Part 2: No Routine Stop

This is the second 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.

Arresting Development

Having never had ambitions to be a cop, Farrell recalled one single incident that made him realize that he had found his calling.

"The very first incident that I had was one of the very first times that I was in a cruiser. I hadn’t had an hour of training. I knew nothing about criminal law. We were just filling in so they could make the schedule work basically.

It was 8:30 in the morning and I get a call for a car being operated erratically. I find the car and it’s on Norwood Drive and it is being operated very erratically at about 10 miles an hour.

I put the blue lights on, it wouldn’t stop and I put the siren on and finally it did.

And there was a woman driving the car in her early 30’s, I guess, and she was as drunk as anybody I had ever seen in my life and this is at 8:30 in the morning.

As drunk as anybody I’ve ever seen before or since. She was literally legless because when I opened the door she almost fell out on the street.

So I had no idea what to do. I called my partner down at the time who was Jim Campbell and we both decided that the best thing to do was to take her to Needham.

So we put her in the back of the cruiser and as we’re driving down to the Needham Police Station it’s finally sinking in that she’s in a lot of trouble and she started to cry.

And now she’s sobbing and she’s telling me this story that she’s in the middle of a divorce, her husband is challenging her for custody of her kids and they’d had a wicked fight the night before.

She started drinking, she drank all night long and she was driving to Boston to work – and there was just no way that was ever going to happen whether she had come across me or not.

So now we were at the Needham Police Station and we were standing at the booking desk and she’s sobbing and if she’s arrested for drunk driving she loses her license. That means she’s going to lose her job, her house, her husband will get her kids, her life will be over and what could she do?

So I’m thinking to myself, ‘What am I going to do? I want my first arrest desperately, like every new cop does. But at the same time, can I be responsible for doing this to her?’ and I don’t know what to do.

One of the shift supervisors in Needham, a sergeant, said to me, ‘Look, you don’t have to arrest her for drunk driving if you don’t want to.’

In those days public drunkenness was a crime, it isn’t any more, but it was then. He said, ‘You can charge her with that, it’s an administrative kind of thing. She won’t lose her license. We’ll keep her here for 12 hours or until she’s sober and then everybody gets on with their life.’

So I agonize about my decision. I didn’t know what to do. She’s standing next to me just sobbing bitter tears and finally decided ‘All right I’ll go with that.’ So I did.

I went back, did the requisite paperwork and forgot all about it."

‘You don’t remember be do you?’

"I don’t know how much time elapsed. It had to have been at least a year, maybe a little bit longer.

I had been to the police academy now, I had been appointed to the police department and I’m working the midnight shift.

So we’re in the station having coffee and it must have been 1 o’clock in the morning and this is the old [station] in the basement of the Town Hall.

This woman walks in and she walks into the room and she asks for me by name.

So I said, ‘Yeah I’m Officer Farrell.’

Her eyes filled with tears, she threw her arms around me, hugged me.

I have no idea who this woman is. I’m waiting for the little kid to come around the corner and say, ‘Daddy!’ and I have no idea what to expect.

So she saw the look on my face and when she let me go she said, ‘You don’t remember be do you?’

And I said, ‘No I’m sorry I don’t.’

And then she told me the about the story of what happened the year before.

When she was released from Needham they told her what I had done and she said, ‘If you hadn’t done that and if I had lost my license I would have lost my children and my life would have been over. I don’t know what would have become of me.’

She went on to say that she was now in [Alcoholics Anonymous] and in AA they say that every individual has to reach their personal rock bottom before they can start the road back and she said ‘That day in the cell in Needham was my personal rock bottom. I haven’t had a drink since then. I have the same job, I’ve been promoted, the reason I’m here at 1 o’clock in the morning is because I just came back from a business trip.’

She said, ‘I still have the house, in fact I own that now, my kids are with me and I owe it all to you.’ And she hugged me again.

So I remember leaving, got out in the cruiser and I’m riding around and I’m smiling and I’m thinking to myself ‘Maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye.’ and I just never looked back.

I mean I don’t know how many people can look back over their life to a single defining moment that sort of charted the rest of their life, but that was mine.

That was my introduction to what public service was all about.”

Check back on the site at 4:00 p.m. today for part three of our three-part series where Farrell discusses some of the more interesting cases he's had in his time at the department.