FIRST RESPONDER FOCUS: ‘Be the calm’

QUINCY — For Quincy Police Sergeant Joe Westby, it’s all about the people. 

“It's just been really cool adapting to the community,” he said. “I hold value in the community like they hold in me. I try and make sure when the need arises, I do the best work I possibly can.” 

Like a lot of police, Westby wears multiple hats. Besides being a patrol officer, he also serves as the department’s event planner. He took over that role this year from Sergeant Julie Fuller, he said, who had planned events for eight years before that. 

“She laid the blueprint of it,” he said. “When it got thrown on my plate, I'm like, ‘OK, she's done great work. How can I make this better?’ ... I'm representing this agency and putting my name on it.” 

Westby took over events just in time to organize National Night Out in August, which entailed organizing a whole horde of first responder and community agencies to come out for an evening at Lauzier Park and interact with folks from the local community.  

“It's a big event,” said QPD Chief Ryan Green. “It's one of our biggest. The coordination starts in January, February, so he's already starting to look at how we can do things better, because we're always trying to figure out what we can do better for our community.” 

Besides National Night Out, Westby has smaller ways of connecting the police department with ordinary folks. 

“If any schools have a job fair or a health fair, any of the community booster events, we try and get involved,” Westby said. “At least be there as a presence … engage with community so they see something outside of us just showing up when there's a problem.” 

Westby grew up in a law enforcement family, he said, in Ferndale, near Bellingham, and spent his high school years in North Dakota. He joined the Marine Corps after high school and served under General James Mattis, whose motto was “Demonstrate to the world that there is no better friend, no worse enemy than a U.S. Marine.” That works great for the Marines, Westby said, but police work is a little more delicate than that. 

“We can’t have (the ‘no worse enemy mindset) as cops,” Westby said. “Not only do we have to be there for our people, but we have to be there to take care of all our people, and we’ve got to do it respectfully and legally and justifiably. You’re not just a guy with the power, you’re there to make things better.” 

One such opportunity came at Quincy’s Downtown Trick-or-Treat on Halloween night, he said. 

“It's a great opportunity for us to engage with kids,” he said. “I opened it up for officers to bring their vehicles in, decorate them up and just kind of create a whole first responders' section. We even did a little barbecue afterward … It's (a way to) not only hit it from an officer angle, but a family angle and a community angle. Officer are feeling valued because they're getting good engagement with the community, and not always bad engagement. Then you're getting officers feel comfortable that they can bring their families here to help engage with it. But now you’ve got the community aspect too, where they're getting used to you as well.” 

Westby hadn’t originally planned to settle in Quincy, he said.  

“Early in my career, I thought about going back home, and those doors just didn't open back up,” he said. “I accepted that God put me here for a reason, and I should embrace it.” 

“He's done really good job for our agency,” Green said. “He's one of our senior guys. We're a really young agency, so we do rely heavily on our experience.” 

Since he’s been in Quincy, he said, he’s also taught defensive training and worked with the Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team, both of which he said he thoroughly enjoyed. The last bust he worked on with INET, he said, took 35 pounds of methamphetamine off the street. 

“(Working narcotics was) an opportunity to experience life from a different angle, and it's a different side of law enforcement that's really hard to understand,” he said. “It takes a special cop … there's guys on the team that the work they could do made me feel tiny, because they were so good at what they did. To be able to learn from them and be even considered in the same group as them was pretty cool.” 

The years he’s spent at QPD have made Westby realize how important it is to be in touch with the people and not just the guy with the badge and the gun. 

“There was a subject who was involved with a homicide, and he was a suspect,” Westby said. “And I’d known that person for a long time. He was … getting taken down by several law enforcement groups at the same time, and the moment he saw me, he instantly relaxed, and he said to me, ‘I thought I was going to die that day, until I saw you.’ … I’m not special. I just try and do my job and do it OK. But if I can be the calm, then I feel I'm doing good work.” 

    In addition to serving locally, Quincy Police Department Sgt. Joe Westby also served the country in the U.S. Marine Corps.
  

    Sgt. Joe Westby, right, poses for a photo with Quincy Police Chief Ryan Green during Westby's promotion ceremony in April.