This is more than thirty years old, and Joe's been dead for years, so I understand, but . . .

Joe Roman -- the family name was something long and Polish, with about eight consonants in a row; it got changed at Ellis Island -- was a pretty fierce looking guy, despite his height. I think it was the bristly mustache, but it was the rest of the face, too.

Five-six, I think; I remember hearing a story (don't know if it was true) that he had worn elevator shoes to get through his application process, but had become a Connecticut State Trooper, which is what he wanted to be.

Built like a barrel, with big, thick fingers and preposterously wide feet.

I heard about him from a cop friend a year or two before I met him. He was kind of a legend.

He had pulled over a kid, probably sixteen, seventeen or so, somewhere on the Berlin Turnpike, if I remember it correctly, and as he was walking over to the car, the kid freaked out -- he yanked out a .22 rifle from the back seat (I don't know what it was doing there, either), and started working the bolt.

Joe had his revolver out at that point, but made a decision in a short moment that no, he hadn't killed a kid, and this just wasn't the day that was going to happen, so he dove down to the ground -- how the hell he hung onto his gun I don't know -- and slid on his ample belly toward the car, hoping --

-- and he won. The barrel poked out the window; he reached up and grabbed it, and yanked the gun out of the kid's hands, and threw it on the ground, then got up and yanked the kid out the window, wrestled him to the ground, and got him in handcuffs, neither of them much the worse for wear.

Use of force regulations, his supervisor decided, had required him to shoot as soon as the gun came out. Failing being man enough to do that, he was to have taken cover and called/waited for backup, and --

Joe might have been able to apologize and talk his way out of it, but he wasn't a brown noser, and had a deserved rep for not having much patience for fools; he spoke his mind, and he got a thirty-day suspension. That's without pay.

Ended up transferring to what was only technically the CT state cops; he worked at the state university, protecting a campus.

I ended getting a ride across campus late one night -- long story; I'd been drinking with a Paulist priest, which wasn't why I fell off the curb. Honest.

But we got to chatting -- I'd had a short gig as a clerk at a different campus, working for a cop friend of his -- and he ended up giving me a ride and we got to talking and smoking (cigarettes, honest; different time and place -- a college kid and a college cop could sit in a car and talk and smoke cigarettes). Took me a while to notice the name tag, and I asked him if he was related to the Joe Roman, the cop who had taken a thirty-day rip for not shooting a kid, and he laughed.

"Yeah. Sorta." He smiled, and said something I promised I won't repeat. "That's me."