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Exclusive: Konversations with Keeme: A Chat with Lt. Roncinske
Nov 1, 2022
This week's Konversations with Keeme features Lieutenant Thomas Roncinske. He's a 29 year veteran of the Norwalk Police department and the Division Commander, directing a team of two sergeants, four investigators and eight School Resource Officers. He is responsible for the investigations of all serious crimes perpetrated against children, juveniles and the elderly and for coordinating school security for the Norwalk School District. He is also responsible for coordinating the preparation andamp; follow up of Juvenile Court cases. He is also the Commanding Officer of The ESU Scuba Team and is an Adjunct college professor at Sacred Heart University. The Lieutenant will be taking part in our 'Finding your voice in self defense' workshop on Feb. 3rd. This is a free class that ties in to our West Side Story prodution that you can register for here: http://www.norwalksymphony.org
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0:00
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
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