SALEM — Capt. Paul Tucker, the Police Department's head of detectives for the last 17 years, will become the city's next police chief.
Mayor Kim Driscoll notified Tucker earlier this week and made the news official yesterday afternoon. Tucker, a lifelong Salem resident, will be sworn in during a ceremony at Old Town Hall on Thursday, Oct. 1 — his 51st birthday.
"Obviously, it's very exciting for me personally and professionally," Tucker said. "The amount of support that I've been getting from the mayor, from the staff here at the police station and the public has just been incredible."
Tucker beat out Salem's three other police captains for the job and was long regarded as the favorite to succeed Robert St. Pierre, who retired last Friday after 25 years as chief.
Tucker has been the city's top detective since August 1992, has handled internal investigations for the department, is a graduate of the FBI's National Academy and holds a law degree. He's also served as an adjunct professor in criminal justice at Salem State, North Shore Community College and Endicott College.
"I think he's going to take this department even greater distances than I ever did," St. Pierre said. "There's nobody more qualified than Paul Tucker to run this department right now. ... He earned the job; he's a man of integrity and experience; he has a wonderful education. Setting all that aside, he's a man who worked from day one to promote the department and protect the city."
Tucker joined the Salem PD in 1983 at the age of 24, after stints working for the Salem State and Nashua, N.H., police departments. He remains one of the few officers on today's force appointed by someone other than St. Pierre. Former Chief Charles Connelly brought Tucker on board not long before his retirement.
Despite finishing fourth overall on the state police exam, Tucker decided early on to remain a local cop.
"I grew up here. I love this city," Tucker said. "I just thought I could make more of a difference here."
His responsibilities have often been unenviable. Shortly after St. Pierre was named chief, Tucker was one of two detectives assigned to look into allegations of drug use within the department. When it was over, four Salem officers were indicted on drug charges.
He's handled internal affairs for 20 years.
"The biggest thing I take out of it is to be fair to everybody," Tucker said. "Fair to citizens, fair to the officers and fair to the organization. That's a balance that I've tried my best to keep. It sometimes can be difficult, particularly when it's people you work with and work for sometimes."
Of course, much of the job is downright dangerous, and there have been close calls. Years ago, he and fellow officer Dick Howell disarmed a suspect who tried to pull a gun on them.
During a drug raid on Lafayette Street three years ago, Tucker and a team of officers stormed into an apartment and found one of the suspects sitting on the couch with a loaded 9 mm handgun by his feet. Officers subdued the suspect, who later told police that if they hadn't handcuffed him so quickly, he "would have taken at least one of you out."
"You think about those things afterward," Tucker said.
Some of them, he laughs at.
When the city's pizza delivery men were being targeted in a string of robberies, Tucker went undercover by putting on a Domino's uniform. That night, he delivered a pizza to a man inside a rooming house who turned out to be the suspect, and a backup team quickly arrested him.
The incident would later be written up in Domino's companywide newsletter.
"We joke that that's when you know you've made it — when you've made the Domino's newsletter," Tucker said.
"There's really nothing in police work the man hasn't done," St. Pierre said. "He has legitimate battle-scar injuries to prove it. He's an amazing fellow."
St. Pierre remembers an incident in The Point when Tucker shattered his right hand while taking down a suspect.
Even Tucker admits that moving into an administrative post with a corner office will be a big change.
"I'm sure the first couple of times I see detectives gearing up for raids, I'm going to want to tag along with them," he said. "I will miss it — and those in my family will not."
Capt. Brian Gilligan remembered an incident a few years ago when Tucker saved a suicidal man from jumping off the Salem-Beverly bridge. Tucker was off-duty and driving with his wife at the time and risked being pulled over the edge if the man jumped.
"He could have kept driving, he could have called the police station, he could have done a million different things," Gilligan said. "But the bottom line is, he cares about other people that much, and that's what made it impossible for Paul Tucker to do anything different than to get out of the car and grab that guy."
Staff writer Chris Cassidy can be reached at ccassidy@salemnews.com.
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