After 38 years, Bradley leaves police department

By George P. Hassett

Robert R. Bradley still remembers his first day as a Somerville police officer. It was 1969 and he was assigned to walk a beat in Teele Square.

“I was surprised they gave me a gun on my first day,” he said. “We had no walkie-talkies then. Every 45 minutes you had to call in to the station from a police call box. There were only three patrol cars in the whole city everyone else walked a beat. You got to know more people in the community in those days because you were out there.”

This week Bradley, the city’s acting police chief for almost three years, announced he would retire on Jan. 14. He said that when thinking back on his 38 years on the job he can remember disturbing tragedies, unsolved murders, big arrests and a bizarre episode in which he fished a live rat out of a woman’s toilet.

But it’s the cases that got away that he brings up first.

“The unsolved ones bother me. I wish we could have solved them all or bring them to some sort of successful conclusion,” he said.

At the top of his list of cases that got away is the 1995 murder of Deanna Cremin, who was found strangled to death four days after her 17th birthday. Bradley said he has kept in contact with Cremin’s family and police continue to work on the case.

“She was a young girl with her whole life ahead of her. There was no reason for that,” he said.

Despite the emotional toll some cases had on him Bradley said the job gave him a chance to help people almost every day.

“You get to see the best and the worst of people in this job. But you have a chance to help. Even when you arrest someone that may help them get the services they need,” he said.

Bradley said the most bizarre call he responded to was for a pregnant woman on Howe Street who said she had a live rat swimming around in her toilet. He said his partner Arthur Pino hated rats so the job was left to him.

“We tried flushing it and the rat swam against the tide and survived. I maced it and that didn’t do any good. Then we thought we would boil him and we poured hot water into the bowl but that just warmed him up a little bit. Then the woman’s husband got a fishing pole. We ended up picking the rat up by the end of the fishing pole, took the rat into the backyard and shot it,” he said.

The experience taught Bradley a lesson, he said.

“I always looked before I sat down on the toilet after that,” he said.

Bradley said he learned how to be a good cop from mentors such as Phil Buccelli, John McCune, John Canty and Leo Letendre.

“They showed me how it was done, how you handle people and how you can calm a situation down,” he said.

Bradley became a sergeant in 1978, a captain in 1983 and worked as chief of detectives from 1985 to 1997, he said. In 2005 he became the city’s acting police chief after George McLean retired.

As chief, Bradley said he put a stop to overspending in the department, bought 16 new cruisers, made 22 promotions and spent $1.5 million on equipment. He said he took over a dysfunctional department and made it work again.

But he also headed the department during one of its most infamous blunders.

In May 2006 while cleaning out the evidence room Somerville police threw away a desk holding $31,535 in seized cash. By the time they realized what they had done it was too late: the cash was buried under tons and tons of trash in a New Hampshire landfill.

The story made national headlines but a State Police investigation cleared police of any foul play.

“That happened because we were tackling the problem of cleaning up an evidence room that had been neglected for years. I don’t see that as a black mark on this department or as an embarrassment it was a symptom of the neglect that had been going on here and we fixed,” he said.

Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone said Bradley did a “phenomenal” job as chief yet he chose Clearwater, Florida cop Anthony Holloway for the permanent post. He said Bradley turned around a failing department and got it on solid ground. Now Holloway will take over.

Bradley said his biggest strength in his bid to be the city’s permanent top cop was also his greatest weakness. “I’m homegrown. That helped me but it also hurt,” he said. “There are a lot of new faces in Somerville in the past 5 and 10 years. It isn’t like years ago when being Somerville born and bred meant something. Everybody’s looking for fresh faces now.”