Ockenfels saw this sucker a mile off

We all read with great interest, and a tear, Walter Griffin’s farewell salute last week to retiring Rockland Police Chief Alfred Ockenfels. It was a serious effort, suitable for the deadly nature of Ockenfels’ profession, which has included cradling a few victims in their last few moments on Earth.

But there is more. So much more.

Usually, police and reporters do not get too close. But Ockenfels knew suckers when he saw them. He could not leave us alone.

I first learned of the other side of Ockenfels’ nature one December night in the 1990s when I drove home from Boston and stopped at Rockland’s Pik-Qwik for the latest copy of the Courier Gazette.

These were the innocent days when we not only left our vehicles unlocked, we left them running.

I came out of the store and found my beloved Honda gone. I was shocked. Some thief had stolen my car. I spotted the Rockland cruiser next door at the carwash and ran (well, waddled) over to report the crime.

I knocked on the window, and there was Ockenfels, with a Cheshire grin. “I saw a band of gypsies take your car and drive off,” he said with a typical deadpan expression.

Even I am not that stupid. It was then that I noticed the tire tracks in the snow leading to the back of the store. It was there that I found my beloved Honda, still running. I found later that several of Herr Ockenfels’ “friends” had suffered the same fate.

My favorite story occurred in the formative days of Cobb Manor, when Larry, Grady and I contemplated moving in together instead of running three houses. Part of the discussion featured the adult decision of whether to buy a washer and dryer to save a fortune on Laundromat charges.

Grady was reluctant. She didn’t know how long she would stay (about five years) and didn’t want to part with the money, then move out.

The item or the cohabitation had not come for a final vote when Grady was returning to her Rockland apartment late one night after she had a few lemonades. She noted a Rockland cruiser following her through several turns and even followed her into her South Main Street driveway. She was sweating bullets, searching for her license and registration, when the voice came over the cruiser loudspeaker, “Give Emmet the money for the washer.”

Ockenfels.

We thought he was a great and good friend, but he was, after all, a police officer, then the deputy chief and finally the chief.

One day poor Larry , a Portland Press Herald reporter, was driving home and stopped at a red light. Ockenfels, in the cruiser, pulled up beside him and they both rolled down their windows. “Breath or blood?” asked Ockenfels. The question rattled our Larry even though he had not a drop to drink.

Then there was the time I was walking to the courthouse when I saw Ockenfels in the cruiser with his mentor, Louis Metcalf. I stupidly opened the back door and sat down, talking to them through the cage. They both laughed and walked away. It was then and only then that I realized you can’t open a cruiser back door from the inside.

They both laughed like hell and walked into court, leaving me in the back seat, trapped. They told everyone in the courthouse I was under arrest. “Go look,” they said. They made a special trip to Blue Eyes, the court clerk, to tell her, “We finally got Emmet. Look out the window.” There I was in the police car, feeling like a fool, waiting for them to come back for my release.

But his piece de resistance was in the summer of 1990, when he came into the NEWS office and asked me if I wanted to go on a huge Rockland drug raid, the biggest in the state’s history. I jumped at the bait, but he said he had to clear it with the city manager.

Weeks later, he came back and said he got the clearance for the raid, scheduled within a few weeks. On the appointed night I came to the Rockland police station with two Nikons and two flashes, armed with new batteries.

Ockenfels even had the state narcotics agent at the station, to brief me on protocol. He almost got me to put a bulletproof vest on, telling me it might get violent. I was this close.

We drove around, waiting for the signal. Finally, he said we would go to the Rockland Golf Club because the raid was right next door. I was breathing heavily, hoping I would not get shot. But it would be a small price to pay for the front-page story.

We snuck into the darkened golf club.

“Surprise! Happy Birthday!”

It was my surprise 50th birthday, months in advance. Ockenfels said to Blue Eyes, who arranged the event, “I told you I could get him here, He swallowed the whole thing, hook, line and sinker.”

And I did.

I, for one, will be glad when Ockenfels is gone.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.