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Sergeant says so long

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

After more than 27 years of dedicated service to the Wytheville Police Department, Sgt. Trenton Crockett’s fellow officers have finally discovered something that he isn’t so good at.
Retiring.
Crockett, an Ivanhoe native and 1973 George Wythe High School graduate, is retiring from the WPD on Thursday, but he’s not slipping into the typical leisurely lifestyle of a retiree.
Instead, he’s going to war.
The 52-year-old already has a new job lined up with R4 Incorporated, a private company that contracts with the Department of Defense to provide troop support.
Crockett, who served in the Marine Corps prior to his police career, said he’ll start training at Fort Benning, Ga., in late August and expects to be in Iraq by September.
He also hopes to be able to make it to Afghanistan, either for troop support or at least for a quick visit to see his son, B.J.
B.J. is deployed with the Navy on a tour that is expected to last into October.
While Crockett has an adventurous future in front of him to say the least, the last 27 years have been filled with plenty of interesting moments as well.
During an interview Friday at the police department, Crockett and his partner for a number of years, Capt. Rick Arnold, reminisced about both pleasant times and tough cases from the past three decades.
The stories began right from the beginning.
Crockett left the Marines in May 1981 and returned to Wytheville, content to draw unemployment for a few months until he decided what career route he wanted to take.
In order to continue to be eligible for his check, Crockett said he had to get two signatures from employers to prove that he was trying to find work.
He found his way to the WPD – merely hoping for a signature, not a job.
“So what happened was that I came down here for my last one, I’d already went to like a doctor’s office,” Crockett recalled. “So what I did was I came down here and at the time they were hiring. I didn’t even think they were hiring. So they wouldn’t sign my sheet, but they sent me up to [former police] chief [W.Z.] McAllister and after a couple more interviews I was hired. That’s the honest truth.”
“One of the jobs he happened to try to get a signature for, we actually gave it to him,” Arnold added with a laugh. “He screwed up.”
Despite the unlikely start to his career, Crockett said he found a home at the department.
“These guys are my family,” he said about his fellow officers.
Crockett also spoke glowingly of the support from his more traditional family – his “inspiration” (wife of 25 years, Cindy) and his “little queen” (8-year-old daughter, Kaylee).
“Could you imagine being married to a police officer for 25 years?” he said.
Although Crockett’s new job will take him around the world, his family plans to stay in Wytheville and he’ll return here when he has leave.
He said he’s already eagerly looking forward to Christmas when he hopes both he and B.J. can be home for a complete family gathering.
Despite some of the anxiety associated with “going into the unknown again,” Crockett said he feels like the time is right for his WPD retirement.
“We got some good young people on this police department,” he said. “These guys need a chance to move up. I don’t want to stand in anybody’s way. I’ve done my time, I’m 52 years old, I’ve got another career lined up, let these guys move up.”
Arnold said it’s hard to adequately express how much both he and the department will miss having Crockett around.
“Trenton has always been a hard worker, he’s always represented the Wytheville Police Department in its best light,” the captain said.
While Crockett’s mere sturdy presence (he has competed in numerous World Police and Fire Games across the globe in power weightlifting) often diffused tense situations, Arnold said Crockett’s engaging personality regularly helped calm people down as well.
“People in the community know Trenton,” Arnold said, adding that Crockett has an aura about him that commands respect. “I can’t tell you the number of times that people have said that, ‘That’s a good looking officer.’”
As odd as it seems now, Crockett pointed out to Arnold that he wasn’t always such a confident law enforcement veteran.
Arnold conceded that Crockett may not have been such an asset during his first few weeks on the job.
“We had this little old lady that we had stopped at a traffic stop and Trenton was like very brand new and I was his training officer so I let Trenton go up to talk to this woman,” Arnold recalled.
“And so he’s up there talking to this woman, nervous as all get out, and he says, ‘Uh, like ma’am, uh, uh, like, I need, uh, you like, you, you were speeding, and like I need, uh, your driver’s license and, uh, your vehicle registration.’
“And the whole time he’s talking she’s looking at him, listening to every word he says and then when he gets through she turns towards me and says, ‘What did he say?’”
“I didn’t know what to do,” Crockett said once he managed to stop laughing.
The nerves soon faded, though, and Arnold said he couldn’t have asked for a better partner.
In addition to working a number of important cases, including the recovery of a murder weapon during a traffic stop, Crockett said he takes pride in the fact that he was only the second African-American officer in the department’s history upon his hiring in 1981.
While he recalled having to deal with many people with racist attitudes – especially during his first few years on the job – he said he’s seen things change for the better during his time with the agency.
“Trenton has always had a laid back personality,” Arnold said. “He took everything in stride.”
Crockett is leaving as one of the most experienced members of the department and Arnold said he is the first officer to retire in good health from the force since the early 1990s.
“The experience can’t be taught,” Arnold said. “He’s done a great job for us and we’re really going to miss him.”
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .