By the time Raymond Gallucci became a reserve officer for the Warwick Police Department in 1983, it had been 10 years since a Gallucci worked for the department. Raymond’s Grandfather, Joseph Gallucci, died while he was still the Chief of Police in 1973. The headquarters building bears a plaque honoring Joseph Gallucci’s service from 1938, as a reserve officer, 1943 as a sworn officer and his tenure as Chief of Police.

“I signed up as a reserve officer and then went to the police academy and was made a permanent officer of the Warwick Police Department in 1986,” said Gallucci.

Since 1986, it has been a steady rise through the ranks and through the various divisions in the department. He was in patrol, detectives, administration, professional standards and administration again.

“I was in detectives three times,” he said, “as a detective, a sergeant and a lieutenant.”

Public service is a family trait for the Gallucci clan. Politicians, police officers and teachers run in the family and Raymond’s wife, Deborah, is a schoolteacher. When asked why he would retire so close to the 30 years required for a full pension, he said an opportunity came up that would not have been available a year and a half from now.

“The job of head of security for Warwick Mall came up and I wanted a job in Warwick,” said Gallucci. “Deb’s got at least five years more before she retires and I will have a job I want now without looking for a job later.”

Gallucci said he is proud of his service and of the department he helped to shape over the last few decades.

“There were times I was particularly proud of how we handled situations,” he said. “I remember a young man who threatened to kill himself and we had to call out SWAT to contain the situation and to talk him out of it…It was a critical situation, but we did manage to save him. He finally fell asleep and we grabbed him. Unfortunately, he did succeed another time.”

But, being a detective three times, Gallucci said solving crimes is one of the things he’s most proud of. There have been some disappointments over the years, but Warwick detectives can stand proudly next to any in the world for the professionalism and swift action in solving a crime.

He said he was particularly impressed with the detectives that solved the murder of Margaret Duffy-Stephenson, an East Greenwich teacher who was killed in her home on Blackmore Street in November of 2005.

“It was amazing,” said Gallucci. “Our detectives went there and immediately found leads and developed a case within days.”

Gallucci said the work of Det. Timothy Grant and Det. Michael Turner and all of the staff led them very quickly to James Richardson, a Cranston man who worked for her husband’s landscaping business.

“They did everything right,” said Gallucci. “In cases like that, it’s rare to pull it all together in such a short time, but they had the suspect within days and had a case and an arrest within a week or two.”

Astonishingly, that airtight case produced a hung jury on the first trial and subsequent remarks from a juror that he thought police were ganging up on the seemingly hapless James Richardson. What he and other jurors were not told that Richardson was convicted of kidnapping a hitchhiker in Connecticut, tying her to a tree and leaving her to die in the woods after hitting her with a rock. He was paroled, for reasons not quite clear, and returned to Rhode Island, where he befriended James Stephenson, Margaret’s husband, and gained enough trust to know that there was supposed to be thousands of dollars in Stephenson’s house while the rest of the Stephensons were still on holiday in Florida.

“We believed he was in it from the beginning and our guys moved fast to get the goods on him.”

The second trial convicted Richardson, especially after a cellmate of Richardson’s, arrested for minor drug charges, was appalled about the hung jury. He told police Richardson bragged about killing Duffy-Stephenson to him.

“There are some cases you remember forever,” said Gallucci.