Men behind the faces
Police, fire spokesmen represent as best they can
By John Quinlan, Journal staff writer | Posted: Friday, February 01, 2008
SIOUX CITY -- "I don't have to tell you times are tough. You read the papers! The country is going to hell!"
So said the volatile boss of a ragtag ambulance company to "Mother, Jugs and Speed," the characters played by Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel, respectively, in the black-comic 1976 movie about ambulance workers that struck a chord back then with a young Sioux City EMT named Marti Reilly.
These days, Lt. Marti Reilly, 47, of the Sioux City Police Department plays a role in the news you read in the Journal, see on TV or hear on the radio as the public "face" and "voice" of his department. It's a role he shares with another prominent "face," firefighter Joe Rodriguez, 38, of the Sioux City Fire Department.
They are the public information officers, or PIOs, for their departments, the guys who work with the news media to provide information to the public about crimes, fires and accidents, members of the public safety teams working specifically to keep this community from trekking to Hades.
So who are these guys, anyway?
Walking the beat
Each has a wife and three kids. Both got their starts as medics. And both love their jobs at Police/Fire Headquarters downtown. Busy guys, neither could name a favorite TV show, and picking a movie fave was a bit of a tossup. Rodriguez jumped on "Top Gun." Reilly finally came up with "The Bourne Identity." Well, they are men of action.
Houston native Rodriguez was a medic for eight years, a Navy corpsman attached to the Marine Corps who flew in a helicopter during search-and-rescue missions. And he still has the bulldog build and clipped haircut of a Marine.
Reilly, a Sioux City native with a noon-hour runner's lean physique, worked as an ambulance technician while a student at Heelan High School and eventually became an emergency medical technician. He'd always wanted to be a cop, though, so he studied police science at Western Iowa Tech Community College and landed his first job with the Council Bluffs (Iowa) Police Department just hours before graduating from WIT. Sioux City wasn't hiring at the time. But after five years in Council Bluffs, 22 years ago, a spot opened with the Sioux City Police Department. It came the year after his father retired as a Sioux City firefighter, a job Dad began in 1957.
"You know, I like to be where the action is," Reilly said of his desire for a law enforcement career. "I like to be outdoors. Now I've actually worked myself up the ranks where I don't go outdoors much. But it's ever-changing. It's neat to work with the community. You are making a difference, sometimes a very positive difference with kids and things like that. I've always liked that part of the job."
Rodriguez said his firefighting career came sort of by accident. He liked to help people and loved the adrenaline that came with the search-and-rescue work. So when his military career ended, he decided to restart in Sioux City, his wife Patricia's hometown. While attending the University of South Dakota, he read in a newspaper that the fire department was hiring, tested for it and joined in February 1998 as a firefighter/paramedic. Five years ago, the PIO job opened up, and he took it.
Reilly signed on as the police PIO about the same time. He is officially the lieutenant in charge of professional standards. That also means serving as the department's internal affairs investigator, SWAT (officially SERT) team commander, training officer and accreditation manager.
Talking the beat
Both men work 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. shifts Monday through Friday, but when a big news story breaks, they're often called to the scene.
Rodriguez views the PIO position as a unique opportunity to "learn something new" in a more independent role than the average firefighter. He isn't called on to fight fires much any more, but he is often on scene and available if needed.
"I have all my gear. I still have to keep my skills up as a firefighter. And if I need to be, I can jump in," he said. "But most of the time it's just to deal with the media and also help the people affected by the fire. I'm just a firefighter.
"I'm probably more independent than the rest of the crew. I have my own vehicle. I go to different areas. I also have to communicate with everybody else. So I know what's happening also. We have to open communication between the chief, myself and the firefighters out there every day. We're constantly trying to communicate."
Rodriguez and Reilly are seldom seen without cell phones stuck to their ears.
"I do enjoy talking to the media on a daily basis," Reilly said, smiling a smile that says he really means it, for the most part.
Since he doesn't always have his radio on, the first he learns about some police incident is when a reporter gives him a call. "So sometimes you're telling me the news and then I'm doing the research for you," he said.
"The main thing is that I don't want to give out more information than what will affect the investigation. So it's a balancing act,"
he said, "of the public's right to know and need to know and giving a fair trial to the suspect and making sure that we don't jeopardize our investigations."
Getting it right
There are a lot of considerations when it comes to releasing information to the public, he said, noting, with a chuckle, how the media live with deadlines but he doesn't. Not that he doesn't try to accommodate the media, he said. "If you don't give them information, a lot of times, with the deadlines, they'll go find it. And not all of the time is that real accurate information," Reilly said. "So sometimes when we release information, it is just to get right information to the public."
He explained that when reporters go to the scene of a crime or some other incident and ask the public for comments, the perspective of these "witnesses" can be incorrect. "But they may have heard something and now they're going to report it to the media, and the media reports it to the public, and now the perception is that that was actually good information," he said. "And it might be complete speculation or just plain fantasy. So you have to realize that trying to get factual information is what we're all trying to do."
Rodriguez said his goal is to treat all the media people the same and not play favorites. "Understanding the deadlines is always in the back of my head," he said.
On days when there are no big, breaking news stories, the PIOs get phone calls from reporters asking if anything is happening. And because of their other duties, the PIOs are not always available.
"When I'm not here, our policy says you're to contact the watch commander," Reilly said. "Well, if anything really big is happening, the watch commander is not available. He's either on the scene or supervising. So it's hard to get information when the media wants it. In a department our size, we just don't always have that readily available person for the media to get to, and I know that's frustrating at times."
Dealing with the media involves a certain degree of preparation, particularly for TV interviews, Rodriguez said. He said he tries to get all the necessary information together that he knows the reporters are going to want and present it in the best way possible, painting a true picture in front of those blinding TV lights. It was daunting at first, he said.
Occasionally, he admits, the words don't come out quite right. Like the time a few years ago when he was reporting on a house fire in which some chickens were killed in the basement.
"And I used the word foul, you know, a foul smell. Not fowl as in chicken. And I told myself, 'Don't use the word foul.' And I did," Rodriguez said. "So does that mean fowl as in fowl/chicken, or foul as in foul odor? So that was kind of an 'Oops!' funny thing that happened."
A not-so-funny but more rewarding part of his job comes in dealing with families affected by a fire through the public education aspect of his job, following through with the investigation and putting the families in touch with the American Red Cross and other agencies that can help them with food, lodging and medications. Most firefighters go home after the fire's out. For Rodriguez, his work is just beginning.
Not without ambition, the two PIOs see themselves advancing within their departments: Rodriguez to lieutenant and eventually to assistant fire chief; Reilly possibly to the top job, chief of police.
They're in it for the long run.
VITA
NAME: Joe Rodriguez, 38
HOMETOWN: Houston, Texas;
EDUCATION: Northbrook High School in Houston; University of South Dakota; Western Iowa Tech Community College, associate’s degree.
CAREER EXPERIENCE: Joined Sioux City Fire Department in 1998. Named PIO in 2003. In addition to dealing with media, he handles department's public education duties.
PERSONAL: Wife Patricia and three children, Amanda, Tegan and Ethan.
INTERESTS: A big sports fan, he plays hockey, watches the Sioux City Musketeers and chauffeurs his children to their hockey games. He loves basketball, baseball and football -- the Texas Longhorns, especially. He's also a fan of the Houston Texans and Dallas Stars. And he's a cook. "I love to cook and grill," he said.
NAME: Marti Reilly, 47
HOMETOWN: Sioux City
EDUCATION: Bishop Heelan High School; Western Iowa Tech, associate's degree; Southern Police Institute, Louisville, Kentucky, administrative officers course; Bellevue University, Nebraska, bachelor's and master's degrees in criminal justice administration. He received his master's last Saturday.
CAREER EXPERIENCE: Council Bluffs Police Department, 4 years; Sioux City Police Department, last 22 years. He did narcotics investigations for 5 years in Sioux City. Promoted to lieutenant 5 years ago, worked 6 months as afternoon watch commander; then moved to present position as lieutenant in charge of Professional Standards. a multi-hat job. He is PIO and Internal Affairs investigator. training supervisor and accreditation manager. He is also the Special Emergency Response Team commander. SERT is Sioux City's SWAT team
PERSONAL: Wife Mary Jo and three children, Katy, Anne Marie and Tim.
INTERESTS: He likes to read and is a big fan of John Grisham legal thrillers. He likes crime stories but HATES cop shows on TV. He runs 25 to 30 miles a week, mostly at lunchtime, outside on all but the coldest days. He serves as board president of Siouxland CARES and is a member of the Knights of Columbus and Men's Club at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church.
So said the volatile boss of a ragtag ambulance company to "Mother, Jugs and Speed," the characters played by Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel, respectively, in the black-comic 1976 movie about ambulance workers that struck a chord back then with a young Sioux City EMT named Marti Reilly.
These days, Lt. Marti Reilly, 47, of the Sioux City Police Department plays a role in the news you read in the Journal, see on TV or hear on the radio as the public "face" and "voice" of his department. It's a role he shares with another prominent "face," firefighter Joe Rodriguez, 38, of the Sioux City Fire Department.
They are the public information officers, or PIOs, for their departments, the guys who work with the news media to provide information to the public about crimes, fires and accidents, members of the public safety teams working specifically to keep this community from trekking to Hades.
So who are these guys, anyway?
Walking the beat
Each has a wife and three kids. Both got their starts as medics. And both love their jobs at Police/Fire Headquarters downtown. Busy guys, neither could name a favorite TV show, and picking a movie fave was a bit of a tossup. Rodriguez jumped on "Top Gun." Reilly finally came up with "The Bourne Identity." Well, they are men of action.
Houston native Rodriguez was a medic for eight years, a Navy corpsman attached to the Marine Corps who flew in a helicopter during search-and-rescue missions. And he still has the bulldog build and clipped haircut of a Marine.
Reilly, a Sioux City native with a noon-hour runner's lean physique, worked as an ambulance technician while a student at Heelan High School and eventually became an emergency medical technician. He'd always wanted to be a cop, though, so he studied police science at Western Iowa Tech Community College and landed his first job with the Council Bluffs (Iowa) Police Department just hours before graduating from WIT. Sioux City wasn't hiring at the time. But after five years in Council Bluffs, 22 years ago, a spot opened with the Sioux City Police Department. It came the year after his father retired as a Sioux City firefighter, a job Dad began in 1957.
"You know, I like to be where the action is," Reilly said of his desire for a law enforcement career. "I like to be outdoors. Now I've actually worked myself up the ranks where I don't go outdoors much. But it's ever-changing. It's neat to work with the community. You are making a difference, sometimes a very positive difference with kids and things like that. I've always liked that part of the job."
Rodriguez said his firefighting career came sort of by accident. He liked to help people and loved the adrenaline that came with the search-and-rescue work. So when his military career ended, he decided to restart in Sioux City, his wife Patricia's hometown. While attending the University of South Dakota, he read in a newspaper that the fire department was hiring, tested for it and joined in February 1998 as a firefighter/paramedic. Five years ago, the PIO job opened up, and he took it.
Reilly signed on as the police PIO about the same time. He is officially the lieutenant in charge of professional standards. That also means serving as the department's internal affairs investigator, SWAT (officially SERT) team commander, training officer and accreditation manager.
Talking the beat
Both men work 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. shifts Monday through Friday, but when a big news story breaks, they're often called to the scene.
Rodriguez views the PIO position as a unique opportunity to "learn something new" in a more independent role than the average firefighter. He isn't called on to fight fires much any more, but he is often on scene and available if needed.
"I have all my gear. I still have to keep my skills up as a firefighter. And if I need to be, I can jump in," he said. "But most of the time it's just to deal with the media and also help the people affected by the fire. I'm just a firefighter.
"I'm probably more independent than the rest of the crew. I have my own vehicle. I go to different areas. I also have to communicate with everybody else. So I know what's happening also. We have to open communication between the chief, myself and the firefighters out there every day. We're constantly trying to communicate."
Rodriguez and Reilly are seldom seen without cell phones stuck to their ears.
"I do enjoy talking to the media on a daily basis," Reilly said, smiling a smile that says he really means it, for the most part.
Since he doesn't always have his radio on, the first he learns about some police incident is when a reporter gives him a call. "So sometimes you're telling me the news and then I'm doing the research for you," he said.
"The main thing is that I don't want to give out more information than what will affect the investigation. So it's a balancing act,"
he said, "of the public's right to know and need to know and giving a fair trial to the suspect and making sure that we don't jeopardize our investigations."
Getting it right
There are a lot of considerations when it comes to releasing information to the public, he said, noting, with a chuckle, how the media live with deadlines but he doesn't. Not that he doesn't try to accommodate the media, he said. "If you don't give them information, a lot of times, with the deadlines, they'll go find it. And not all of the time is that real accurate information," Reilly said. "So sometimes when we release information, it is just to get right information to the public."
He explained that when reporters go to the scene of a crime or some other incident and ask the public for comments, the perspective of these "witnesses" can be incorrect. "But they may have heard something and now they're going to report it to the media, and the media reports it to the public, and now the perception is that that was actually good information," he said. "And it might be complete speculation or just plain fantasy. So you have to realize that trying to get factual information is what we're all trying to do."
Rodriguez said his goal is to treat all the media people the same and not play favorites. "Understanding the deadlines is always in the back of my head," he said.
On days when there are no big, breaking news stories, the PIOs get phone calls from reporters asking if anything is happening. And because of their other duties, the PIOs are not always available.
"When I'm not here, our policy says you're to contact the watch commander," Reilly said. "Well, if anything really big is happening, the watch commander is not available. He's either on the scene or supervising. So it's hard to get information when the media wants it. In a department our size, we just don't always have that readily available person for the media to get to, and I know that's frustrating at times."
Dealing with the media involves a certain degree of preparation, particularly for TV interviews, Rodriguez said. He said he tries to get all the necessary information together that he knows the reporters are going to want and present it in the best way possible, painting a true picture in front of those blinding TV lights. It was daunting at first, he said.
Occasionally, he admits, the words don't come out quite right. Like the time a few years ago when he was reporting on a house fire in which some chickens were killed in the basement.
"And I used the word foul, you know, a foul smell. Not fowl as in chicken. And I told myself, 'Don't use the word foul.' And I did," Rodriguez said. "So does that mean fowl as in fowl/chicken, or foul as in foul odor? So that was kind of an 'Oops!' funny thing that happened."
A not-so-funny but more rewarding part of his job comes in dealing with families affected by a fire through the public education aspect of his job, following through with the investigation and putting the families in touch with the American Red Cross and other agencies that can help them with food, lodging and medications. Most firefighters go home after the fire's out. For Rodriguez, his work is just beginning.
Not without ambition, the two PIOs see themselves advancing within their departments: Rodriguez to lieutenant and eventually to assistant fire chief; Reilly possibly to the top job, chief of police.
They're in it for the long run.
VITA
NAME: Joe Rodriguez, 38
HOMETOWN: Houston, Texas;
EDUCATION: Northbrook High School in Houston; University of South Dakota; Western Iowa Tech Community College, associate’s degree.
CAREER EXPERIENCE: Joined Sioux City Fire Department in 1998. Named PIO in 2003. In addition to dealing with media, he handles department's public education duties.
PERSONAL: Wife Patricia and three children, Amanda, Tegan and Ethan.
INTERESTS: A big sports fan, he plays hockey, watches the Sioux City Musketeers and chauffeurs his children to their hockey games. He loves basketball, baseball and football -- the Texas Longhorns, especially. He's also a fan of the Houston Texans and Dallas Stars. And he's a cook. "I love to cook and grill," he said.
NAME: Marti Reilly, 47
HOMETOWN: Sioux City
EDUCATION: Bishop Heelan High School; Western Iowa Tech, associate's degree; Southern Police Institute, Louisville, Kentucky, administrative officers course; Bellevue University, Nebraska, bachelor's and master's degrees in criminal justice administration. He received his master's last Saturday.
CAREER EXPERIENCE: Council Bluffs Police Department, 4 years; Sioux City Police Department, last 22 years. He did narcotics investigations for 5 years in Sioux City. Promoted to lieutenant 5 years ago, worked 6 months as afternoon watch commander; then moved to present position as lieutenant in charge of Professional Standards. a multi-hat job. He is PIO and Internal Affairs investigator. training supervisor and accreditation manager. He is also the Special Emergency Response Team commander. SERT is Sioux City's SWAT team
PERSONAL: Wife Mary Jo and three children, Katy, Anne Marie and Tim.
INTERESTS: He likes to read and is a big fan of John Grisham legal thrillers. He likes crime stories but HATES cop shows on TV. He runs 25 to 30 miles a week, mostly at lunchtime, outside on all but the coldest days. He serves as board president of Siouxland CARES and is a member of the Knights of Columbus and Men's Club at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church.
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I agree wrote on Feb 3, 2008 12:18 AM:
appreciative wrote on Feb 1, 2008 1:59 PM: