If Calaveras County had a contest for the shortest commute to work, resident Deputy Paul Newnam would win hands down. Newnam, a Calaveras deputy sheriff since 1998, has always wanted to work in the same community that he lived. When newly elected Sheriff Kuntz asked for a volunteer to serve as a resident deputy for Copperopolis, Newnam got his wish.
In order to feel more like a part of the community, Newnam moved to Copperopolis with his wife and two children from Sonora long before the position of resident deputy was available. “I like walking out of my front door and letting my neighbors see they have a cop in the neighborhood.” In times where some police departments are laying off deputies this is a big plus for our community. Although his beat covers more than Copperopolis, he enjoys working closely with the people within his immediate neighborhood.
Letting everyone know you’re a deputy by parking your police car in front of your house, sometimes resulted in people driving down your driveway to report a crime. Newnam takes this in stride and considers himself on duty twenty-four hours, seven days a week. “My ambition is to work with the community as well as being a part of it,” says Newnam.
Even though police services is an around the clock affair, Newnam still finds times for his hobbies. He is an avid deer hunter and his latest gig is playing keyboard in a local band called The Copper Holdings Company. His eyes lit up when he started rattling off all the places he had played years before, up to and including the Hollywood Club, a sign that you’ve made it as a band. Playing back-up for Freddie Fender was mentioned almost as an after thought. Oh yeah, he’s also self-employed with a truck washing business, a line of work he’s been involved in since moving to California from Oklahoma as a young man.
In 1992 he hired on with Angels Camp Police Department as a reserve. “It was just a hobby,” says Newnam, but he worked as much as a full time officer and twice was awarded the title of Officer of the Year. Six years later he joined the Sheriff’s Department.
Being in police work for nineteen years has afforded him valuable experience in dealing with people in stressful situations. When asked if he had ever had to fire his gun in the line of duty, he knocked on the top of an old wooden table he was setting next to and said, “No, and I hope I never have to.” Being a deputy in an area where your nearest back-up officer can be a ways off, you learn how to deal with people.
Learning how to deal with people may explain why Paul proudly wears the brass letters of HNT pinned to his shirt above his right breast pocket, which stands for Hostage Negotiating Team. In addition to special training, the people skills he’s learned over the nineteen years arresting drunks, handling family fights or showing compassion for victims no doubt make him an asset to the team.
When asked if technology has helped police work, he leaned back with a grin, and I knew a war story was about to unfold: Recently two suspects broke into a vacant vacation house owned, as luck would have it, by a Redwood City police officer. When Paul arrived at the house, he spotted a security camera perched in the eaves over looking the driveway. The next day, when the camera was played back on the homeowner’s computer, they could plainly see the suspects pull into the driveway, break into the front door and abscond with the loot. Later the camera showed Newnam arriving. Then, after Newnam left, the camera showed the greedy suspects returning for seconds.
While on patrol the next day looking for the suspects, Newnam spotted the truck at a gas station occupied with the two suspects. Newnam pulled them over. After a brief search of the truck, some of the stolen property was recovered and the two suspects were jail bound.
Although it still takes alert deputies patrolling the streets of their beats, “security cameras and alarms in the price range of three to five hundred dollars are worth having,” say Newnam.
But one of the most critical assets our new resident deputy brings to the town of Copperopolis is his desire to work with the people of the community. Although he’s had the opportunity to move up in rank, he prefers to work as a deputy explaining, “I like working at the ground level because that’s where it get’s done.” I want the people in the community to know, “I’ve been in their shoes and I want to assure them that we will work with them to resolve their problems.”
In a society where law enforcement officers sometimes appear distant and cool, it’s heartening to have one who remembers that he was a husband, father, neighbor and a rock and roll band member before he was a cop.
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