FLORENCE - What kind of police officer is sent packing?
The best. At least, that's how it is in this Boone County city.
Lying atop a sheet of procedures for firing-range practice on Detective Terry Vannarsdale's desk is a plaque proclaiming him Northern Kentucky's Officer of the Year for 1996. On the floor behind his chair are boxes filled with photos, pens and a half-empty bottle of Pepto Bismol.
Mr. Vannarsdale, an
11-year veteran of the Florence police department's detective bureau, has started cleaning out his desk.
His boss, Chief Paul Buelterman - the man who nominated him for the award - told the detective earlier this month that he would be made a patrolman again in July.
Barely one week later, Mr. Vannarsdale was at a dinner in Campbell County, accepting his plaque from the Northern Kentucky Police Chiefs Association.
''I know the timing is probably horrible with this,'' Chief Buelterman says.
Found niche
There's a reason for the strange career move of Detective Terry Vannarsdale, and it has nothing to do with the quality of his work. Mr. Vannarsdale's job evaluations say he's found his niche.
The detective, a 19-year veteran of the Florence police force and the department's reigning fingerprint expert, is a recognized authority on child-abuse cases.
He's developing a site on the Internet for the Florence police department. He compiled a statewide phone directory of child-abuse investigators. He wrote a booklet on interpreting the behavior of children who testify before a grand jury.
Ask him what he does in his spare time and these things he rattles off. Northern Kentucky's Officer of the Year loves his work.
''I've had the best life a person could have,'' he says.
Mr. Vannarsdale, 49, is irrepressible. He talks enthusiastically about work, though it requires him regularly to wade into a sea of human despair. Some child-abuse cases never leave you. Some domestic-violence cases never end.
But as he drives around Florence with his summonses and his business cards and his Jeff Foxworthy tape on the console of his blue Crown Victoria cruiser, he laughs easily.
The cases
Mr. Vannarsdale steers the cruiser up Montrose Drive, pulls on a cap, removes his eyeglasses so they won't streak in the rain and walks up to the door.
When the woman comes downstairs to greet her caller, she finds a tall man in a wrinkled, black raincoat standing in her living room. There are bright, red dots on each side of Mr. Vannarsdale's nose where his glasses used to rest.
Karen Huth's boyfriend has threatened her again, violating a domestic-violence order that says he must keep his distance.
''I went through counseling,'' Miss Huth says. ''I tried to get him to do the same, because it takes two. But he won't do it.''
''You need to show him he doesn't have control over you,'' Mr. Vannarsdale says.
''You need to show him you're no longer a victim.''
Policy calls
When Mr. Vannarsdale leaves, it's to duck back into the drizzling rain. He won't be doing this much longer.
His transfer to patrol officer is mandated by a policy that requires officers to be rotated through the detective bureau.
Nobody stays. Not even the Officer of the Year.
It's for morale, says Chief Buelterman. This way, everybody gets a chance at the plum jobs; nobody feels left out.
''Officers in patrol sometimes see themselves as second-class citizens,'' he says.
Chief Buelterman says the rotation also gives younger officers a chance to develop and learn from skilled detectives such as Mr. Vannarsdale, who is training his replacement as domestic-violence specialist.
But the chief concedes: ''It's kind of a strange situation that all of this came out before the awards dinner.''
Ironically, the Officer of the Year is the first affected by the policy. The rotation will not take another detective out of the bureau for five years.
''I don't want to come out of the detective bureau,'' Mr. Vannarsdale says. ''I'm good at what I do.
''As I told the chief, 'If you have a heart attack, do you want somebody fresh out of med school operating?' He said, 'It's not brain surgery.' ''
''I said, 'As police officers, we often hold a person's life in our hands.' ''
But the Officer of the Year is taking it all in stride.
''For two or three days I'll be down when I'm back on patrol,'' he says. ''I'll probably pout. It's not where my heart is.
''But I'll be back up.''
Rob Kaiser is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. His column appears on Sundays and
Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. He can be reached at 578-5584.