Valley People

WE’VE BEEN HOUNDING Deputy Squires to submit to a debrief in the form of an interview, but the Deputy says No. We had a title all ready to go: “A Great Cop Hangs Up His Cuffs.” But the Deputy said No, even after we tried to bribe him into it with Giants tickets. And when Deputy Squires says No he means No, as many dismayed miscreants have discovered over the three-plus decades that the Deputy has maintained order in the Anderson Valley. Nobody will ever dare confirm, least of all him, that Squires was originally assigned to The Valley because he could handle the tough guys. And there was a legendary load of tough guys in the 1970s before The Valley’s blanding down into its present stoned passivity. The Deputy, and this is pure rumor, handled certain people informally, and ‘handled’ might be the operative word here, but it wasn’t long before the tough guys knew that when The Deputy said No it definitely meant No. For many years, Squires was a central figure in the life of this place. He was never off duty. Everyone knew where he lived, everyone had his home telephone number. If you needed him at 3am he would be there. He knew who needed to go to jail and who needed an emphatic warning to “Go home and stay there.” And he knew everyone, and he knew exactly who was doing what. It’s no exaggeration to say that Deputy Squires saved the County many thousands of dollars by resolving matters before they involved arrests and the courts. When he wasn’t in uniform he was coaching youth sports. Put a cop like this guy in every neighborhood in the country and the crime rate would be a third what it is now. I don’t want this to sound like an obituary, but it is unlikely The Deputy will be back on duty. He’s got back problems, shoulder problems, leg problems that haven’t quite immobilized him but he’s considerably slowed down. At a minimum he ought to be Grand Marshall for this year’s Fair parade. We all owe him, and owe him big.