Meet Chief O’Keefe
Published on October 31st, 2001
STONEHAM, MA - Stoneham’s new police chief needed only one weekend to decide that Stoneham was the place for him.
In 1974, two years after Gregory O’Keefe took his first police exam, he was accepted into the State Police and Stoneham Police Department on the same weekend. He had to make a choice.
“I told my wife, Virginia, that we’d take a look at Stoneham, and if we saw a house we liked — we were looking for a house at the time — we’d stay in Stoneham,” O’Keefe says.
The couple bought a house on Pleasant Street that weekend. Last night, Oct. 30, 2001, O’Keefe was sworn in as the Stoneham Chief of Police. In between these events, the O’Keefes have made a life in Stoneham, and three O’Keefe children — Alison, Brian and Stephanie — have gone through the Stoneham schools.
As his children moved through the grades, O’Keefe rose through the ranks of the Stoneham department. He began as a patrolman in 1974 and soon became the detective rank juvenile officer. By 1982 O’Keefe began his career in police administration as the sergeant night shift supervisor.
“My first night as a sergeant there was a fatal (accident). I knew the girl that got killed, and I had to tell her parents,” O’Keefe remembers. “It can be tough.”
But O’Keefe continued to shoulder and embrace the duties of a supervisor. He was named sergeant in charge of detectives in 1987 and became a lieutenant in 1989. Since then his position has grown to include supervising internal affairs, budgeting and working as Chief Eugene Passaro’s right hand man.
O’Keefe got the job not only because of his track record in the department but also based on the strength of his real-life experience and thorough education. O’Keefe, a Cambridge Rindge Tech grad, joined the U.S. Marines after graduation, serving in Vietnam from 1967-1968.
O’Keefe earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Northeastern University in Boston in 1978 and a master’s in the same area from Anna Maria College in Paxton, Mass. in 1981. He graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 12-week intensive police academy in 1988. Only one percent of the nation’s cops are accepted into this program.
Coming from within the department brings both advantages and disadvantages, O’Keefe says. The disadvantage is that he must be replaced and so on down the line before things can work smoothly.
“But I already know the community, and they know me,” O’Keefe says. “There doesn’t have to be a ‘learn the personality of the new chief’ period.”
His personality is well-established in the department; he is open to new ideas and likes to get things done. O’Keefe says he is most proud of being a part of the efforts to develop in service training, build a new police station and computerize the department.
“The Stoneham department founded the Northeast Regional Police Institute in Tewksbury... We developed the curriculum, got the building. And it worked so well the Mass Criminal Justice Training Counsel took over the program,” O’Keefe says. “We were the model.”
Stoneham was also one of the first fully computerized forces in 1988, due in large part to research done by O’Keefe under the direction of Chief Passaro.
In continued pursuit of the goals established during Passaro’s tenure, O’Keefe wants the Stoneham force to go after grant money and, in particular, install digital imaging technology so digital pictures of offenders can be easily shared and printed for wanted posters or used to expedite booking.
Handling a young police force during tough economic times is the challenge O’Keefe sees on the horizon. He must replace retiring command staff with young men and women and ask them to deal with rising crime and shrinking resources, the double-edged sword of a bad economy.
“I need to pick the right people,” O’Keefe says, boiling down the true test of any manager.
He hasn’t made any decisions yet about reorganizing his staff, and he’s waiting for the sergeant and lieutenant exams to come back this winter to see who’s ready to step up. But the new chief is confident.
“These young people are well educated, and they’re dedicated,” O’Keefe says. Sounds familiar.
“I look forward to working with Town Administrator (David) Berry and the Selectmen and Finance Board,” O’Keefe offers as his parting comment, but then he smiles, leans back in his police conference room swivel chair, and adds a quick story:
“Back in 1972 I left my job at an M.I.T. lab because I didn’t want to work in an office all the time... Look at me now!”
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