SIDNEY — After working for the Sidney Police Department for last 27 years, you would think recently retired Juvenile Detective Scott Roomes would be ready to sit back and relax. Not a chance.
Between his two new part-time positions, one transporting juveniles for the juvenile court and the other as a victim services advocate, Roomes will be back to full-time hours within a couple of months. But until things are completely set with his new jobs, he will volunteer and work on an overdue “to do list” at home.
“I wasn’t done. I just didn’t feel like I was done. These (new) jobs will allow me to continue on,” Roomes said of working in public service.
He likely would have stayed on the police force until 2020, he said, if it hadn’t been time to rotate out of his position. Although Police Chief Will Balling allowed him to remain in his position two years longer than his rotation period, Roomes knew it was time to move on as opposed to going back to patrol. Roomes explained it is now a Sidney Police Department policy to rotate officers’ positions every five years to spread experience around and keep things fresh within the department.
For the last 17 years, Roomes served as head of the juvenile division, but “wore many hats” within the department, including being a hostage negotiator and shooting range instructor. He also became known as “Detective Teddy Bear.” Roomes said because he is a large man with a deep voice, he was given the nickname by colleagues in an effort to relax children.
“That’s OK. I’ll wear that (name). In fact, I like it,” Roomes said. “A friend of mine sent me an old picture of a child in bed and a dragon hoovering over the child. And standing on the bed is a little teddy bear with a wooden sword and shield. And the caption says, ‘Teddy bears protecting innocent children from monsters under the bed since 1902.’ And I had that blown up and framed and put in my office.”
On his last day of work, Roomes said he was given a teddy bear by a child he worked with as a juvenile detective. Roomes said a juvenile detective becomes closer to the people in his case load than other detectives do, because juvenile cases remain open for a much longer period of time.
Most juvenile detectives do not last as long as Roomes at this job. He thinks he held the juvenile detective position longer than anyone in the police department because he and his wife, Dianna Morrow, have no children. He said that made it easier for him to leave the job at work.
“Nobody wants to take the job. There are very few takers of this job,” said Roomes. “When I interviewed for the position, I told children’s services, ‘I don’t like kids. I don’t want kids. I don’t have kids. But it (makes me mad) when people hurt kids.’”
“It makes it easier, in a way, (to cope) because he doesn’t see his kids through these kids (he works with),” said Morrow.
“I define success as a juvenile detective differently. I got three tiers of success. My first tier of success is if I can actually understand what happened … because everybody lies. My next highest tier is if I can protect the child. I maybe can’t prove the case, but if I can at least make this child safe so that they are not re-victimized, then that’s a success. And I gotta be willing, if I can’t win the case, to say, ‘No, that’s still a win. I protected the kid.’ The third level is if someone did do something illegal to the child, if we can then prove that case. That’s the highest level of success,” said Roomes.
He recalled various cases that stood out over the years, from a man who broke into a home and stole only women’s underwear, to a stand-off situation lasting more than 12 hours at the Stolle warehouse, during which the gunman ordered himself a pizza.
Aside from the part-time jobs, Roomes said he also plans to continue working with the police department as a reserve detective. He will help conduct searches, investigate murders or be the second required person in the vehicle that transports individuals to polygraph tests.
“The city and the SPD has been very good to me … It’s been a very positive thing. I wouldn’t have wanted to work anywhere else. It’s been a great job, and I’m not quiet done with it; that’s why I’m still a reserve (detective) and I’m gonna do these other things,” Roomes said.
Maybe in three years, he said, he’ll re-evaluate things and potentially scale back.
“He’s too young to retire right now,” Morrow said with a smile.
Capt. Jerry Tangeman, Roomes’ boss, said in an email to the Sidney Daily News, “With Scott’s retirement, we lose 17 years of child investigation experience. It is commonly known in our law enforcement community that Scott is the ‘juvenile expert’ when it comes to investigating crimes against children. In the course of his 17 years as a detective, I estimate that Scott has helped and positively impacted the lives of over 500 victims. He always evaluated the total picture of a situation and endeavored to do what was moral and right, despite the obstacles. His mind, communication skills and commitment are his might and have been a great asset to our department and community. He has served us well and is an example for all investigators.”
Roomes said, “I’ve seen a lot of police departments, and the SPD is exceptionally good. They weed through things right. You hear things on the news about police officers doing bad things and shooting people that shouldn’t be shot, overuse of force and all that. It doesn’t happen in Sidney. SPD is a department to be proud of. And I was always proud of working with them. They are a lot of great guys.”
