Although he said he will miss East Lansing and all the people he has become so close with, East Lansing Police Chief Tom Wibert looks ahead to some of the positive things about moving to New Braunsfels, Texas.
Tom Wibert was not supposed to be there.
The East Lansing police chief was an hour early for the meeting he was on his way to, and had gotten off the highway at the wrong exit. Now he was somewhere in DeWitt, Mich., near the crossroads of Clark and Wood roads.
It was there he found a car tipped on its side, a girl slumped over the central console — unconscious, seat belt strangling her airway.
Wibert opened her airway while calling 911. But she still wasn’t breathing. Not yet.
“Hannah,” Wibert said, noticing a name tag in the back of the girl’s car. “Take a deep breath. I need you to breathe.”
And in her unconscious state, Hannah heard Wibert’s voice, and began to breathe.
Five months later, in January 2007, Wibert got the East Lansing Police Department Life Saving Award. And Hannah Marks got a father figure.
“He just kind of took on the fatherly type role,” Marks said. “I talk to (Wibert) a lot, I tell him a lot about myself and if things are going bad or I’m stressed out.”
Marks is one of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people Wibert has influenced in his 25 years with the ELPD. He has handled massive crowds from NCAA Final Four celebrations, run the ELPD for five years on a shrinking budget and turned a police department into a family.
And today is his last day.
The boxes are packed, the plans have been made. On Nov. 8, the city of New Braunfels, Texas, will gain a new police chief, and East Lansing will lose a man greatly respected by many in the community.
Lt. Kevin Daley remembers the day Wibert told the department he had applied for the job so his wife could take better care of her mother-in-law. With 96 applicants, Wibert wasn’t sure he had a chance. But Daley knew he would get it.
“He doesn’t realize how special he is,” Daley said. “Maybe that’s what makes him so special.”
Family traditions
About 20 years ago, Daley was an officer with the ELPD when he got a call about several intoxicated students getting rowdy at a local McDonald’s. Daley went to the fast food restaurant and met the young McDonald’s manager, who thanked him for coming. Daley didn’t realize at the time that the McDonald’s manager would someday be his partner, and later his boss.
It was one of the first interactions Daley had with Wibert.
Police officers run in the Wibert family. His grandfather was an officer in the Lansing Police Department for 25 years and his father was a captain with the ELPD. Wibert remembers running down the halls of the police building as a child so small his father had to lift him up to drink from the water fountain — the same fountain that now sits down the hall from Wibert’s office.
The man who has run the East Lansing Police Department is a far cry from the McDonald’s employee who had sworn for years he would never go into law enforcement. Wibert never was interested in being an officer — and his group of friends embraced a lifestyle that often ran counter to the law.
At MSU, his partying caught up to him. A letter of academic probation preceded his dropping out of college, wrapping cheeseburgers at McDonald’s, trying to figure out his future.
Wibert doesn’t quite know why he took the criminal justice course at Lansing Community College.
One assignment was to ride along in a cop car. That day, Wibert helped the officer fix a flat tire and reunite a mother with her lost child. Several tickets were given, but none that were unfair. In fact, in Wibert’s opinion, a few more tickets and a few less warnings should have been given.
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That was the day police officers stopped being Wibert’s enemies and began to be his heroes.
“Police work is a job that you do with your heart,” Wibert said. “Even the decision of whether or not someone gets a speeding ticket can be a decision of the heart.”
Wibert enrolled at the police academy, went back to MSU and got his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. It took his father a second to recognize his own son when he walked through the door with a trim hair cut, his shoulder-length locks shaven.
Wibert began at the ELPD as an officer in 1985, five years after his father retired from the force. Eight years later he was promoted to a sergeant, and quickly rose in the ranks becoming a lieutenant, a captain and deputy chief. His father lived long enough to see his son become chief, and then passed away several years ago.
MSU police Chief Jim Dunlap worked with both father and son.
“I knew Tom’s dad,” Dunlap said. “I can’t imagine how proud his dad must be of him.”
The man behind the bowtie
When East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton is asked why he saw Wibert as a “bright up-and-coming star,” of the police force 10 years ago, his answer was simple.
“The bow tie.”
Wibert’s bow tie — bow ties, rather, as he has about 50 of them — is representative of his personality. His peers and boss call him an excellent chief; professional and effective. But Wibert is quick with a joke, and those who know him can recall numerous pranks throughout the years.
“As an officer, you think about the chief as someone who makes you nervous,” Wibert said. “I don’t see myself as that, and I don’t feel like I’m a police chief. I’m a police officer who happens to hold the rank of chief.”
It’s the humility, that rejection of the superiority that could easily come with the badge and title, that has made Wibert such an asset to the community. And although Staton liked the bow tie, it is Wibert’s attitude he might miss most.
“What always impressed me about Tom is he thought there was no special power that came with the position of being police chief,” Staton said.
Wibert’s wife, Wilma Wibert, saw it firsthand the day she got a parking ticket — outside of the ELPD, no less. When she told her husband about the ticket, he paid for it.
“I said, ‘Why did you pay for it?” Wilma Wibert recalls. “And he said, ‘They were doing their job; you forgot to pay the meter.’ He sees this as helping people, not policing people.”
On Christmas mornings, Tom Wibert and Captain Tom Johnstone wake up at 3 a.m. and spend hours cooking breakfast for the police officers who work the midnight shift and day shift on Christmas. The ritual is repeated on Secretary’s Day, not only for the secretaries in the ELPD, but also those who work in city hall. There are Christmas parties for the adults, Santa for the kids, water balloon fights and picnics in the summer.
The family-like sentiments extend to those who came and went before Tom Wibert’s time. Officer Jim Johnson died in the line of duty in 1984, but each year his wife Val Johnson receives a photo of a headstone that the ELPD cleans and surrounds with flowers. Val Johnson still is invited to ELPD Christmas and retirement parties. And on the 25th anniversary of her husband’s death, she received a pieced-together picture depicting Jim Johnson’s funeral with thousands of people from across the country in attendance.
“That is an exceptional kind of love, respect, honor,” Val Johnson said in an e-mail. “It describes the heart of Tom Wibert.”
Lasting legacy
On St. Patricks’s Day in 2005, a man driving down Grand River Avenue was hit by a drunken driver going 85 miles per hour. The crash sent him through the windshield, scraping the top of his head off. His scalp, his hair, hung from the wreckage. The entire night shift of the ELPD saw it. The entire day shift saw it.
And when Tom Wibert took on his role as police chief one month later, he felt he didn’t even need to say he meant to reduce the number of people who drank and drove.
Drunken driving, outreach to children and community were the three priorities Tom Wibert set for himself when he began as chief. And he found success in all of them.
The crackdown on drunken driving has been effective. The number of drunken drivers the ELPD has arrested has increased by more than half in the five years that Wibert has been chief, compared to the five years prior. Tom Wibert also worked to change the mindset behind drinking and driving. He helped begin Spartans Against Drunk Driving and offered the club unlimited support. In a recent study by Olin Health Center, the number of students who do not drive after five drinks has risen from 90 percent in 2000 to 97 percent in 2010.
Besides rasing three “little good people with the last name Wibert,” the chief has influenced hundreds of children through volunteer efforts with organizations such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Kiwanis Club of East Lansing.
James Coles IV, a student at MacDonald Middle School, remembers being a part of the Police Athletic League when he was about 7 years old and having Wibert as a coach.
“Sometimes I wasn’t as good as the other kids,” Coles said. “He would sometimes just take a minute and focus on me and help me get better on my shooting.”
The love of basketball has stayed with Coles. The seventh grader made MacDonald’s basketball team last week. And he gives part of the credit to what his first coach taught him.
But Wibert’s most prominent legacy may be the way he has brought East Lansing together.
East Lansing Mayor Vic Loomis can remember a time where there was a “wall” between the police and stores licensed to sell alcohol.
Wibert tore it down. When NCAA Final Four celebrations morphed into a riot, Wibert handled the situation with a level head.
At 3 a.m., people will e-mail Wibert with complaints. They’re shocked to see a response from the police chief an hour later.
In the 14 years Tim Homberg has been the career development coordinator for MSU’s School of Criminal Justice, he has never seen the relationship between police and students this good.
“I can only hope that the new chief is even half as active within the community as Chief Wibert has been or there will be a tremendous falloff,” Homberg said. “These are big shoes to fill.”
