“I tell everyone I feel like I am the captain of a ship and it was torpedoed and I am on the only life raft rowing away and saying to the people left 'hope it all works out,’ ” Schwarber said. “You don’t want to leave in a crisis and that is what we are in.”
His reluctance to leave the department he joined in 1980 is most evident inside his office.
With less than a week left on the job, photos still hang on the walls and his bookshelves and drawers are still filled with files — not a moving box was in sight.
At the police station, it’s not just Schwarber who is reluctant. From the records department clerks to the dispatchers, officers and detectives, all have the same lament: “We don’t want him to go.”
So why is he leaving? Simply put, Schwarber, 56, has to retire now due to pension regulations.
“I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to,” he said. “I love my job.
“This is my family. And I’ve never been one to run from a fight. And we’re in a fight.”
Scary, funny anecdotes part of retiring Middletown police chief’s legacy
Police work may be nothing like what you see on TV, but Chief Greg Schwarber said most of it would make a darn good novel.
“There are all these crazy stories. Whenever I hire new people I tell them to keep a log. I wish I had,” Schwarber said.
“In a town this size you see everything — it’s a best seller.”
Schwarber, 56, is retiring after 30 years of service with the Middletown Division of Police. His last day is Friday.
He worked two years in Germantown before joining Middletown, “the premier force in the area,” Schwarber said.
“I hope residents appreciate the police department they have. It’s still the best around,” he said. “And it has nothing to do with me.”
Of course, his friends will tell you differently.
City Manager Judy Gilleland recalled how strong and steady Schwarber has been in his more than three years as chief. She said he’s been dependable through the best and worst times in Middletown.
“He is a man of honor and integrity. He has steered the police department in the right direction and we will miss his leadership a great deal,” she said.
Jason Cabe, who has coached Schwarber’s son, Kyle, 18, since Little League, said the chief breaks the mold for people in his position.
“I’ve never met someone so busy who still always finds time to help anyone who asks,” Cabe said. “He excels at being a good person — he’s a man of faith and a family man.”
“I know it’s cliché, but he’s my hero,” Cabe said.
‘Crazy’ stories
Reflecting back on his career, Schwarber said it’s the people that make it so worthwhile. Middletown’s police officers “are a dedicated, hard-working group” who also know how to have a good laugh.
It’s also the “crazy” people he’s met as an officer that taught him to expect the unexpected, he said.
One of his first calls involved a fight on the levee near First Avenue that turned out to be an armed robbery. Schwarber said he found a man bleeding from the head after three men had knocked him in the head with a gun and taken his money.
Schwarber said he got the man — who was drunk — into the front seat of his cruiser and began checking the area. Not far away he spotted the suspects’ vehicle at a stop sign. The passenger door was open, and one of the men was standing outside with his hands inside his trench coat.
“I’m trying to dispatch (my location) and that the suspects are armed but the victim was yelling in the background ‘There they are! There they are!’” he said. “He covered up what I said.”
Dispatch was unable to reach Schwarber or get information on his location. He held the three men at gunpoint and frantically ordered the suspect outside the car to show his hands. Meanwhile, the victim was trying to get past Schwarber with his cane to “get a piece of these guys.”
In the midst of the tension, several neighbors decided to cross directly in front of Schwarber’s drawn gun, between himself and the suspects, despite shouts for everyone to stay back.
“They were looking at me like this was a scene from a movie,” Schwarber laughed.
Then the victim picked up Schwarber’s microphone and slurred their location to dispatchers, adding “this guy needs some help down here,” Schwarber recalled.
“And they sent the whole world, thank God!” Schwarber said.
As it turned out, three guns were recovered from the vehicle as well as the victim’s money. While he looks at the situation as “comical” now, Schwarber said it easily could have become deadly.
“That is probably the closest I ever came to shooting someone — other than myself,” he said.
The shooting
What Schwarber calls “the low point” in his career also is the only time he has ever been shot.
And he did it to himself with his own gun.
In November 2008, Schwarber said he’d gone to the shooting range with his daughter, Lindsey, who was home from college. Afterward, at his home on Todhunter Road in Monroe, he was teaching her about gun safety and maintenance “and got careless” while attempting to clean his sidearm — a Glock .45-caliber pistol.
“I emptied the magazine, set the bullets out. I got distracted. I was searching the channels (on TV),” he said. “I picked up the gun to disassemble it and take it apart to clean and part of that (requires) pulling that trigger.”
What Schwarber forgot was the bullet still in the chamber. It entered his inner left thigh just above the knee and exited the other side before lodging itself in a wall, according to the report.
His wife, Donna, is a nurse and assisted bandaging the wound before he was taken to the hospital. Schwarber said he was glad his daughter wasn’t standing next to him at the time.
“As embarrassing as that was for me personally, I felt it was important to talk to everyone here,” he said.
“I carried a gun for 33 years. It becomes second nature and I got careless and didn’t want to see anyone else go down that path.”
Car accident
Another noteworthy event that sent Schwarber to the hospital was a January 2010 car accident. Seven other people were injured in the crash as well.
Schwarber is reserved when he tells the story. He was heading home from a meeting at the high school in his unmarked Chevrolet Malibu sedan. While on First Avenue, he recalled a Dodge Durango traveling just in front of him in the left lane. Suddenly, a minivan plowed into it, twisting away before striking his vehicle head-on.
“I was kind of out of it for a couple of seconds maybe. I woke up to On Star asking if there was a problem,” he said.
Schwarber keeps a stack of about 100 photos printed out from the scene in a manila folder on his desk. He can readily flip to shots of the van’s speedometer — stuck at 90 mph. Behind it are several photos of his car — a mangled, unrecognizable pile of metal.
What he remembers most about the crash is what he spotted in his side mirror — a teenage boy stuck under the side of the minivan that struck him. His instinct was to help, but he couldn’t get out of the car. In his delirium, Schwarber said he didn’t realize his seat belt was on.
“By the time I got it off a group of people had come over and lifted the van up to get him out,” Schwarber said. “There are good Samaritans everywhere.”
And he knows. Schwarber collapsed after getting out of his car, but a stranger — not a paramedic — helped him to a waiting ambulance.
While Schwarber is very nonchalant about the injuries he suffered, friends recall his pain.
The Rev. Lamar Ferrell, who visited him in the hospital after the crash, said he was clearly “in a lot of pain,” but all he could think about was the upcoming Hands and Feet mission trip to Jamaica the next week to build a home.
“He just kept saying, ‘I can’t believe this happened. I’m going to Jamaica,’ ” Ferrell recalled.
He did make the trip, which taught Schwarber he had more than bumps and bruises. Jumping into the deep end of the hotel pool after a long day’s work, Schwarber said he was panicked to find he couldn’t tread water. He yelled to his companions “I can’t swim!”
“I said ‘you dummy, why are you in the deep end then?’ ” Ferrell recalled. “But it was because he was hurt.”
Schwarber later discovered he had a fractured sternum.
“I just had to let it heal,” Schwarber said.
But as for healing the trauma of that day, that’s a different story. Schwarber said he can still see that boy under the van, and feel his inability to help. He plans to keep the stack of crash photos with him after he retires.
“A reminder,” he said as he carefully tucked the photos away.
Just days away from retirement, those photos are the only thing he’s packed.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2843 or jheffner@coxohio.com.
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