There’s an awful lot about being a police officer that the public might not know.
“It’s not all about writing tickets and hitting the bricks 24 hours a day to try arrest people,” said Randy Flora, Frontenac assistant police chief. “My dad taught me that this job is a service, and we need to be there to help people.”
He was born in Fort Scott, but the family moved to Frontenac in 1962. His father, the late Roy Flora, became chief of police in 1969 and held that post around 17 years. Another son, Carl Flora, is now chief.
“Daddy needed a dispatcher’s position filled, so I started doing that when I was 17,” Flora said. “We were in a little 10-by-14-foot room with a one-channel radio and a telephone. This would have been around 1979.”
The next year, when Flora was 18, he attended the Police Academy.
“Now you can’t do that at 18,” he said. “You have to be 21.”
After attending the academy, Flora became a patrolman/dispatcher.
“I’d answer the telephone, lock up the office and go take the call, then come back and wait for another call,” he said.
Flora switched over to the Crawford County Sheriff’s Department.
“After two years there, I came back to Frontenac around November 1982, and I’ve been here since,” Flora said.
Things have changed over the years.
“Now we’ve got a five-frequency radio and we have computers,” Flora said. “I went from writing up my reports to doing it on a computer.”
He’s also met a lot of interesting people, most recently Russ Clear, an ex-convict who performed feats of strength and gave his Christian testimony with John Jacobs Next Generation Power Force. Flora was in the audience when the group performed recently at Pittsburg High School.
“I cuffed him up good and tightened the cuffs, but he broke free,” Flora said. “He’s phenomenal.”
He said it was good to see Clear using his strength for good, instead of for crime.
“I’ve seen a few kids going down the wrong path, took an interest in them, got them on the right track and now they have careers,” he said. “I went out on a call years ago, where some kids had climbed the fence around a lagoon. I chased them home, and years later one of them wrote a college paper about that incident. He came in and told me that he got an A on it. I’ve watched children grow up to become law officers, and I’m proud of this.”
On another occasion, he picked up a hitchhiker, put him up in a motel for the night and gave him $20.
“Around four years later, that man came to me and he had become a preacher,” Flora said. “He returned the money I’d given him.”
The community’s children have always been special to him.
“I started a Toys for Tots program years ago at Christmas,” Flora said. “I’ve got four wonderful children of my own, two grandchildren, and a wonderful wife, Kathy.”
He’s also changed light bulbs for the elderly and done other chores for them.
“The other day a lady needed her sump pump turned on,” Flora said. “I was happy to do it.”
He was also happy to serve recently as a judge for a cherry pie contest at Sunset Manor.
But he’s no stranger to the dark side of his job, including the harm done by drugs. “Meth has overcome small towns — it’s an epidemic,” Flora said. “Where you have meth, and other drugs, you have more crime, such as burglaries, robberies and assaults. Those addicts steal to pay for their drugs. I have seen the worst thing a person could imagine, and the best thing a person could imagine. After 28 years in law enforcement, I’ve seen it all.”
He said that it takes a special person to be in law enforcement.
“My father told me that when you’re a policeman, you’re not just a policeman,” Flora said. “You also have to be a lawyer, a doctor, a counselor and a psychiatrist. You have to be able to make decisions in the blink of an eye. In this area we have excellent men and women in law enforcement, and I’m honored to work with them.”
