In June 2006, during an event held in honor of Bruce Beard ahead of his retirement as chief of police of the Lexington Police Department, then-Lt. Steven Crowder noted several things that were achieved within the department during Beard’s nearly 20-year tenure leading the department: a low turnover of personnel, a modernized facility, and an accredited department (the smallest in the state, at least at the time), just to name a few.
But, as Crowder noted at the time, though those achievements are important and noteworthy, “it could still make you look like a dead mackerel in the moonlight.”
He went on to explain that “It shines, but it still stinks” without the appropriate values behind it, such as “integrity, respect, efficiency, compassion and honesty.”
And while those values are certainly ones you would want your local police department to embody, when Beard, who died last week, first became Lexington’s chief of police in 1987, those weren’t words that citizens in Lexington associated with the department.
Five years earlier, in March of 1982, former LPD officer Barry Flint was convicted of stealing from a local business in 1977. Within a few hours of his conviction, Flint had agreed to cooperate with a state police investigation into other thefts from local businesses.
The investigation revealed a “theft ring” of both current and former Lexington police officers and resulted in indictments against 13 Lexington police officers in May of 1982, including five who were actively serving in the department at the time. The officers were charged multiple counts of breaking and entering, burglary, receiving stolen goods and conspiracy to commit those same crimes.
Six of the officers pled guilty, charges were dropped against two of them, and the other five stood trial in Rockbridge County Circuit Court. One was convicted, two were acquitted and the other two trials ended with hung juries and dropped charges.
“We went from a full force to a half force overnight,” recalled Torben Pedersen this week, who had joined the Lexington Police Department in 1979 after moving to the area from Florida. “In looking back, there was something wrong in the department. There was not the right feeling. At the department I was with in Florida, there was total trust among all the officers, whether they were on the same shift or not. There was just something here that you couldn’t put your finger on. Of course, in 1982, we found out what it was.”
Then-Police Chief James Kirby resigned in January of 1983 and Beard, who was his lieutenant, stepped in as acting chief. He held that role until Larry Sutton was hired as the city’s police chief and took it twice more in 1986: from July to September when Sutton took an extended leave to train at the FBI academy and again in November following Sutton’s resignation from the department.
In an article in the Nov. 26, 1986 edition of The News-Gazette, Beard said that he had two priorities for the department beyond stopping and solving crimes. “We want to promote good public relations,” he said. “I am hoping the officers will be polite and courteous, throw up a hand or stop and share concerns with the citizens.” Additionally, he said that his office door “is always open if anyone has a problem with the department or one of the officers.”
Beard was one of 85 applicants to replace Sutton and was hired in February of 1987. In a statement announcing Beard as chief of police, then-City Manager Joseph King said “Bruce competed against the best we could attract and came out the winner,” and added that he was confident that Beard would provide “progressive, professional leadership to a police department on its way to becoming one of the best in Virginia.”
Over the next 19 years and four months, Beard worked to restore the trust in the department that had been destroyed due to the officerled theft ring. He established neighborhood watch and community watch programs and encouraged officers to interact with the community. He also made an effort to be as transparent as possible about ongoing investigations.
“That was a big thing for him,” Crowder told The News-Gazette last week. “He would release everything he could.”
Beard also established a more comprehensive hiring process for prospective officers, including psychological evaluations, polygraph tests and interviews, which Crowder said “worked out very well because it helped us determine who would fit Lexington the best.”
With all of those efforts, it took, by Crowder’s estimation, about four years to begin to re-establish the community’s trust in the police department.
“It was a hard start for everybody at the police department,” Crowder said. “We didn’t have the best reputation in the world, and not a lot of respect from the citizens due to the past incidents. And there were some other incidents that happened along the way that the department went through, but…the bottom line is that Bruce Beard and his reputation brought that police department back to the point where the public could trust [and] have faith in the police department.”
Crowder, who joined the Lexington Police Department in the wake of the scandal in 1982, was promoted to lieutenant following Beard’s promotion to chief, and served in that position during Beard’s entire tenure. When Beard retired in 2006, Crowder inherited a department that had a good reputation in the community in large part due to Beard’s efforts over the years.
“I was handed the keys to a Cadillac and my only job was not to wreck it,” he said.
Beard didn’t stay retired for very long, though, because Crowder hired him back as a school crossing guard, a role he held through at least 2010, when a photo of him working in that role ran in The News-Gazette to mark the 40th year of his law enforcement career.
Beyond his legacy as the man who helped rebuild the community’s trust in the police department, Beard is remembered by those who worked with him as someone that everyone liked.
Pederson, who served as the department’s investigator for most of Beard’s tenure as chief, said that he considered Beard a friend and described him as “level-headed and fair.”
“His legacy is he interacted with everybody in a calm and collected manner,” he said.
“He didn’t have any enemies, which is pretty good for a cop,” Crowder told The News-Gazette. Crowder also described Beard as humble, approachable, honest and gentle.
“He didn’t want any recognition,” he said. “He would do anything for anybody. I never saw him lose his temper, and he had plenty of times where it would have been justified.
“Every police agency in the country needs a Bruce Beard, but I don’t know if they’d be able to find one,” he added.
