Gery Thobe retires after 40 years in law enforcement

CELINA - Gery Thobe this week wrapped up a nearly 40-year career in law enforcement, one that saw the New Bremen native, husband and father hold many top positions with area police departments and the Mercer County Sheriff's Office.

Thobe, 60, departs as chief deputy at the sheriff's office and will eventually resettle in a small town overlooking a lake in Tennessee once his home there is finished. He'll be catching fish rather than crooks, as he did earlier in his career as a deputy and police chief.

"I am going to wake up with a panoramic view each and every morning," Thobe said.

County Sheriff Jeff Grey said the department is losing a great leader and asset responsible for important initiatives and a good man who will be missed by many.

Thobe, a kind and humble officer with a keen, self-deprecating sense of humor, enjoyed a strong rapport with staff, Grey said. He said Thobe has also become a good friend whom he can lean on and talk to just about anything.

"He has done a fantastic job. He's become not only a good friend but a good advisor," Grey said, "He keeps me grounded. He's not afraid to give me a different point of view. He's not afraid to tell me when I'm wrong and that's invaluable."

As chief deputy, Thobe was largely responsible for handling personnel matters, discipline, policies, regulations, procedures and training.

"Everything gets to the sheriff through the chief deputy," Thobe summed up the position.

Among his key accomplishments as chief deputy was founding the Crisis Intervention Team and training program in 2014. Officers undergo the training to effectively handle situations involving people experiencing a crisis.

"CIT to me is learning how to deal with people and how to talk to people," Thobe said. "Every officer that works here including corrections officers will go through CIT training. All of our patrol people have been through CIT training. We put them through first and then corrections officers also get it."

It has also been added as a component of dispatcher training, he said.

Thobe said several years ago the state was pushing CIT hard. He was asked by Grey to check out a training session in Troy.

"I went there and thought it was probably the best class I had ever attended," he said.

Thobe said he was assigned to ride-alongs with two female case workers who responded to crises in troubled neighborhoods in the Dayton area. The case workers, carrying no guns or Mace, entered volatile situations without law enforcement officers.

From them, Thobe learned the power of talking to people, not down to them, he said.

Many mental health workers have said it clearly shows that county deputies are properly trained in CIT.

"I take that as a source of great pride because I've coordinated the CIT classes since 2014," Thobe said.

Thobe too agrees CIT has had a profound impact on local law enforcement, noting probably 45% to 50% of all calls fielded by the sheriff's office pertain to mental health and/or drugs and alcohol.

"Tri County Mental Health Board has been a tremendous help because they've stood beside us from the very first moment we instituted this," he said. "And they pay for everything. Whatever we needed they have been instrumental in getting it for us. And Foundations has been with us as well since the very beginning."

The Quick Response Team is another of Thobe's brainchildren.

Dressed in plain clothes and accompanied by a Foundations Behavioral Health Services drug/alcohol counselor and Mercer County Emergency Medical Services member, Thobe or another officer tries to persuade residents who have recently overdosed on opiates to seek detox, treatment and recovery services.

"I think there are people that we have saved over the years, not nearly as many as I would have liked, but I think all-in-all it's a good program," he said.

Thobe's career in law enforcement traces back to his years as a student at New Bremen High School.

"I had a brother-in-law … who worked as a part-time officer for Celina and I developed an interest in the job," he said.

He sustained that interest even though his guidance counselor thought Thobe was not suited for the work.

"He mentioned I could be a park ranger," Thobe said. "You can go around and give ducks tickets."

Thobe joined the county sheriff's office reserves in July 1985.

"It was a volunteer group. Basically they went through the same academy as everyone else but it was people who either had retired from law enforcement or were thinking about getting in," he said.

He recalled joining the reserves with Tom Risch, now the Mercer County Veterans Service officer.

"We actually ended up to the point where if they were short, they needed help they'd call us and ask if we could come in for a shift," he said.

Thobe and Risch put the kibosh on a string of burglaries when the two apprehended a pair of brothers at the former Hollister's Restaurant on State Route 703.

"As reserve deputies we filed 13 felony (breaking and entering) charges on these people because they had been going up and down the road for weeks breaking into places and we caught them," he said. "As a reserve deputy that's something that you don't get to do very often. As a full-time deputy you don't get to catch somebody in the process of breaking in very often."

Thobe also worked as a part-time police officer for Mendon and St. Henry before eventually getting at the sheriff's office as a full-time deputy.

"The sheriff's office was my goal. They had paid for my training. I got to know everybody being on the reserves and it just felt like home," he said.

A few weeks into the job Thobe was called to the scene of a murder-suicide.

"I went into the trailer and every bad Stephen King movie I ever saw came flashing in front of me, and a gentleman had decided to take his wife's life and his own," he said.

Nothing can prepare a person for such a grisly scene, he said.  

"That's one of those things where you go outside and after it sinks in you throw up or cry or whatever else you're going to do and then you move on with your day," he said.

Probably any officer can recall having to tell someone their child has passed or that a loved one has died, Thobe said.

"It sticks in your mind. It doesn't go away," he said, noting that while driving he sees fields where fatal accidents had occurred, replaying the scenes in his mind.

Since that murder-suicide Thobe said he's probably seen just about everything, from the routine to the horrendous.

"There were nights where we would arrest four people individually for OVI," he said. "Thankfully the drinking public's gotten a lot smarter - designated drivers, things like that. That has come down tremendously and I'm happy for that."

Once full-time with the sheriff's office, Thobe rose through the ranks. He was appointed to the task force responsible for drug enforcement in 1994 and promoted to patrol sergeant in 1995.

Thobe left to become Coldwater's police chief for about a decade before returning to the sheriff's office as chief deputy.

Mercer County is in good hands with the sheriff's office, Thobe asserts.

"I can't think of one single deputy in this division or even in the corrections division that I would be concerned about having contact with in public or at home. They care," he said.

Thobe's departure triggered a major personnel shakeup. However, Thobe gave notice of his planned retirement well in advance, allowing Grey to contemplate a roster change.

Capt. Doug Timmerman has been promoted to chief deputy, detective sergeant Megan Baker to captain and detective Chad Fortkamp to detective sergeant, Grey said.

"Really good people, younger people that they've been at the sheriff's office long enough they've got experience but they've got a ways to go. So we're not promoting people that a year from now are going to retire," Grey said.