"You woke up!," Danny Parker says to me with an ornery grin as he thrusts his hand toward me.
"I did," I reply, as I shake hands for the first time with Winfield’s new chief of police.
Parker, 60, is ribbing me about the fact that, about two weeks earlier, I’d missed a 9 a.m interview with him at the police station. I pause for a second as I decide whether it’s worth fully explaining why I’d missed our first scheduled encounter.
But his version is at least roughly correct, so I think better of prolonging our introduction and head to Parker’s first-floor office at the station. I take his teasing as a sign he’s the easy-going type.
We’re sitting face to face ? with a desk between us ? for what is to be my first interview with Parker.
I don’t know about other journalists but the new-guy-in-town articles are a tough go for me. It’s just too tough to know much about a guy just arriving in town, and, he’s barely been here two weeks.
That’s not a lot of time for him to know much about what he’s gotten himself into. Which is why I’m sure missing our first meeting at least provides the benefit of giving Parker a little time to settle in.
As the interview begins, he follows a familiar playbook: praise the staff and the people who hired you.
"I’m very impressed with the department," he says. "Dedicated staff."
Parker speaks of his time at Southwestern College and graduating from there in 1971. He was a vocal music major because music teachers seemed to be in demand when he started college. As he left high school he was an athlete with dreams of coaching.
"But coaches were a dime a dozen and music teachers were hard to find," he says and chuckles. "When I got out of college music teachers were a dime a dozen and coaches were hard to find. It was totally the other way around."
I move pretty quickly to the only half-way tough questions I can muster. At this point I can quickly tell that surprising Parker or catching him off guard won’t work. He’s calm and collected and, after years as a law enforcement officer and teacher, unflappable.
Questions about his age don’t make him blink. At 60, he’s in the neighborhood of retirement but not ready to take that step. He discussed his age with the panel that interviewed him and told them he expects to serve seven or eight years here in Winfield.
"As long as my health holds up," he says. "And, I do plan to retire here."
His is an administrator’s chair but he acknowledges being as hands on as he can be. Right now, he just wants to "take time to get my feet on the ground."
Then there’s the question about how he’s getting along with his officers. He was chosen ahead of several internal candidates, most of whom read of his hiring on the Internet before it was formally announced, a goof for which city manager Warren Porter apologized.
I ask Parker if there’ve been any hard feelings.
"I’ve been very, very well received," he says. "You’re always going to have competition. Lots of people start jobs where internal candidates have been passed over. But as far as I know the selection process was as fair as it could be, and that’s all you can do."
Still, he understands there maybe hurt feelings.
"No one wants to be rejected," he says. "But I’ve always thought of that as an opportunity to ask myself: what do I need to do to better myself for next time."
He’s also quite aware that ? as far as anyone knows ? he’s the first Winfield police chief that wasn’t promoted from within. The city has a tradition of cops who have climbed the ranks all the way to the top job.
Parker acknowledges there are advantages to familiarity with a department but says his situation presents its own advantages.
"I’m making a fresh start," he says. "I don’t have a specific group of friends, or loyalties to anyone or any group."
Parker says the major issue facing the department right now is 911 consolidation. The state has provided funding for Cowley County to improve it’s emergency communication systems and Parker is giving that high priority as his tenure starts.
Though he’s not entirely proficient with computers, he started a computer crimes division in Concordia and says computer crime is an area of law enforcement that deserves increased attention. Fraud, sex crimes and confidence crimes of all sorts are perpetrated on the computer these days, he says.
Staffing-wise, there are a couple jobs to fill at the police department. Parker wants to hire another officer and a dispatcher as soon as he can.
Which probably means there won’t be a whole lot of time left for fishing or golf ? Parker’s two favorite ways to kill time. There are just too many things to do he says.
That includes selling the home he has in Concordia, where he served as chief for three-and-a-half years before coming to Winfield. He and his wife have an apartment here for the time being.
But that doesn’t keep him from spending a little time talking about golf, a discussion that gives us the most to talk about since the interview started. Parker talks of favorite courses and his respect for Tiger Woods and the level at which Woods plays.
And Parker laments the decline of is own game. Age has cost him some length off the tee and lack of practice has let an old friend pass him by in terms of score.
"I thought I was going to play quite a bit when I was in Concordia," he says. "But I never did."
