Part 1: From an Unlikely Start to a Proud Finish

This is the first article in a three-part series on the over 40 year career of Dover Police Detective Sergeant Jeffrey Farrell, told mostly in his own words.

"I never had any ambition to be a policeman."

“I grew up in the gas station business, loved it, I was one of those teenagers who was motorhead and loved cars and all that.

When I was in high school, I had a 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk. It was a limited edition car, Studebaker didn’t make a whole lot of them. It had a 289 cubic inch engine but it had a McCulloch supercharger.

I joined the Army in 1966. I went to Vietnam on my 21st birthday in 1968.

1968 was the single year when more G.I.’s were killed than any other year during the war. And I went over in the middle of the Tet Offensive, I was on the wire at Long Binh the night the embassy was overrun.

So I came back and I had no idea what I was going to do, no idea whatever.

I had no plan, I was angry, I was bitter, disillusioned, just simply not in a good place and I gravitated back to the gas station business because that was all I knew.

I was at work one day and a customer came in who had connections here in Dover and he mentioned that the Dover Police Department might be hiring.

So, I remember one day going to the dump from the gas station and I was dressed in grubby clothes and dirty because I was at work and I thought ‘Well, I’ll stop in at the police station just to get an application and fill it out.'

I couldn’t find the police station, I was driving all around Dover.

There was no police station.

So finally, in the lower level of the Town Hall I did see a little sign that just said ‘Police’, tiny little thing.

So I popped in there and the first door on the right was the records book, at the time Phyllis Tucker [was working there], and I told her what I wanted and she introduced me right then and there to the police chief.

And of course, I’m in grubby clothes, and everything else, and he saw that I had an Exxon patch on my shirt and he once owned the Mobil station right here across the street.

So we started about 45 minutes just shooting the breeze about the gas station business and the people that we both knew, and so on and so forth, and at the end of that time he pulled out his service revolver, held it up and he said ‘Do you want a two-inch barrel or a four-inch?’ and I said a four-inch barrel and that was it, I was hired.

I never even filled out an employment application. No background check, no physical, nothing, I was just hired."

When Farrell started in 1972 there was no police station, no lockup, and hardly any equipment. He took the job for $5,500 a year. Overtime paid $4.25 an hour and paid-detail was $4.00 an hour.

“Our highest paid patrolman at that time made $500 a year less than a starting patrolmen in Needham, so we were in tough shape.

I had no intention of staying or anything like that, I just didn’t know what I was going to do. But it was just better than what I was doing.

So I just had no idea and this came about and on a whim I just did it. I never had any ambition to be a policeman. Never even thought about it."

Dover's De Facto Detective

In 1978, Farrell earned an Associate's Degree from Northeastern University and went back in 1980 and got a Bachelor’s Degree. He was also appointed Sergeant in 1980.

"Back in the ‘70’s and up into the early ‘80’s house breaks, residential burglaries, were a tremendous problem. We had 50 to 60 of those a year and we didn’t have a detective and they were going relatively uninvestigated.

Somebody would call and say their house had been broken into, we’d send a uniform to the house, they’d take a report and basically that would be the end of it.

So I started following up on them, just on my own because I enjoyed it.

And then I got involved in a drug case and I followed up on that and we made a huge seizure of marijuana, a dump truck load.

And I just sort of morphed into becoming the detective, I was never formally appointed the detective. I just sort of morphed into the job and less and less often I would come in, in uniform, and more and more I would come in, in civilian clothes to work on these cases.

I’ve always enjoyed court, I’ve always enjoyed the law, I’ve always enjoyed cases with complicated constitutional questions and things like that. And I’ve been the prosecutor since 1982-83."

When Police Chief Carl Sheridan, who hired Farrell, retired he competed for the job with Joe Griffin.

The selectmen at that time appointed Griffin as the next police chief and Farrell served as acting-chief for about six months. He served under Griffin for the next 16 years, until 2010, and the two forged a great working relationship during that time.

After Griffin's retirement, Farrell served as acting-chief yet again for nearly a year until the town hired current police chief Peter McGowan in June 2011.

He then went back to his role as a detective and police prosecutor.

"Where Did it Go?"

"Where did it go? It went by in an eye blink, I mean, it’s just unbelievable how fast it went.

I look back on it, I look back on the changes and where we started from and where we are today, and boy, it’s like going from Earth to Pluto.

When I first started they had two cruisers at the department. Neither had air conditioning or radios. I do remember that when you would start that cruiser you’d have to wait 30 to 40 seconds for the tubes to warm up before the police radio would actually turn on.

We had no teletype, we couldn’t communicate with any other departments. We shared a radio frequency with Needham.

When we had a prisoner, and back then it was very infrequent, but we had to bring them to the Needham Police Department and they would lock them up for us.

So the changes are amazing. As I said there were five patrolmen and there are in total 16 of us now.

The police department has just made leaps and bounds. As a detective I’ve worked with detectives and cops from nearly every police department in Eastern Massachusetts all the way out to Amherst and Springfield, and so on and so forth, and I can say this with complete confidence that this police department is as good as any and better than most.

It’s a great, great group of people that the town has in the police department. These are all college educated kids, several have advanced degrees, we have an officer in law school right now.

They’re motivated, they’re dedicated, they understand the job, they understand the concept of public service and we do provide a very high level of service to the town."

Life on the Outside

Farrell is 65-years-old.

When a cop turns 65 it is mandatory for them to retire, no matter how many years of service are under their belt.

He won't completely stop doing what he loves, however. Farrell has his private investigator's license and plans to use it.

He also plans to delve into his passions that include spending time with is grandson and travelling to the Adirondack Mountains.

"I’ve got a boat, a kayak and a Harley Davidson motorcycle. I trailer the motorcycle to Vermont to Lake Champlain, I like to ride through the Adirondack park up in upstate New York. I know Lake Champlain very, very well I’ve been up there for years now. My family and I have a cottage up there, so I go up there a lot.

I’m involved also with the Museum of WWII over in Natick. I’m one of the staff members over there and I hope to become more involved in that because I enjoy it very much."

As for working on any cars...

“Probably not. I open the hood now, I don’t even recognize the engine. When I was doing it there were no emission controls or any of that kind of stuff. So it’s all changed today.

I just look forward to spending more time in Vermont and I have a grandson who is 11 and he absolutely loves Vermont. I bought him a kayak and he and I go kayaking together and stuff like that and I love doing all that kind of stuff now.”

Check back on the site at noon today for part-two of our three-part series where Farrell talks about the event that cemented his decision to stay a cop.