Steve Glick, Chief of Police, City of Wooster

by Karol Crosbie

Career opportunity:

Excellent writing, speaking, driving, first-aid, and firearms skills are required. You must be willing to serve as psychologist, sociologist, educator, and kitten-rescuer. On some days you will be the hero, on others the bad guy. You must have the fortitude to take another’s life and the courage to give your own. Expect long hours.

When Steve Glick ’79 arrived at Wooster, the idea that he would go into law enforcement was as unlikely as a career as a lion-tamer. But then he started hanging out with the College’s director of security, Carl Yund, a retired police chief from the City of Wooster. “In retrospect, I think Carl was trying to recruit me,” remembers Glick.

“He talked about law enforcement in a different way than you would expect. He talked about service to the community. He talked about those times in his career when he could look back and say, ‘I helped somebody today.’”

By the time Glick (a history major) was a senior, he was working for the Wooster Police Department. He never looked back. After 28 years of service to the department, he was recently promoted to chief of police.

He remembers the first time, early in his career, that he realized the job meant that he had to be willing to take a life. He and his partner were investigating a domestic abuse complaint and were met at the door by one of the residents, bearing a knife. “I’ve been lucky enough never to have to use deadly force,” says Glick. “People would be surprised at how often in an officer’s career (even in a city the size of Wooster), an officer is legally and morally justified to use deadly force, but doesn’t.”

As the chief of police, Glick is responsible for the ongoing training of 37 officers and five support staff. He also has responsibility for their well-being. “There’s a lot of talk about the physical dangers of the job, and those are very real, but there’s less understanding about long-term emotional trauma. More officers commit suicide every year than are killed in the line of duty.”

Glick knows from experience the pain that comes when emotions overwhelm reason. Logically, he knows there was nothing he could have done the night he was called to a home, responding to a complaint about a loud party. Legally, he could not have entered the apartment without a warrant. But the next day, when he learned that a two-year-old child had been killed at the party, he was besieged by guilt and grief. “I kept thinking back—if I had done this, or if I hadn’t done this, if I’d just walked in. . . .”

The best way to maintain good emotional health, Glick tells his officers (and himself), is to find someone to share with. For him, it is his wife, Liz Eberhart ’81. He also tells members of his force to develop relationships and activities outside of law enforcement. “It’s tough at times, because we work odd schedules, see things other people don’t see, and do things other people don’t do,” says Glick. “But if you can manage it, it really helps.”

Another thing that has helped, he says, is understanding the global nature of his profession’s challenges. As part of his ongoing education, Glick attended an international law academy. “If you put law enforcement officers from Hong Kong, Las Vegas, and Scotland into the same room, you’ll hear them talk about the same types of good things, bad things, and issues. It’s absolutely amazing how similar law enforcement is, across the world.”