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Hello, my name is Aji Bolo, Taji Dine, but you can call me Kimi
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And today you're watching Conversations with Kimi. A show we ask stuff and we make stuff
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Today, like most of our crafts this season, we'll be making a loop that will bind together
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the community of West Side Story, which coincidentally is exactly what our guest today aims to do for his
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job, please help me in welcoming Lieutenant Roncinski of the Norwalk Police Department
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Hey, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. How long have you been a part of the Norfolk Police Department
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Close to 30 years. I started out as a patrolman in 1989. Oh, okay
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What other jobs have you done with the North Police Department? Fortunately, with police work, you can have a multitude of jobs
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And after being a patrol officer for close to nine years, I was promoted to detective
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So I've had a diverse amount of investigatory experience. And also, too, I was a member of our department's scuba team
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I was a member of our departments. I was a member of the department's ESU team, which is the SWAT team
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And I worked as a field training officer. I've also worked as a trainer
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I teach the hate and bias class here. And presently, I am the commanding officer or the special victims unit
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Wow. So as a lieutenant what are some of the complicated situations that you have dealt with Well we dealt with I worked as a lieutenant both in patrol and in investigative services this being special victims unit
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And some of the things that you can run into are the dynamics of calls, the spontaneity
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of calls, being able to deal with things very quickly, and you also have to be able to multitask
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And at the same time, lead the people that are under your command
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When you work as a patrol lieutenant, you have patrol officers that work with you, you
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have sergeants that work with you, and you have to coordinate their efforts. Did your family have a lot of police officers in it, or is it
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Well, actually, one of the first people that got me interested in law enforcement was this
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gentleman here. This is my cousin, Bobby Trowbridge. He was a police officer up in Rochester, New York, and when I was in high school, I got
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got to know his work, got to know him, and I started having an interest in law enforcement
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And that's actually his son who becomes a law enforcement officer later, and that his youngest
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son, Luke, who's 24 years old, just became a police officer in Virginia. Wow
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Well, as you know, Officer Viteer is doing our West Side Story production this year
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How do you feel about that? I think he's a good person to be doing this
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He has, you know, as much law enforcement experience as anybody in the department
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and he's been working in patrol, community police. So he's a diverse amount of work
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He'll be playing Officer Kruppke. So have you seen the show West Side Story
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Not in a number of years. I know it's based in New York City
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It's about some gangs in New York City, and there's a lot of singing. Speaking of gangs do you deal with that a lot with your profession I have in the past when I worked in narcotics and when I worked in the detective brew What advice would you give to young leaders who want to lead out in the community of
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Norwalk, Connecticut? Well I think what you have to do first of all is you have to get involved
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You have to get to know your community, know the people that are out there, and you need
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to have a certain level of involvement before you can actually become a leader
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What I also think you have to do is you have to try to not only set a good example
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but set the best example. So how do you do in school, how do you do at your work
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what you're trying to do to make things better? A lot of people can go just talk and talk
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and talk yet not do anything. How will you be helping with the finding your voice
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defense class with MPT? What we're going to do is we're going to do an overview of a
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course that might be able to help young women and women protect themselves and
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that's what this course has been developed over the years and they're going to be offering it in Norwalk, I believe in May, the formal course
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So it's something that I think all women should know to be able to protect themselves in case they run into circumstances and try to protect themselves better
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So we have an extension to our craft today. Building One Community started our handcraft
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where we sign a hand for each person that we interview. As you can see, here's some hands from before, from Building One Community
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and what they sign. So if you don't mind, can you sign one of the hands
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Yeah, sign it this way. I was going to say we got a little son before
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This is a really nice signature. Thank you. I actually have a degree in art
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Oh wow Okay Can we see some of your artwork Actually the cartoon is up there I drew that Wow that amazing How long did it take you to draw that Oh that a hours Oh a couple of hours Yeah it starts out as an editorial cartoon that I changed around a little bit
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We need one for Westside Story. Did you ever want to be an artist
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I enjoyed it, and I worked in package design for a little bit when I got out of college
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but I kind of developed interest in law enforcement. So I've tried to blend some of those things together over the years
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So when I was working as a detective and was working as a patrol officer, it was easy to do the photographs
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It was easy to do the diagramming. So that made things a little less complicated when I was doing crime scenes or accidents
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All right. Well, let's show our work with our links here. There you go
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Also, if you want to see our final product of the links, you can see our show on February
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23rd at Noak City Hall and you can find out more information on the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra's
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website. Thank you so much Lieutenant Roncinski for joining us here on conversation with Keeney
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Make sure you guys go check out West Side Story February 23rd with the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra
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and I want to tell you guys your voice is your power so use it
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Kim me out. Conversations with Kemi is produced with support from the Department of Economic and Community
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Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, which also receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency
