A good choice, yet ...

Friday, August 5, 2011

Well, of course we hate to be the curmudgeon in the Council chamber but, while the town’s new police chief, John J. Bryfonski, has an impressive background in law enforcement, none of it seems to be in a town like Bedford.

Perhaps that’s not important, we don’t know, we’re just ... well, being curmudgeonly.

Bryfonski has 32 years in law enforcement, including, as our Maryalice Gill reported, a stint as deputy chief inspector of the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency. Pretty impressive, if you’ve got a drug task force that desperately wants running.

And he was an officer and detective in East Hartford, Conn., and investigated organized crime-related arson cases, and even established the department’s first burglary squad. Pretty impressive, but there’s not much organized crime in Bedford (we sincerely hope), but there are burglaries, of course.

He was a special agent for the DEA in Hartford and Portland, Maine, and in Tucson, and with the DEA in New York and Philadelphia, too.

And he is originally from a town in upstate New York that is smaller than Bedford.

OK, we get it, we’re being picky. The new chief knows law enforcement on at least a dual level – East Hartford and the federal DEA – and maybe there’s more that wasn’t mentioned that would indicate more clearly that he knows about law enforcement in a community like Bedford and, as we said, we’re just being the curmudgeon in the Council chamber.

But he’s been with the DEA since 1984, according to a biography issued by the DEA, which also said he graduated from the University of Hartford in 1977 (he got a masters in public administration from that school in 1987), so any chance at policing in a town like Bedford would be at a minimum and quite some time ago.But the Town Council took a lot of time to make this appointment – almost three months, according to our story last week, and the process took “multiple interview panels,” so our curmudgeonlyness is probably uncalled for.

And after his appointment, Bryfonski said all the right things, how the most important initial job is to get acquainted with every employee of the Police Department, every employee of the town and “as many of the citizens of ... Bedford as I can.”

And he said law enforcement “is not a job. It’s not an adventure. It’s a calling.”

Well, right. And good.

So, we’re just being ... well, we said that already, and maybe there is something we’re missing and if there is, please tell us. We’re not opposed to this appointment, we believe a lot of thought went into it, Bryfonski has stellar law enforcement credentials, and he does say, “I’m a small town guy.”

And now he’s a small town cop.