Faces in the News: Mark E. Talbot Sr., Reading deputy police chief
Position: Deputy chief, Reading police department.
Why he’s in the news: Talbot often takes a lead role in high-profile criminal cases.
Personal: Born in 1970 in West Chester; grew up in the Chester County town of Lincoln University. Wife, Brenda; children, Michael, Mark Jr., Jasmine, Christopher and Jada.
Resume: Correctional officer at Chester County Prison, 1990-94; hired by the Reading police department as a patrol officer in 1994, position he held until 2002; patrol sergeant, 2002-03; investigations sergeant, 2003-05; vice section lieutenant, 2005-07; deputy chief, 2007-to present. Currently pursuing a degree in organizational leadership at Penn State.
Interests away from work: Avid weight lifter who loves to read.
What have you learned from your job?: “I’ve been doing consulting work for the Penn State Justice and Safety Institute for a couple of years. That has given me the opportunity to work with police officers and supervisors from all over the country. Based on those experiences, I’m confident that Reading has some of the most talented and committed police officers anywhere.”
What is the most difficult part of your job?: “Police work is all-consuming. Your entire life doesn’t revolve around the job. Your entire life becomes the job. To commit yourself to this profession means that everything else takes a back seat.”
Why did you become a policeman?: “Being a police officer was a childhood dream. Like most cops, I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Accomplishments: “Later this year I will be one of a handful of police executives that will be training leaders from the Camden, N.J., police department in the style of police operations and management that we practice in Reading.
Something people might be surprised to know about you: “I would rather read a book than watch a professional sporting event.”
Your guiding principles: “In the book ‘Good to Great’ by Jim Collins, he describes what he calls the ‘Stockdale Paradox.’ The Stockdale Paradox is a mind-set that says to be successful you must always be willing to accept the brutal facts of reality, while at the same time have an unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end. I try to live my personal and professional life with that in mind.”
What have you learned in your job as deputy police chief: “One of the biggest challenges in law enforcement is responsibly policing an urban environment. The social, economic and structural issues that many cities struggle with seem to be aligned perfectly against helping to create a safe and prosperous community. Despite those brutal facts, we will continue to work to make the city of Reading a great place to live. At my current rank it is clear to me that the police must take a leadership role in public safety, but our success will be uncertain at best without the support and confidence of the citizens.”
Who has been the most influential person in your career?: “Chief (William M.) Heim has been a tremendous friend and mentor for the past several years. He’s influenced my thinking about policing more than anyone.”
Officer’s action exemplifies devotion to duty
Put yourself in this situation.
You’re in a line of traffic waiting for a freight train to pass a crossing and notice that a passenger van is trapped on the tracks between the warning gates.
As the train approaches it is apparent that the van cannot get out of the path of the train. It is obvious that a tragedy is unfolding before your eyes.
Most, if not all of us, would like to think we would act courageously and attempt to rescue the passengers without concern for our own safety. In reality, would we?
That situation unfolded Monday in Elm Grove. With a freight train bearing down on the van, police officer John Krahn ignored his personal safety and did what he was trained to do. He put himself in harm’s way to protect the public.
In this case, Krahn rushed to the scene and helped the driver, Monica Ensley-Partenfelder, 40, escape, and turned back to remove a child from the van just as the train plowed into it.
Scott Partenfelder, the driver’s husband, was in another vehicle behind the van with two other children. He and Krahn pulled the wife out, but their 2-year-old son was still inside when the train struck the van, and careened into the two men. Remarkably the child was not injured. Krahn, 41, was in satisfactory condition Monday following surgery. Scott Partenfelder, 47, underwent five hours of surgery for his injuries and is in critical condition.
According to the Associated Press, witness Tim Weiner said that he saw a police officer come “out of nowhere to help out.” After the officer helped the woman, he tried to save the boy, Weiner said.
“He was reaching in the back when the train hit the car,” he said. “He was trying to get the child out. It was unbelievable. This guy is a hero …. He didn’t have to risk his life.”
Krahn’s story, while dramatic, is not unlike other selfless acts of police officers, firefighters and first responders who are willing to put themselves in dangerous situations to protect citizens.
And we have no doubt that police officers, sheriff’s deputies and firefighters in our communities are no different, trained and ready to put their lives on the line when necessary. They go work daily with the potential of facing dangerous, live threatening situations.
Yet it is human nature to take them for granted. It is more common to complain about the traffic ticket or the fire code violation than respect their commitment to keep our community safe.
Most of us will never find ourselves trapped inside a van with a child with a freight train bearing down. But if in a similar situation, we’d all like a John Krahn nearby.
New police dog, officer bond through training
When Georgetown Police K-9 Officer Teresa Hollon first saw Boss she knew he would be a perfect fit for the department.
Boss, a black German Shepherd, is GPD’s new police dog after having to retire its former dogs, Sammy and Presto.
“The department wanted a black German Shepherd and it was between Boss and his brother,” Hollon said. “Boss is a little bit smaller dog and he came to the fence right away. His personality drew me to him and we bonded from the beginning.”
Hollon began training with Boss who came from Poland but was trained and purchased at Faus K-9 in Elkhart, Ind. Boss is a utility dog specializing in article search, tracking, narcotics search and apprehension.
When they’re not nabbing criminals, they’re winning hearts
Ever since joining the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office less than a year ago, Rex and Ringo have been making a name for themselves, putting criminals behind bars — and winning the hearts of school children everywhere.
Rex is a 5-year-old Belgium Malinos acquired through a law enforcement adoption program.
Ringo is a 3-year-old Dutch Shepherd, born in Holland and purchased from a top-ranked kennel.
Both are K-9 officers trained to alert when narcotics are present, schooled in the art of tracking, handler protection and criminal apprehension, but passive enough to let children pet them.
Some 2,000 students, pre-school through fifth grade, have already met the dogs at demonstrations held at their schools.
“Since the inception of the K-9 unit, they have made 29 arrests and conducted 14 demonstrations at various schools in the county,” said Ringo’s handler, Cpl. Mike Zimmerman.
Both he and Deputy Justin Wagner, Rex’s handler, head up the K-9 unit, saying they love their jobs and they are solely responsible for their dogs.
“No one else works our dogs,” Zimmerman explained. “It’s a partner thing. I spend more time with Ringo than with my family.”
The dogs go home with them, he said, and are “part of the family, but not family pets.”
He is particularly proud of their recent national certification earned in Little Rock in October.
He said Rex and Ringo were required to find four “hides” in four rooms. “If you have one miss, you don’t get certified,” he said, “It was a pretty stressful test.”
Stressful, he explained, because the sheriff’s office doesn’t have heroine or cocaine on hand for training purposes.
“They were previously trained on those,” Zimmerman explained, “but it’s nice to have it — to throw out and know they’ll alert. We only have meth and marijuana here. We don’t have the luxury of heroine and cocaine for training purposes.”
Although Zimmerman said he sweated the outcome of the certification test, both dogs reverted back to their previous training and sniffed out the four “hides” with no problem.
Zimmerman said the K-9 unit is available to area law enforcement agencies 24/7, and the canine’s skills are often called upon.
He said his prediction that it would take about a year for all area personnel to learn procedure has proven true.
As an example, he said officers have learned that if they are involved in a foot pursuit and decide a tracking dog is needed, they stay off the trail.
Pictured are Deputy Justin Wagner with Rex, and Cpl. Mike Zimmerman with Ringo.
“Now, all our guys know what we need so the dogs can do their job,” he explained.
While Zimmerman has a history working with drug dogs, Wagner admits he is relatively new to the K-9 division.
He recalled his first “agency assist,” which involved a probation/parole officer on a home visit that resulted in an arrest for drug possession.
“It was my first time to deploy the dog,” Wagner remembered. “I was leery. But, you trust what you have and trust the dog.”
Wagner says he enjoys his work with Rex, who knows when they are about to go on duty.
“He stands at the door and whines. He’s ready to go to work. He sees my clothes going on, and to him, it’s that time to go out and have fun.”
“Working the K-9 unit couldn’t be more satisfying,” added Zimmerman. “I like finding drugs but I like tracking better. Nine times out of 10, at night, a suspect can get away — but not from the dogs. Ringo is a great dog to work with. Of all the dogs I’ve worked with, he’s Number One.”
Butler police dog begins night patrols
Night-time police patrols are no longer as lonesome or dangerous for the village’s third-shift officer, Lt. Brian Pergande.
He’s got a canine partner now – a police-trained German shepherd called Oden – thanks in large part to a generous contribution from Butler resident Mary Turnbull.
Pergande took Oden on his first patrol Saturday night, May 16. “We encountered an ‘open door’ the first night,” Pergande said.
Pergande regularly checks Butler businesses for open doors on his night beat. If he finds one, he goes in, looks around and, if no one’s there, secures the door as he leaves. He notifies the business owner the next day.
This time, though, “Oden went in ahead of me and cleared it out.”
If Oden had discovered anyone there, he would have barked if the man fled, or held him with his teeth if he caught him.
That’s just one of his jobs. Besides “officer protection and criminal apprehension,” Oden can also track criminals or missing children and elderly people and retrieve evidence dropped by suspects that an officer might miss, Pergande explained.
Adding a canine officer to the otherwise single-officer night beat was Pergande’s brainchild. Night patrols had become increasingly dangerous as drug busts in the village doubled over the last two years, he said.
He began campaigning for it last fall with a letter to Police Chief Michael Cosgrove. The chief backed him up and took it to the Village Board, which unanimously endorsed the proposal – but without voting any money for it.
Pergande then sent out fundraising letters to every resident and business in the village. He had raised about $5,000 in $100-$500 contributions when Turnbull stepped in and donated the balance.
Oden was already trained, but Pergande was not, so he went to Campbellsport to take the Steinig Tal Police K9 Academy’s four-week training course at Fox Valley Technical College’s Criminal Justice Division.
There he had to learn a little German, too, because that’s the language Oden (named after the chief god in the ancient Norse religion) knows.
“Most police dogs are trained in another language,” Pergande explained, “so criminals can’t confuse them.”
It’s also a tradition. “Police dogs were first developed in Germany,” he noted. Oden’s parents were from Germany, too, he added.
The dog and Pergande’s training cost $10,000, and Pergande expects Oden to cost another $25,000-$30,000 over the course of his estimated 10-year life expectancy for housing, food and medical care, plus yearly certification.
Neighboring communities might also benefit from Butler’s police dog. Oden will be available for mutual assistance with other communities, Pergande said.
The 32-year-old Pergande has worked in law enforcement for nine years and trained with the West Allis Police Department’s canines when he served there as a dispatcher.
Pergande, who still lives in West Allis, has also worked for the Kenosha Police Department (five years) and for the Wisconsin Capitol Police in Madison and at State Fair Park in West Allis, but hopes to spend the rest of his career in Butler.
Police dog teams take top honors
The city’s police dog teams racked up more than a dozen awards during the United States Police Canine Association competition.
Franklin Police Department hosted the event on May 15. Twenty-nine officer-and-dog teams from Tennessee and Indiana competed at Franklin’s Fieldstone Park.
Sgt. Aaron Compton, who supervises Franklin’s K-9 Unit, and Officer Charlie Richards won 14 of the 28 awards for this year’s competition.
“While very proud of their performance, I am not at all surprised,” said Chief Jackie Moore. “The Franklin Police Department strives for excellence in every area. The fact that our two competing walked away with 50 percent of this year’s honors is evidence of just that.”
Compton and his dog, Sting, won first place overall, as well as first place in agility and total search, second place in obedience, article search and criminal apprehension, and third place in tracking. The two also won the Sgt. Jimmy D. Anderson Memorial Award. This award is presented to the officer-and-dog team with the highest combined obedience and criminal apprehension scores. Compton and Sting scored 690 out of 700.
Richards and his dog partner, Titan, won first place in obedience and tracking, second place overall, second place in total search and third place in article search and box search. They scored 684 overall.
Franklin’s two newest dog handlers, Brad Dorman and Brett Spivy, along with dogs Nash and Axel, will compete at next year’s event.
Breeder donates pup to police K-9 unit
A Pullman (WA) man motivated by the shooting of a Spokane police dog has given the department a German shepherd puppy.
Nick Lungu breeds and trains the dogs for his business, I-Guard International. He sells the animals for as much as $2,500 each but gave the Spokane Police Department first pick of his latest litter after reading of the March shooting of Var, a longtime police dog.
Police say Officer Dan Lesser shot and killed Johnnie Longest, 22, after Longest shot Var.
The puppy, named Ajax after the mythological hero, will be raised by Officer Jay Kernkamp as part of the Spokane police K-9 unit’s puppy program.
“This program, due to its careful selection process, has been extremely successful in producing some of the region’s finest police service dogs,” according to a news release prepared by Officer Kevin King.
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