During his short tenure as Roanoke Rapids police chief, one that ends December 1, Shane Guyant said there were so many things that had to be done that thinking about what wasn't accomplished is a difficult question.

“I feel like when I came in there was so much to be done that it was kind of hard to set up a strategic plan for one, two, three, four, five years,” he said in an interview this week. “I had to concentrate on fixing what was broken and there was a lot that was broken.”

So the question of what wasn’t accomplished remains unknown for a law enforcement administrator who with his team has done around five years of work in a year and a half. “I don’t really know what there could be other than just maybe getting a new police station because this building is very old. We are in need of a big upgrade. To modernize our facility would be fabulous.”

But that’s something that takes funding. “I hope one day Roanoke Rapids can make that happen to have a facility for the police that’s better than we have right now because this is an old, decrepit building. It would be nice to have a more modern facility that we could call home.”

Despite that big wish, he said, “I’m very satisfied in everything we’ve done.”

Five years of work

Guyant said it was a top command staff which helped the department do five years of work in a year and a half.

“I have three captains — Captain Gorton Williams who is over professional standards which didn’t exist before I got here.”

Professional standards set the tone for the professionalism of the agency, Guyant said. “Captain Williams is the perfect person for that because he loves his community, he loves his department, and he does things the right way and is doing them ethically.”

Williams is over internal affairs, training, and hiring, “making sure that all the pegs fit like they’re supposed to fit.”

Then there’s Captain Jeff Baggett, an officer who has spent his entire law enforcement career in Roanoke Rapids. “He went to high school here, he went to the Army, came back and started working here.”

Baggett started in patrol, went to investigations, and eventually became captain of the patrol division. “He is the type of person that handles his business and gets it done. People respect him because he leads by example. He already knows the answers to the questions that he’s asked. He’s fostering good relationships between the squads that are working together instead of against each other. He’s really set the tone for professionalism as far as patrol goes.”

And finally, investigative Captain Harold Phillips who Guyant says he adores. “He came over from the sheriff’s office. When he applied for captain he won that process. He became captain of a division that needed complete restructuring. There was a lot that was going on with the other administration that the investigation division had lost some of its trust and there were a lot of things that needed to be reworked.”

Instead of replacing staff, he used the staff already in place. “They admire him. He leads. He gives. He gives them the ability to think critically to what they think is the best thing to do.”

Said Guyant: “He’s turned that place around and he is by far a great leader amongst his staff.”

The ones that made this happen

The outgoing chief doesn’t credit himself for the department’s quick turnaround. “I’ve only been successful because I’ve put the right people in the right place. I’ve given them the core values.”

What Guyant did was give them the vision from what he’s seen in his career. “They’re the ones that have made this happen.”

And it’s just not the officers. “One of the other things that I tried to do as chief is I tried to involve everybody in the agency. Essentially what that does is this is a good lesson for leaders in business and leaders in government. If you involve everyone what you do is give them a voice and when they have a voice they have accountability. Then they can’t turn around and say, ‘Oh, this is terrible. We should be doing this, we should be doing that,’ because they have ownership.”

The staff has grown to like that the chief will come ride with them on shifts and ask them their thoughts. “I take what they say to heart. When a decision is made, when a decision comes down from the chief, it is done with a lot of input and they love that. They love having that voice.”

Policy rewrite

One of the things that came out of that input was a major policy rewrite which boosted the department’s list from 30 to 120. “When I got here we had 30 policies and for a modern day 21st Century police agency that is unacceptable.”

One of the first things he wanted to look at was getting accreditation. “Accreditation gives you a little more of a robust look where people say, ‘Hey, this department’s got its stuff together. They’re following guidelines.’”

With accreditation comes policies and procedures that address everything little thing, he said. “It sounds like overkill but in a job like this policies are just not policies or procedures. They’re their directives on how to handle something. If you have a situation, you pull out your policy. It gives you step by step instructions on how to do that.”

The results have been beneficial in increasing the department’s professionalism. “If you come into an organization and you just come up with verbal threats — we’re going to do it this way — next week that’s subject to change.”

Putting policies into writing and giving guidelines, “You set the rules on what they’re supposed to do. One of the things that you don’t want to do is get in the habit of changing protocol and changing how you do things.”

The top policy changes

He said the some of the top policy changes were:

Professionalism. “We needed to increase our professionalism. My dad used to say when I used to play high school sports ‘you might not get in the game but at least be prepared. At least look like you know what you’re doing.’”

Body cameras. “These are very expensive devices but they save us every day because people complain about every little thing. Officers can have their body cameras on and we can see what happened. We get the firsthand view — not just the officer’s opinion, not the person complaining’s opinion, but we get to physically see what happened. We made that a policy that when we get around the public we have to have our body cameras on.”

Use of force. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t have a lot of use of force. One thing that I did notice when I came on was we didn’t have a lot of use of force. You see all the time that police are beating up on certain individuals. Wait, wait, wait, that is so not true. That is so blown out of proportion and it’s a political narrative and is not even close to being true.”

The Frontline suite

In line with use of force, is a program called Frontline. “It’s our professional standard suite. Within that suite is our use of force module. It’s our early intervention module.”

Out of the George Floyd death came a bill that said law enforcement agencies had to have a way to keep up with officers who were getting out of line. “That helps us to keep up with officers who are having the most wrecks, having the most use of force, who’s calling in sick, who’s getting injured. It helps us track all of that. It keeps up with our policies. If we make a change to a policy, it’s instant. They can see it, they can read it, they can sign off on it.”

With it comes accountability. “It gives us roll call abilities where if something happens during the day we can report that.”

The department’s field training is on the suite. “We can monitor daily how a new recruit is doing. Just the enhancements that were made to the way we do business is amazing. We didn’t have that before. Prior administrations chose not to do it that way. These things were already out there. We just took advantage of it. You can see the city manager was very giving about our budget. She let us do what we had to do to make things work, to make us better.”

On leaving

After nearly 32 years in law enforcement, Guyant is leaving after a very short stint in Roanoke Rapids.

He started in Edgecombe County and worked there for 12 years before going to the North Carolina Department of Insurance where he stayed for 14 years.

From there he went to the Halifax County Sheriff’s Office. 

Then he obtained his doctorate. “I had already made my mind up that I was going to retire. Prior to this chief’s job I was going to retire anyway and go out and teach. Then this job became available.”

He made it clear it was a job he wanted in 2019, went through the process and scored very well, coming in first.

The city manager at the time, Joseph Scherer, decided they wanted someone else and former Chief Bobby Martin was hired. “I think that was a terrible decision on his part, but it was his decision.”

Asked what he might have accomplished if had gotten the job then, Guyant said it is a difficult question to answer. “It’s hard to look at that because the pandemic had a big impact on our profession. It had a big impact on this department. I can tell you this — I know me and I know my strengths and I know my abilities and I can only imagine where we would be.”

The city still has the same checkbook it had in 2019. “There’s still not a lot of money but it would have been different. One, you wouldn’t have had all the negativity that came about from some reports that had been made about the prior administration. There would have never been a blackeye on the department.”

Guyant said if he had the same crew in 2019, the three captains, “Who knows where we would be.”

On leaving, Part II

No one asked him to apply when the position came open after Martin’s dismissal. “Nobody ever begged me to come in and take this position. I talked to my wife and said, ‘I know I was getting ready to retire, but this is an opportunity that I would love — the opportunity to fix something because I feel like I’m a fixer.”

City Manager Kelly Traynham never called and begged him to apply, he said. “She recognized that I could do this job and ultimately put me through a process to get this job. It just wasn’t handed to me. I had to interview for it and I had to go through a process for it and I was the person that was chosen to be chief. I knew the challenges.”

On leaving, Part III

Guyant and the staff worked through the challenges but in the end it came down to a realization. “I’ve been giving my whole life to other people that I haven’t really given much to my family.”

Over the past couple of years his father has developed COPD. “He’s really sick. He’s not getting any better. He’s not dying, but he’s not getting any better either. He lives three hours away from here in Carteret County and I’m an only child.”

He sees his father getting older and not being as healthy as he used to be. “I see my mother getting older, doing more work around the house because she’s having to do the stuff that he did because she’s taking care of the things like mothers do, like wives do.”

Now there is the duty to help. “I just feel like I’ve got to step up and be a better son and do those things for him.”

It’s the only reason he’s walking away from the success the city’s department has had. “I’m not leaving for any other reason than that and all this crap that you see about rumors and this and that … You know I’m doing this for what I think is right. I guarantee you that it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make.”

The people

Another reason the decision to leave has been so difficult is the people. “I have really come to love these people that were with me every day. That includes every one of my staff, that includes all of these people that work with public works, the fire department, the city manager’s office, human resources — every single employee of this city.”

He has also come to love a lot of people who live in the city. “I have truly developed a love for the people that I worked with every single day. I’ve tried as hard as I could to make it feel like genuine love and not fake love and walking away from that is a hard thing to do.”

He sees it not as walking away from power, “Because I don’t feel like I have any power. I’m just a member of a team. I show up to work on this team every day like everybody else does.”

The future

Right now this decision is about family. “I’ve been called by so many people. I have the choice of whatever I want to do. I’m not even thinking about that right now. I’m gonna take some time off for Shane and for Shane’s family and I’m going to do what God leads me to do.”

He knows that he and his wife will probably be moving to be closer to his parents. 

His daughter lives in Wilmington. His son, a detective, lives in Tarboro. 

“I need some Shane time and one thing about it is I’m a realist. They’re not gonna hang my jersey in the rafters. I’ll be gone and I’m not gonna have a ring of honor and that’s OK because I don’t deserve any of that stuff.”

His hope is whoever takes his place continues the momentum and will listen to the staff.

The biggest highlight

Perhaps the biggest highlight of his short career in Roanoke Rapids was the case of Umel Jackson who fired shots at officers in May.

That led Guyant to make a heated social media post about his bond but that post became a rallying cry to support officers.

“I don’t regret a thing I said,” he said. “What I found out is that people really and truly still love law enforcement and they support us. That right there was a highlight to me because you know it allowed us to see that people do care about us. They were saying positive things about us and negative things about the system which is OK because I do believe that part of the system is broken.”

It comes down to faults within the justice system, he said. “It always gets pinpointed to law enforcement. It’s not all our fault. Do we make mistakes? Yeah, but the blame is on the courts and the prosecutors and the defense of these individuals. That’s the pure blame and to me, the highlight of this is being able to get out there and use my First Amendment right as chief and stand up for my people.”

The episode unified the department. “They knew that I stood up for them and I was going to defend them to the end despite what could happen to me personally. Professionally, I could care less, but the biggest thing was that the public just seemed to really rally around officers.”

What’s made the system broken, he believes, is, “I think that you have people who have lost sight of what their jobs are — that they’re so caught up in the minutiae of following some vague policies and procedures on how to do things they forget they are supposed to be standing up for victims, they’re supposed to be a part of law enforcement. They’re supposed to be partners with law enforcement and fighting crime and making sure that we’re relentless in our prosecution of people who have been charged.”

The police chief realizes that not all who are charged are guilty. “You put it before a jury, you put it before a judge and you let the chips fall where they may.”

He says the willy-nilly dismissal of cases to clear a docket has to stop. “There has to be accountability on the part of the DA’s office to make sure that they are prosecuting relentlessly as they can to protect our society.”

Judges, he said, are gatekeepers between those responsible and those not responsible. “But they can only make this decision if they hear the case. If the case is getting dismissed, they have no idea.”

He believes it comes down to trying to reduce the prison population. “In the process you know they’re not benefiting the victims. They are not benefiting our community. They’re not benefiting our civilization. If you’ve committed a crime you should get just as fair a shake at the justice system as an African American as you do a white male. At least get in your time in court. Don’t just throw it out because when you do that, the rest of civilization and the rest of the victims they suffer. They’re not getting what they’re supposed to be getting and that’s justice.”

Missing serving

Serving people is what Guyant will miss the most. “I love serving people and that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life is serving.”

Then there’s teaching staff the things he experienced as well as learning from them. “It’s just that overall socialness, just being around people, the staff. I will miss them tremendously. I don’t consider it a family because I’m not really a big family guy because I don’t have a real big family, but these folks have been my life for the past year and a half and I will miss them a lot.”