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SHIRLEY -- For his achievements and service to the community over 24 years and for his willingness and ability to wear two hats now, acting Police Chief Gregory Massak is the Nashoba Publishing's 2009 Extraordinary Service Award recipient for Shirley.
Massak joined the Shirley Police Department as a reserve officer in 1984 while also working part time as a police officer in his hometown of Lunenburg.
He was hired full time in Shirley in 1985. Then-police Chief Enrico Cappucci broke the good news at Massak's wedding, calling it his "gift" to the groom.
That was 24 years ago. Massak has been on the job ever since.
Today, he has reached the rank of lieutenant and was recently named acting police chief by the Board of Selectmen, on which his former chief now sits.
Massak heads the department during an especially challenging economic period for the town while also serving as an on-duty administrative officer on the afternoon shift.
So far, he shows no sign of battle fatigue.
Tall and fit, he cuts an imposing figure, but he's accessible, with a friendly, forthright manner and a ready smile.
He always aimed for an active, service-oriented career, he said.
After graduating from high school, Massak served for awhile on the Lunenburg Fire Department, then joined the Marine Reserves.
While working as a part-time police officer in Lunenburg, "someone suggested I should work here in Shirley part time, too," he said.
He wanted full-time, so he went after it. "I worked hard and I pressed the chief," he said. "The rest is history."
Massak's approach to the top job he's taken on -- for only a small raise in pay, as Selectman Andy Deveau stated at the Annual Town Meeting recently -- seems to suggest a style both determined and matter-of-fact.
Sketching his philosophy in practical terms, Massak said communication is key, across town lines as well as within the department.
"It's good to network," he said, noting working relationships he has with other police chiefs, including William Murray in Ayer and Edward Denmark in Harvard.
The notion that communication pays off isn't news to patrol officers, Massak said, and although it's not policy, per se, most of them are in synch, catching up between shift changes or engaging in cross-town shoptalk in cruisers parked at the town lines.
At the administrative level, his links with other chiefs are not formal meetings, either. Unlike police chief summits in Holyoke, their get-togethers take place close to home, once a month or so. They talk about crime and what's up in their towns, about sharing regional resources and getting grants. "We ... help each other out," he said, simple as that.
For instance, Chief Murray gave him tips when he wrote the narrative for a "Cop Grant," he's going for, Massak said. The $330,000 grant, very competitive and by no means a sure thing, would pay two full-time police officers' salary and benefits for two years.
Currently, there are shifts when officers work alone and gaps for sick time and vacation. Recently, a new reserve officer was hired to help with coverage, but two more officers would be a big plus, he said. To get the grant, the town must agree to hire the officers when the grant period ends and keep them on the payroll for two more years.
Grant writing is time-consuming, Massak said, but worth it if an award comes through. He's also eyeing a $32,000 grant from the Department of Justice, he said.
The re-do he has in mind for that grant would make the dispatch area more user-friendly, he said, with an additional station, reconfigured counter and other upgrades to make a small space more efficient and dispatchers more comfortable. Heavy-duty dispatcher chairs with a hefty price tag are on his list of upgrades, plus anti-static flooring, storage and improved lighting, all in the existing footprint.
War stories
After 24 years, Massak said he's had his share of hair-raisers and close calls. Asked to share a couple, he began with an amusing anecdote.
While attending the State Police Academy in Topsfield, Massak recalled training with a trooper who had an odd sense of humor. "We used to run through a neighborhood, singing cadence," he said. As they circled a particular house, stomping and "singing," the trooper would call out a rhythmic repetition that referred to its occupant, who had complained about the noise.
Another recollection isn't so funny, when he and Officer LaPrade responded to a domestic incident on Clark Road. The wife came out, he said, recalling a small lady, "very nice." Her husband, however, had barricaded himself inside the trailer home with his arsenal of weapons. It was a volatile situation. Hoping to catch the man unawares, the two officers went around back and entered the kitchen. Furniture was overturned, broken. Suddenly, LaPrade, who had a clear view into the next room, said to Massak, who was peering around a door frame. "I see a gun!" They both dove for cover as the man fired twice at them and missed.
Eventually, they talked him out of there, but it was touch and go for a while, he said.
Another time, Shirley police called in a SWAT team to get two men holed up in the old Shell Club, across the street from the Mohawk on Great Road. That was in Fort Devens days, when clubs stretched along Route 2A from Littleton to Lunenburg, with a number of night spots in Shirley where knock down, drag out bar fights were weekend routines.
Those days are long gone, but to Massak, incidents like that, and later, high-school shootings across the country, suggested the need for a SWAT team, even in a small town. For a time, there was talk of forming a regional team, he said. But although he and other officers in Shirley and other towns trained for the purpose, it never got off the ground.
"Right now, we have to call in the state police SWAT team if a hostage or "active shooter" situation comes up, Massak said. "But you may have to wait."
He and other officers continue to train at their own expense. "We like the work," he said.
Once, Massak tried out for the state police himself. He passed the written exam and met the height requirement but fell short on perfect eyesight, he said.
But he stuck to the goals and ideals he'd framed in childhood, as a Boy Scout. That's where the incentive to be a police officer came from, he said. "Either that, or a firefighter."
Now he's reached the point some of his Police Academy classmates have also attained, heading a police department.
Cappucci said Massak has what it takes to do the job.
"My fondest memory of Greg as a young patrolman is when he apprehended a suspect after a house break on Leominster Road," he said.
It was a hot summer afternoon. As Massak ran through in woods in pursuit of the suspect, Cappucci followed the chase on his police radio. He heard someone cry out. It was Massak. "I fell," he said. "I hurt my knee."
"I told him, we'll get you a new knee. Just go get the bad guy!"
Cappucci heard a groan as Massak kept on running, in pain. But he caught up with the man he was chasing and arrested him.
