The Force is with Them

The Force is with them

Published iberkshires.com & The Advocate September 30, 2004

Marc and Deanna Strout and their daughter, Paxton. Photo by Linda Scott Galok

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.” — Babe Ruth (1895-1948)

LANESBORO — On a warm, rainy night, in a room filled with more toys than furniture, despite the threat their pictures would be posted on bulletin boards in two different police departments, exposed to ruthless jeers and caustic comments from their co-workers, Marc and Deanna Strout consented to questioning.

“The first time I met him, he almost shot me,” she said.

“She stalked me for two years,” he said.

“We kept running into each other,” both agreed.

“I finally asked her for her phone number,” he said.

“I told him no,” she said.

“And then she told three people we knew to give me her phone number,” he said.

“That is so not true,” she said. “He was done the first time we met.”

He said, “Well, you can only take so many restraining orders out on someone.”

The Strouts will celebrate their third wedding anniversary on Oct. 13.

Marc Strout is a sergeant on the Pittsfield police force, a third-generation police officer who has been on the force for 10 years. His father, Craig Strout, and grandfather, Fred Strout, are both retired. Deanna Strout has been a Dalton police officer for seven years and was a part-time EMT prior to that. She said she knew she wanted to be just like her uncle, George Wendling, a retired Dalton police officer, from the first time he used his cruiser’s PA system to say good-bye to her.

The Strouts' daughter, Paxton, is 18 months old, and a little brother is scheduled to join their family in February 2005.

“I would love it if one of our kids goes into law enforcement,” Deanna Strout said.

“Absolutely not an option,” agreed her husband.

Deanna Strout has her master’s in criminal justice and feels the degree helps in that it makes her more accepting of people, because, she said, “It’s not our job to judge.”

Her husband served four years in the Coast Guard before joining the Pittsfield police force and felt that gave him an advantage in getting hired. Both said the trend is that more people are attracted to police work, even though they also feel it has become a less respected line of work. They agreed a civil-service background or a degree is almost mandatory in being able to compete for the few openings available.

Both attended the Police Academy in Agawam, and Deanna Strout said her grades were better than Marc’s.

“We’re kind of competitive,” she said, “about everything. We have card night with our families every week, but we can’t play Monopoly anymore because Marc gets way too aggressive and it gets ugly.”

Her ideal vacation would be a Disney cruise; her husband would like to swim with great white sharks. She has brothers; he has sisters. She is a morning person; he is a night owl. The dog is his; the cat is hers. She is an avid Red Sox fan; he is a fanatic Yankees supporter.

She said, “The battle of the century will be whether this next baby is named after a Yankee or a Red Sox player.”

“He’ll be named after a Yankee,” he said.

“The mother signs the birth certificate,” she said, then turned to her daughter. “Paxton, what do the Yankees do?”

Paxton blew a raspberry.

“Paxton, what do the Red Sox do?” her father asked.

Paxton blew another raspberry.

“She’s our little politician,” Deanna Strout said, sitting on the floor, feeding Paxton her yogurt.

They both work the night shift and said they average about five hours of sleep each but are used to it. They agreed it is both easier and harder to be married to someone in the same line of work.

“She understands the stress and the situations I deal with every day because she deals with it, too,” Marc Strout said. On the other hand, he said, “It’s harder not to worry because we know exactly what the dangers are.”

They don’t own a scanner, but they are aware of each other’s calls when they are working, since Pittsfield and Dalton back each other up on occasion. They have been lucky in that neither has ever been seriously injured but said the emotional and mental stress can be just as difficult, and they feel lucky they can rely on each other when things get tough.

Deanna Strout recalled the worst situation she had ever dealt with: “A little boy had died. My chief sent me home and called Marc’s department. They sent him home and he took me out for a milkshake. He understood what I was going through and was able to be there — he knew what to say and what to do.”

Marc Strout lost his partner, Jack, a trained German Shepard police officer, to spinal myopathy a few years ago.

“People will say they understand because they lost a pet, too, but I didn’t lose a pet,” he said. “Jack was my partner and a member of our family. We were together 24/7. We worked together, lived together and depended on each other, sometimes in life-threatening situations. Deanna understands that.”

Deanna Strout is the only female officer on the Dalton police force. Her husband’s lieutenant and several of his co-workers are women. The Strouts said they have both witnessed the varied reactions of people to female officers and find them sometimes odd, sometimes funny and hardly ever surprising.

Deanna Strout recalled an incident that still makes her laugh: She had been on the job for about a year. A car failing to yield almost broadsided her cruiser. She followed the car for about 5 miles with her blue lights and siren going, but the driver would not pull over. When a state trooper finally cut the car off on Merrill Road in Pittsfield, her cruiser, another Dalton cruiser and two Pittsfield cruisers were all in pursuit of the “criminal” going 30 mph.

“There’s a little old lady driving the car, and the trooper said to her, ‘Ma’am, this officer would like to speak to you.’ I said, ‘I’ve been behind you for 5 miles with my lights and siren on — why didn’t you stop?’ She said, ‘Well, I didn’t know why a little girl would be driving a police car, so I didn’t want to stop.’ And the first thing I did was turn around to see if everyone else heard it, too. Of course they did, so I still hear about it.”

They both agreed that men and women in uniform have unique and effective ways of dealing with situations, and they have learned from each other.

She said, ”I’m a small woman, so if I walk into a bar fight and start acting like I can take on the world, then I’m pretty stupid — and I’m going to get it handed to me in a big hurry. I have to go in and use my head and deal. If I treat people with respect, I get it back. It’s the rare person that doesn’t agree with that and calm down.”

He said, “Female police officers are less likely to be in a violent situation because of the way they deal with people. If I tell someone to do something and they don’t do it, the situation may escalate more quickly than if a female officer tells him to do something — people are more aggressive with male officers — but male officers may be more aggressive than female officers.”

Deanna Strout witnessed her husband in a violent situation on her way home from her own 3-to-11 shift one night. She said it was one time when the potential reaction of others might have slowed her reaction time.

“I drove around a corner and saw a Pittsfield cruiser stopped on the side of the road with the driver’s door open and the lights going. That seemed strange,” she said. “I saw it was Marc’s car, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him on the ground fighting with some guy. I was still in full uniform, but my first thought was, ‘Will I embarrass him if I stop and help him?’ You know, I’m his wife jumping out of her truck in the middle of the night to help him in a fight. I actually had to process that thought before I slammed on the brakes and jumped out to help. Of course, I didn’t do anything to help. He’d already called for backup, and his guys got there really quick. I just kind of snuck back into my truck because I’m thinking they are going to give him so much crap that his wife stopped to help him.”

The thing they both love most about their jobs is they never know what their nights will bring. Deanna Strout has been in her own physical confrontations, and her husband has had occasions when logical thinking was “the more important resource.”

She said, “Another officer and I were called to a bar, and a guy took a swing at me. I had an older brother who used to beat the crap out of me when I was a kid, so I was like, game on. I had the guy pepper-sprayed, on the floor and handcuffed before my partner could even react — you do have to be able to handle yourself. We don’t just write speeding tickets.”

Marc Strout recalled being sent to a robbery at the Tyler Street Pizza House.

He said, “A guy ordered three pizzas with everything. When he got there, he grabbed them and ran out the door. I thought, well if I’m going to steal three pizzas, I’m not going to be running very far with them, so I went into the closest apartment building at the corner of Curtis and Tyler. When I got to the third floor, I could smell pizza, so I started knocking on doors. Sure enough, there were the thieves, eating the stolen goods.”

They said they both went into police work with a desire to help people.

She said, “You start out thinking you’re going to make a difference, and you find out pretty quickly that you can’t. It’s kind of depressing — so you just do what you can and do your best every day.”

He said, “We deal with the same 2 percent most of the time — it’s the other 98 percent that you do the job for.”

“I know it sounds dorky, but I think of Marc as invincible,” she said. “He’s one of the smartest people I know, and I respect his opinions. I’ve learned not to take as much grief from people, and I have much more self-confidence because of Marc. I’ve learned that, even if you don’t know the answer, pretend you do. People need reassurance that you’re going to fix things, even if you have no idea how to make that situation better.”

He said, “Deanna has taught me patience with people. Stuff that before would have sent me over the edge and wind up getting someone locked up now makes me laugh, and I can just let it go.”

The Strouts have arguments like any normal couple, but they believe laughter keeps them sane at work and keeps things working well at home.

She said, “The longest argument we’ve ever had has been about 10 minutes. I’m quick to apologize. He’s a little more stubborn.”

He said, “We don’t fight very often because we don’t have time. We don’t fight about money.”

“Because we don’t have any,” she said.

“We don’t work any overtime,” he said. “We live on what we make.”

“Our family time is way too important, and you can’t get that back,” she said. “Family traditions are very important to both of us.

“We’ve always had the same goals.”

“We love each other’s families.”

“And we don’t fight about work.”

They said they consider their fellow officers family, too, and, just like family, they can be brutal in their honesty and in their jokes — much worse than dealing with criminals.

“I can mess with them. They can mess with me, but nobody else better mess with us,” he said. “We can scream and yell and go nose-to-nose with each other because, when the night is over, we’re still family.”

“Even taking our jobs into account, it’s a very low-stress relationship,” he said of his marriage.
Complimenting and complementing each other, they finally confessed:

“He really does have a sweet side,” she said.
“She cleans up nice,” he said.

Red Sox vs. Yankees, they watch side by side and every day, work, play and raise their family on the same team.