the couple has five children: two sons and three daughters. They also have eight grandchildren.

Briggs started his career in law enforcement with the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Department in 1967, but it didn’t last. “They hired me and then they told me I was too short to be a good police officer and they fired me,” he said.

Undaunted, Briggs took a job as a Kasson police officer before joining the Mower County Sheriff’s Department as a deputy in 1969.

He served as a deputy sheriff until 1978, when he left the law enforcement profession and moved to Atlanta to work for J.C. Penney as an upholsterer.

He returned to Minnesota in 1983 to work as a part-time Adams police officer.

Dick Hagen was the Adams police chief at the time.

Three years later, Hagen was gone and Briggs became the Adams police chief.

In recalling the highlights of his law enforcement career, the first thing mentioned by Briggs was his creation of the Child Registry Program, while heading up the Adams Police Department.

“That was the time of the Jacob Wetterling kidnapping and Wayne Goodnature was the Mower County sheriff,” Briggs said. “Later he decided to promote it through the sheriff’s department, too.”

“It was a way to help parents to protect their children and I think it worked,” he said.

In the 1990s there was much made of something called “community policing.”

The expression defined a policing strategy and philosophy based on the notion that community interaction and support can help control crime, with community members helping to identify suspects, detain vandals and bring problems to the attention of police.

“We had been doing that for years before they even thought about it in St. Paul,” Briggs said.

Briggs’ style of community policing came “from within,” he said. “To treat people the way I wanted to be treated.

“It helps you do a better job,” he said.

Being a small town police officer is not like the Barney Fife character on television’s “The Andy Griffith Show.”

“You have to keep that same edge that officers in large cities have,” he said.

He has other skills, including being an education director for four years at Little Cedar Lutheran Church (Imagine Briggs as a Sunday School teacher or superintendent and it’s a combination of Mister Rogers and a serious Starsky or Hutch).

But law enforcement — remember, more than decades — was for him the perfect choice.

“There’s nothing else I ever wanted to do,” he said. “Once I got into it, I was very happy and satisfied.”

‘Hello Chief Gehrke’

The incoming Adams police chief is well-known to residents. In addition to his part-time police work through the years, Gehrke was a custodian at Southland Public Schools.

Consider that for a moment: it’s just possible the same teens Gehrke arrested the night before were walking the hallways of the school the morning after.

Gehrke’s personality ingratiated him wherever he went, so popular an individual is he.

Now, he will test his popularity on a 24/7 basis as Adams “top cop.”

Gehrke and his wife, Jacquie, live at rural Grand Meadow.

They have four children: three sons and a daughter, plus two granddaughters.

Gehrke is a native of Iowa Falls, Iowa, where he graduated from Ellsworth Community College, earning a degree in agriculture.

Gehrke grew up on a general livestock and cash crops farm with a sister in Iowa. “It was a classic family farm” he said.

It was the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the farm financial crisis gripped the nation.

“I chose to pursue other interests,” he said of his quick exodus from agriculture.

His introduction to law enforcement was working as a member of the Iowa Falls Police Reserve unit.

When he moved to St. Paul, he worked for a private investigator.

Sixteen years ago, he moved to Mower County and took a job as a part-time patrol officer for the Grand Meadow Police Department.

He became a certified canine officer at Grand Meadow until his bloodhound died of cancer.

When Briggs announced he was going to retire as the Adams police chief, Gehrke’s interest in the job piqued.

“At the time I was working for the Southland School District in Adams and I got to know a lot of people that way,” he said. “It helped a lot to get to know Adams and the people in the seven years I had that job.

“Now, I’m not starting a new job in a brand new town,” he said. “I’m somewhat established here, which is huge. It gives me a great advantage,” he said. A lot of people in law enforcement use small town police jobs as stepping stones. Grand Meadow was my steppingstone. This is the place I want to be.”

While his methods of policing may resemble other officers’, Gehrke is his own man.

“I don’t try to be like Gordie or any other one particular officer,” he said.

“During my training and during the time I was with the Austin Police Reserves and rode along with deputies and worked with other small town officers and chiefs, I took a little bit from everyone and create my own personality,” Gehrke said.

The best advice Gehrke has received is “Never stop learning,” he said. “What has helped me a lot is that over the past 16 years I’ve trained a lot of officers. That helped me refine my own thought processes and made me rethink how I do things. I was learning along with them.”