Worthington names Scobie police chief

WORTHINGTON — To say that Officer John Scobie was appointed police chief last week may imply that he oversees a department. But that’s not exactly the case.

“It can’t get any smaller than this,” he said, days after his appointment by the Select Board last week to lead the one-man operation. He signed a three-year contract that will pay him $90,397 a year for the next three years.

“We’re extremely fortunate,” said Select Board Chair Charley Rose following the selection of Scobie. “It’s really hard to find a candidate for chief in local towns, and we have one that is also a firefighter and first responder.”

Heaping more praise, Rose said that, “He is ex-military but approachable. People want to respond to him, which is important, and he gets the customer service aspect of the job.”

Scobie did spend the majority of his life serving in the military, from the age of 17 to 43, with 14 years in the Army followed by nine in the Air Force.

It was five of his former military buddies who worked in the Worthington department, since retired or promoted to State Police, who got the Worcester native to the small town of almost 1,200. In 2004, Scobie started part-time at the department, and later picked up full-time hours in May 2023.

Over the past 20-plus years he has seen a maximum of eight part-time officers. However for the past five years it has been a single full-time officer under Chief Robert Reinke, who took over as chief in 2019.

Now Scobie, an Agawam resident, is the last and only law enforcement officer left in town.

“I have a big set of shoes to fill because Chief Reinke was pretty good, pretty skilled, and he knew his job and he did it well, and he was a good chief to work for,” he said about his predecessor.

In addition to being chief, Scobie is also a teacher at the Career Technical Education Center (CTECH) in Springfield and teaches criminal justice. Following his military service, he earned a degree in criminal justice from UMass Amherst in 2016, and now his most recent journey in gaining experience has been taking six weeks of courses toward becoming a certified firefighter, which he will use to assist the town’s Fire Department.

Over the past school year, “I would do my eight hours at school, literally change into my uniform, and drive here,” he said in his one-room police station. “I’d work until like 11 at night, then drive back home, sleep for four hours, then get back up and go back off to school.”

His around-the-clock work ethic, an asset in a community with a single police officer, was developed in the military, he said.

It was drilled into him that, “When you’re at your tiredest point is when you should do something, and when you’re exhausted, that’s when you get up and you go do something.”

He went on, speaking of his deployment to Iraq, that “We were doing 16 hours a day, six days a week. We had one day off, but that was just so you could get your laundry done, otherwise you’d never have time to do laundry.”

While Worthington’s crime rates are considerably lower than the national average, and not quite as action-packed as Iraq, he said there are always property disputes to settle and animals to corral.

“Crime is mostly neighbor disputes,” he said. “I know it sounds crazy, because I said the same exact thing, like, ‘how are we having neighbor disputes when people live on 70 acres of land?’”

“When I grew up in Worcester I could raise up my window and touch the house next to me, and I never fought with the people in that three-decker. I mean your neighborhood was like your family.”

He was taken off guard shortly after he began working as an officer in town when a call came in saying there were mini horses in the road on Route 143.

“I was like sure, right — this person’s been drinking,” he said. “So I drove over and sure enough there were three horses, and they’re running around making those noises.” The incident later gave him his first bite from a horse.

“I was thinking, now I have to shoot him or tase him. Here I am fighting a mini horse in the middle of the night on 143 and it’s trying to bite me,” he said. Fortunately, the incident ended without a taser or gun being deployed.

But the town is not always quiet, either, such as when the National Guard found a large marijuana plot in September 2004.

After the Guard’s drug eradication unit spotted the greenery from a helicopter, the three Worthington officers working at the time responded to uproot the plants.

“We ended up with 819, 6- or 7-foot pot plants we had to pull out of a swamp. It took us from early morning to late at night,” he said. “It was bundle after bundle after bundle, and they estimated it was worth about a million dollars — someone was angry.”

One of the hardest parts of his job, and a much more regular occurrence than weeding out drug cultivators, is responding to medical emergencies.

With the town’s high proportion of elderly residents, and ambulances being anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes away, Scobie is often a first responder for medical situations, which is when his medical training from his years in the military kicks in.

“We do a lot of CPR — and you know that’s tough,” he said. “Sometimes families are there, and sometimes you know you’re not doing any good — like it’s not going to work, the person is not coming back. But you can’t quit, you don’t want to quit in front of the family. So you sit there and you do CPR for 40 minutes, just pouring sweat. It’s tough.”

Scobie said also he would like to emphasize that, if there is an emergency, callers should not leave him a message if he doesn’t pick up his phone, but should call 911.

Rural challenges

One of the struggles that has exacerbated rural policing is a recent state regulation that mandates full-time training for even part-time employees, Scobie said.

“If one of you guys wanted to be a police officer here, even if it was for a part-time job, you’d have to go to the full time academy for a part-time job that you’re going to make $20,000 a year,” he said. “Who’s going to do that? Nobody.”

Then, even when part-time officers do come along, they end up transferring to Springfield or other cities in the region, “because anyone will hire right now — especially when they don’t have to pay for your academy, because we pay for it,” he said.

Scobie is interested in pursuing another part-time officer at the station. In the case of a “hypothetical grant,” he would experiment with personnel needs.

“I know people want to build like a big station or public safety complex, but I would be concerned more with using money to hire additional officers just to see how it goes. Is there enough work, enough crime? And if not, maybe better rescue equipment,” he said.

The biggest fear on his radar is the possibility of a mass casualty. “They can launch the helicopter from Barnes, which can get here pretty rapidly. But even then, maybe you can squeeze two patients in,” he said.

There is no holding cell in the Worthington department, and those being processed are brought to the Hampshire County Sheriff’s Office in Northampton. This being the case, the majority of his work happens from his cruiser where he stores almost all the department’s gear.

Now, since his training in fire safety, there is not only police equipment, but also an oxygen mask, helmet, jacket, and fire suppressor grenades.

“It’s fun — it’s like I’m a soccer mom on patrol,” he said.

Outside of work, family is crucial to him, and he has two sons ages 17 and 11.

Scobie said given the demands of policing and the hardships he sees people experience daily on the job, he tries not to take anything too seriously. But what motivates him daily to be on the front lines, whether in Iraq or in Worthington, is a sense of service.

“It’s just your sense of service — doing something for the greater good of somebody else,” he said.

But there might be some love of adrenaline mixed in with a love of service. His wife thinks so.

“My wife always says, ‘whatever’s dangerous you’ll volunteer for it.’ I don’t believe her, but yeah that is kind of a thing.”

And why Worthington? “Because I like small town community policing,” he said.

Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com.