RI Central - Final days at the helm

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NORTH KINGSTOWN — Charles Brennan is a captain with the North Kingstown Police Department, a rank he has held since 2002, but he still prefers people just call him Chuck.

“I want to help people feel comfortable,” he said. “It’s important for people to see you as a human, someone they can talk to, rather than just a police officer.”

Chuck Brennan has spent almost half his life working for the NKPD abiding by that mentality and last week, two days after turning 50, Brennan announced his decision to retire.

Yesterday was his last day, marking the end his 21-and-a-half year law enforcement career with the department.

“I had always planned on retiring with 20 years in, to give me enough time to start a second career,” he said. “I made it a little longer than that.

Brennan is leaving the department to take a job with Genesis Investigations, a private investigation and surveillance systems agency based in North Kingstown.

“He is a brilliant investigator,” Charboneau said. “If anything ever happended to a family member of mine, I would want Chuck Brennan investigating.”

Charboneau, who began his career in North Kingstown in 1982, said he and Brennan moved up the ranks together, starting with working patrols in the 80s.

Brennan joined the North Kingstown Police Department fresh out of the academy in March of 1987. He worked as a patrol officer until 1993 when he was promoted to detective. Brennan was still a patrol officer when the Rotary Club first recognized him in 1989 as Officer of the Year, the same year he was awarded for cultivating an informant for a large-scale drug bust involving 13 defendants.

In 1995 the Rotary bestowed him the same honor a second time and Brennan also received an award for his investigation into a missing elderly woman who died under the charge of a caretaker. The investigation resulted in a conviction for involuntary manslaughter.

Brennan continued to climb the ranks within the department, being promoted to sergeant in 1997, lieutenant in 1999, detective lieutenant in 2001 and to detective captain a year later.

The following year, in 2003, Brennan was transferred to captain of internal affairs where he remained until 2006 when he was again transferred to his current position as captain of the uniform division.

“He’s had an exemplary career,” Charboneau said. “We’re really going to miss him.”

“The last job I had before this, I made nails 10 hours a day at Bostich,” Brennan said Tuesday. “I’ve had a lot of jobs but this is the best job I’ve ever had.”

Brennan has earned a number of commendations throughout his career but one of his most memorable cases as an officer didn’t involve a monumental, high-profile investigation -- it started with a mother who wanted help for her son.

Brennan said he was a detective working nights at the time and a woman came to him looking to file charges against her son.

She said her son was a heroin addict and he had stolen a lot of her jewelry. She felt he was beginning to spiral out of control and having him arrested was the only thing she could do.

“We recovered all of her jewelry and we found him at a drug house in Providence and charged him with theft of her property,” Brennan said.

Some months later, the young man stopped in to the police station one night when Brennan was working to say thanks.

“He said ‘if you hadn’t done that, I’d probably be dead.’ He had gotten clean, met a nice girl and was turning his life around. This kid just wanted to thank me,” Brennan said. “It almost never happens that someone thanks you for arresting them.”

In addition to his duties as an officer and captain, Brennan was instrumental with seeing the new public safety building project through.

Charboneau said Brennan also worked a lot for the town’s youth, participating in baseball games for Special Olympics children, assisting with the DARE program and the town’s Party Patrol to curb underage drinking.

He also intitiated community outreach programs through the senior center and Crossroads, the state’s largest homeless services organization.

“It’s important for us to do stuff with people in the community that need help, to go into schools and things having the bike patrol go to Crossroads to teach the kids about bike safety and going to senior complexes to teach them how 9-1-1 works and how to avoid scams.”

In particular, Brennan said he felt it was important to build a positive relationship between the residents of Crossroads Apartments and the police department.

“Some of them might have had bad interactions with police in the past. It’s important for us to build a positive community relationship with them so they know we’re not all about putting handcuffs on people. Single moms and kids need to know that if you need us, call us and we’re going to come and help you. We respond to everyone’s needs. Going there when there isn’t a problem helps cultivate those positive relationships.”

Jan Hall Stinson, who has worked with Brennan for about two years in her capacity as property manager at Crossroads, spoke of Brennan’s value as a “community resource.”

“You always know that when you call him with a question, he’ll have an answer and if he doesn’t know the answer, he’ll get back to you with one,” she said.

“He’s been wonderful about ensuring positive police relations with the kids here and the community,” Stinson said. “He’s been a fabulous resource to Crossroads. He’s always been so accessible and helpful to me as a property manager.”

“I’ve worked with a lot of good people here. I’ve enjoyed the town and the community. A lot of people over a period of 21 years beome dependant on you,” he said.

While Brennan said he will miss the people he has worked with both in the department and the community as a whole, he said he’s not going anywhere.

Brennan, the father of five girls and the grandfather of two, lives in North Kingstown with his wife of 29 years, Jennifer. Each of his daughters lives in Rhode Island so, he said, “I’ll still be around.”

“As good as it felt putting the uniform on, it’s going to feel just as good taking it off.”