Detectives with combined 80 years service retire

Officers have 70 years of combined service

By Joe Gorman

jgorman@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The city police department said goodbye Friday to 70 years of combined experience as detective sergeants Darryl Martin and Tom Parry both retired.

Parry was hired in December 1978 and has more than 36 years of police experience. Martin came on the department in 1981 and served 34 years.

Parry investigated robberies and burglaries for several years, and Martin has been a homicide detective for more than 20 years.

Martin estimated he has been assigned to at least 100 homicides as the lead investigator during his tenure as a detective. That doesn’t include other homicides for which he was the secondary investigator.

Their supervisor, Chief of Detectives Capt. Brad Blackburn, said replacing both will be hard. What set them apart was their willingness to help other investigators, Blackburn said. The two would help with paperwork, knock on doors and even help escort other detectives’ suspects from or to the Mahoning County jail, Blackburn said.

Parry began his career in Car 205 on the South Side. His partner was Tim Maloney, who went on to become a lawyer and eventually a Mahoning County Probate Court judge. Parry then worked an East Side beat for 15 years.

He also worked numerous details such as the violent-crimes task force and the SWAT team. He said the biggest change since he began his career – after graduating from Youngstown State University after a stint in the Army in Vietnam and Germany – is the technology available to both police and criminals today.

Parry, a native of Syracuse, N.Y., said he was looking for a career when a few policemen in the city he knew encouraged him to take the civil-service test for patrolmen after he graduated from YSU.

One of his most-satisfying cases was solving a string of robberies of fast-food restaurants on the South Side, which resulted in three people going to prison last year, Parry said.

Martin said he became a police officer because he always wanted to be in the center of what was going on. He began his career as a patrolman on the North Side. He then was a patrol supervisor when he was promoted to detective sergeant and then moved into the detective bureau under the tutelage of the late Capt. Robert Kane, a longtime chief of detectives.

Martin said Kane encouraged him to work homicides. At first he begged off, saying his children were young and his wife worked odd hours, which would bring about child-care issues should he be called out to a crime scene.

Kane kept encouraging him, however, and Martin eventually agreed to try it. He said he liked the change in his career because of the unpredictable nature of homicide investigations.

“I always looked it as a challenge,” Martin said.

Martin said he treated investigations as a job and because of that attitude, was able to work through the emotions that such cases usually bring to suspects and witnesses.

“I always looked at it as a business. It’s work. It’s a job that needs to be done,” Martin said. “You try to be respectful to people at all times, even the suspects.”

Almost always, Martin said, he ends up interviewing people after a homicide he has never met before, and he has to “wing it” when talking to them. He said that is one of the quirks of the job that appealed to him.

Martin said he will miss his job and the people with whom he works.

Parry said the advice he would give young police officers is to guard their reputations. He said police are looked up to, especially at trials by jurors and judges, and a blot on their reputation, no matter how minor, could put that reputation at risk.

“It’s the most-important piece of equipment you carry,” Parry said. “That’s something that needs to be protected. You don’t want to lose it.”