Spinelli joined the force in 1985, and enjoyed stints as a patrol officer, K-9 officer, SWAT team member, field training officer, and services officer. He left the department this month as well, but didn’t attend Friday’s ceremony.
Bucheit stated that both retiring officers were shining examples of the best law enforcement has to offer. He said Buns was the type of person who got to work early and stayed late, as well as, the type who would consider holidays a time to work.
He added, that with the recent deaths of Hamilton firefighter Patrick Wolterman and police Sgt. Gerald Butler, Buns spent a lot of time coordinating internal details so that many law enforcement officials would be able to pay their respects at the memorial services.
Promoted to fill Buns’ role will be Sgt. Brian Robinson. Other announced promotions were three officers moving up to the rank of sergeant from detective: James Calhoun, Richard Burkhardt and Donald Taylor. Calhoun is a 26-year veteran, and Burkhardt has been on the force for 16 years. Taylor has been with department for 21 years.
Three officers are getting transitioned into detectives: Aaron Hucke, Brian Gleason and Shawn Fryman. Hucke has been with the department for 15 years, while Gleason has served for eight and Fryman for nine years.
Robinson has worked with Buns for several years and shared a story that had the room doubled over in laughter. He reminded folks that as any situation got more dangerous, the deeper Buns’ voice became.
“Nobody can get their voice down as deep as Ed can get his,” Robinson said. “One story about him a lot of people bring up because everybody that was working that day heard it — is when we had just started to make the transition over to county dispatchers. Ed was out on Main Street after a pedestrian got struck. It raining out, traffic everywhere.
“It was second shift and everybody at dispatch was going crazy because there were not used to the amount of calls coming in. Ed was trying to get the air and they were talking over him and his voice was getting deeper and deeper: ‘395 to dispatch get that bird in air we needed them yesterday!’ Dispatch got quiet and we all laughed.”
Mayor Patrick Moeller was on hand to salute the officers being promoted and to congratulate Buns on his retirement.
“Ed Buns, you have been a great, great police officer and a friend to the community,” Moeller said. “Anything that has been asked of him, he did it. He has been very responsive in providing assistance to the community.”
Moeller and Bucheit read proclamations from the city and police department, respectively, thanking Buns for his dedicated and loyal service. And they paid tribute to his family — his wife, Lori, who was in attendance, and his two daughters, Molly and Abby.
A clearly emotional Buns gave thanks to all that had worked with him over the past 31 years, the chief and the city. It was family first during his speech and a subtle jab at the retirement system.
“Well, I don’t want to go, truly don’t want to go, but I had to,” he said. “I love what I am doing, but the state retirement system has maximum time limits and I hit that later this year. The department is undergoing a lot of staffing and assignment changes and it made sense to retire a few months earlier than the mandatory so all the changes could be done at one time, to create less disruption for the department. I may not be here, but I’m not going away. Thanks to everybody.”
All of the promotions were effective today, according to Bucheit.
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