Third in a series. 

Re: “Why It’s Good Time for Raetz to Retire” 

Officer Jim Raetz, still youthful and peppery even though his December retirement from the Police Dept. barely is 90 days away, was asked how much conditions have chained since he joined the force in 1984.

“I call it the pre-Prozac Era,” he says with a smile.

The anger temperature around Chief Ted Cooke’s department often was at heat wave level, Mr. Raetz recalls.

“We had supervisors who did not listen to people,” he said. “They really did not know how to communicate.

“They were just angry. They would yell. Instead of being teachers and mentors, if you had something you disagreed about,  they would say things like ‘You weren’t in Vietnam with us. You don’t know what it was like to be in the military. This is a paramilitary organization.’”

A full smile returned to Mr. Raetz’s appearance.

“That mindset really has dissipated,” he said.

Now, by the second year of Chief Scott Bixby’s tenure, “there is a strong desire to listen. It is common to hear ‘Hey, what do you guys think will work?’”

(To be continued)