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BY EUAN BEAR

ob Parzych’s daddy was a
cop, but he insists that he
ever tried to follow in his

father’s footsteps. Itjust sort of 
happened, kind of. Rob works as the
civilian supply officer for the
Burlington Police Department. Think
Radar O’Reilly from the TV series
M.A.S.H., but way more organized
and much more personable.

Following a journey
through twisting, turning corridors in
the police station at the comer of
North Avenue and Battery Street, we
settle in his office, where his comput-
er screensaver displays in 3-inch let-
ters the questions that run his profes-
sional life: Rob, I need  Rob, I
want ...; Rob, do you know  Rob,
have you got  In fact, during the
hour of our interview, on an official
holiday when he wasn’t even sched-
uled to work, two officers in mufti
stop by with requests (one for keys to
the supply room for an “ammo
count”) and another in uniform
escorts the UPS driver in with a
delivery.

If you’re of a certain age or
have read much gay history, you ‘
know that the police in most jurisdic-
tions have not been our friends as a
community. In New York and other
cities, police were bribed by bar own-
ers to leave the customers alone, but
sometimes came back and raided the
establishments anyway, routinely
beating and harassing gay men, drag
queens, and lesbians, parading them
past reporters and releasing their
names and addresses to the press. ’
Police have ignored for years the
possibility that a gay man could be
raped, and that it was a prosecutable
crime. Too often in the past they have
been slow to answer and eager to
lose the paperwork on calls about
anti-gay violence and reluctant to
look for or arrest the perpetrators.

But now gay cops march in’

pride parades —just not ours, or at
least, not yet. And Rob Parzych, who
says he always knew he was gay, is
the supply officer for the Burlington
police and couldn’t be happier.

Rob was born in _
Sturbridge, Massachusetts — yes, that
Sturbridge. His father was not only a
cop, but a security officer for Old
Sturbridge Village. With the promise
of another job, Rob’s dad moved the
family to New Hampshire, but the
job offer evaporated, and the family
moved to Bellows Falls when a work
opening was offered. Parzych senior
eventually settled in at the Windham
County Sheriff ’s office.

Rob came out publicly and
to his parents when he was 17 and
graduated from high school in
Bellows Falls. “High school,” he
says, “was all about survival. It was
all about being small and invisible
and trying not to get beat up. I was
chubby and short for my age. Then
when I was 19, I lost 45 pounds and
grew three inches. Nobody recog-
nized me at the next reunion.”

He moved to Burlington in
1985 to be with a boyfriend soon
after graduation, and that’s when he
came out to his mom. “I was getting
ready to move and my mother was
kind of wonderin-g about this 30-

year-old man I was moving in with.
‘So, is he gay?’ she asked. I said,
‘Yes he is.’ Then she said, ‘Well, are
you?’ Ijust said, “Yeah’ and started
laughing. She asked me if I wanted to
‘talk to someone’ and I said no, I’m
fine with it. Then she said, ‘As long
as you’re safe and happy.’ She asked
me not to tell my father yet, she
wanted to tell him first.”

His coming out wasn’t so
hard, Rob said, because he had heard
his father’s comments after he’d been
called to the gay-owned Andrews Inn
in Bellows Falls to break up fighting.
It turned out to be “some local

“meter checker" he quickly corrects
me — and he applied and got thejob
in 1998.

“You know, if you’re in the
job because it’s about the power, you
need to find another job,” Rob says.
“It wasn’t just the meters, I was out
there as an ambassador for the city.
There’d be kids locked in a car, or.
dogs on a hot day, or I’d be giving
directions. One time there was a
naked guy on Church Street in a tee
shirt and sneakers and nothing else. It
was a little tough to know how to call
that one in. I’ve checked and there’s
no IO-code for that.

Chief’s Award.

The Chief’s Award — a
handsome plaque attesting to the
honor hangs in Rob’s cubicle, fes-
tooned with his colleagues’ notes of
affectionate ego-deflating humor — is
the highest award bestowed on a
civilian by the Burlington Police in
conjunction with the Rotary Club. It
stands for doing a good job, “above
and beyond the everyday stuf ,” says
Rob.

Rob’s boss, Burlington
Police business manager Lise
Veronneau, virtually gushes when she
explains why Rob got the award: he

Rob Parzych

Who Keeps BurIington’s Cops
in Bullets and Paperclips?

drunks picking fights with the cus-
tomers. My dad said, ‘Why can’t
those guys just leave them alone —
they’re not bothering anybody.’”
Rob’s Mom actually ended up work-
ing at the Andrews Inn part time,
stamping hands for the Friday night
dances.

After telling his parents he
was gay, he started telling others in
his life. “With each person, itjust got
easier. I told my [younger] brother,
and he said, ‘I don’t care.’ My broth-
er is super straight, we’re really
opposites, but we get along real
well.”

Not having a college
degree hasn’t held him back because
he’s able and eager to learn.
“Limitations are something you put
on yourself,” he says.

He got several jobs in
retail, including one that took him to
Maine. When the Once A Tree (now
Symmetree) store in Portland burned
down, Rob came back to Burlington
to work in the Church Street store.
He eventually tired of working retail
and started looking for something
more secure, a job with benefits.
There was an ad for a meter maid —

“Of course, once I did call
it in to Dispatch, all the other meter
checkers converged from all over the
city. It was a guy who had decided on
this hot day to take a little walk from
some group home and he just kind of
forgot his pants. An officer came and
picked him up.”

After 18 months on meter
duty, Rob saw that a new business
manager had opened up the position
of supply officer to civilian appli-
cants. Previously it had been held by
uniformed officers assigned to light
duty for various reasons or who were
nearing retirement, or it was shared
among a number of officers. The job
needed to be consolidated and cen-
tralized. And Rob was the man for
the job.

“I am the primary — the
only — purchaser for all of the depart-
ment’s supplies: bullets to paperclips,
uniforms, weaponry, office supplies,
bulletproof vests, service contracts,
food vending machines, rubber
gloves, everything,” he says with
some pride. The pride is justified:
after all, he has been twice nominated
as employee of the year for the city
of Burlington and last year earned the

“pays attention to details, he under-
stands what an individual needs —

' often before they do ‘— he saves us

money and is very good about stay-
ing within our budget, he’s creative
 I could give you a list a mile long
of projects that he’s been involved
with. Our mission "statement as a
department lists four qualities we
strive to achieve: integrity, creativity,
service, and respect. Ron exemplifies
all four.” And, she noted, Rob got
this award after only one year of
service.

Naturally, as supply officer,
Rob ordered his own plaque, though
he says the guys were sneaky about it
so he wouldn’t know it was for him.
Rob even picked it up at the engraver
without tumbling to the secret.
Burlington Police Chief Alana Ennis
handed out other awards, and the
Chief ’s Award was the last of the
evening. Even though the Chief had
invited Rob and his partner to the
awards dinner and suggested that he
might want to dress up a bit more
than usual, “It was a total surprise
and shock. The Chief read off a won-
derful speech,” Rob recalls.

Chief Ennis has also

 

attended Rob and his partner Steve
Porter’s civil union ceremony and
has written a‘ recommendation for
them as prospective adoptive parents.
Their homestudy was done and
paperwork completed in May. Now
they’re waiting for the magic call to
let them know they’ll be parents. “It
doesn’t matter to us if it’s a boy or a
girl. It’s all about the birth mother —
she gets to choose whether we’ll be
parents. Waiting is the hardest part. I
tell myself it’s not that different from
straight parents — they wait to con-
ceive, and then they wait nine months
afier that.”

Rob says he’s prepared for
the changes that parenthood will
bring. “I used to babysit all the time.
And yes, you get to give them back,
but for me, it got to the point where I
didn’t want to give them back.” He
shows offa photo of himself holding
an officer’s new baby. “Other people
here bring me their children,” he
says.

“It’ll be chaos, but we’re
set. I mean, how prepared can you
be? And whoknew there was that
much paperwork? Have you ever
Seen adoption paperwork?” he asks
incredulously.

“My worst fears are the
birth mom changing her mind and
dealing with daycare. I get four
months parental leave here, and I can
maybe stretch that out by working
part-time. My boss here is very good
about letting me know I can have a
flexible schedule.

“I never dreamed I would
be doing this. If anyone had told me
even five years ago that I’d be the
supply officer for the Burlington
Police Department, I would have said
they were crazy. What an amazing
group of people we have here,” he
enthuses.

If there’s less prejudice
than some of us might expect at the
police department or in other city
departments, it might be due at least
in part to Rob — notjust his example
as a gay man, but his presence on the
board that screens applicants for city
jobs. “There’s usually one person
from the department they’re applying
for, and a supervisor or superior offi-
cer, and one other person. I’m usually
the ‘other person,’ mostly because
I’ve done it so much. You can see
peop1e’s biases — our interview ques-
tions cut right to the quick. That way
we can weed out undesirables. You’d
be amazed at how people talk about-
their prejudices against one group or
another,” Rob marvels.

“Never once have I come ‘
up against prejudice here. I’m not an
in-your-face guy — being gay is just
part of who I am,” Rob declares.
“I’ve been at the bar when there’s
been a call [to the police] for service.
and I see them handling it like any '
other call for service. There’s a whole
ne_w level of respect, and of treating
people as people.

“Everyone gets [anti-]sexu-
al harassment training. There’s just
no tolerance for discrimination. I
don’t see any prejudice here. Of
course when I first started I didn’t
exactly announce myself. But once I
got more confidence and got to know
people more, and they got to know
me ...” V