Profiles in policing: The Night Shift

by Margay Blackman,
Brockport Village Mayor

As I wind up my term as Mayor, it seems appropriate that I close the Profiles in Policing series with the late-night platoon (10 p.m. to 6 a.m.). When May and the end of the semester at SUNY Brockport arrived, I did a two-hour ride-along (10 p.m. to midnight) with each of the three night shift officers – Evan Blodgett, Ryan Kelly, and Matt Adams.

Officer Evan Blodgett
My first ride-along was with Officer Evan Blodgett on Friday, May 9, the last day of SUNY classes, a celebratory evening for college students before final exams and graduation.

Evan came to the Brockport Police Department in 2016 by way of a short stint in college (“not for me,” he said) followed by three-and-a-half years in the Army, the police academy, part-time police jobs in LeRoy and Holley, and finally, the Brockport Police Department (BPD). He has worked all shifts. Both he and his wife grew up in the greater Rochester area and live in the area with their young children.

It was early the first time we drove by Masons and the Red Jug Pub on Clinton Street and Merchant Street, respectively; there was no line at the former and just a short one at Red Jug. It would get much busier as the night wore on. I asked if there was a strategy for bar closing. “We just make a presence, lights on, to deter anything from occurring. We talk to bouncers but don’t walk all the way through the bar.” On Friday and Saturday nights, “these streets (on the south side of the canal) get more love than those across the canal.” As he spoke, the other two officers on duty were patrolling the north side of the canal.

I asked about ticketing people. Blodgett described himself as “more of an educational officer. I don’t believe everyone deserves a ticket. Honesty goes a long way with me. If you’ve learned something from this mistake, I’ll use my discretion. I’d rather educate if they’re receptive.” But, education aside, there are certainly times to write tickets.

On one of our circuits of the village, we were traveling east on West Avenue when, suddenly, Officer Blodgett made a quick U-turn, switched on his flashing lights, and pulled over a car headed towards the stoplight at Redman Road doing 86 mph. It took a while to deliver the ticket to the driver because he didn’t have his license with him. “He could be looking at a lot of points on his license,” Blodgett mused. That prompted me to ask about body cams. “Some agencies have them on all the time, but you can’t be yourself. We use them at all traffic stops and when you believe a verbal or physical argument is about to ensue.”

Another turn through the village spoke to me of nighttime vigilance. During the first platoon, regardless of the time of year, it’s dark, very dark. As a passenger, I noted how different the village looks in the dark – streets not so easily recognizable, detecting motion in the shadows more difficult, and the need for a flashlight whenever you exit the car. Going down Utica Street by Monica’s Park, a moving object in the background caught Officer Blodgett’s eye. It was the new “We Go Round” (an adaptive merry-go-round) being tested out by a couple of college students. Vigilance, indeed! Evan reminded them that the park closes at dusk.

We were called to Adams Street to a house party that a resident had complained about. Several male college students were outdoors engaged in beer pong with music playing. It was a calm, windows-open night, and the not excessively loud sound easily carried beyond the property. The students were compliant and turned off the music.

Officer Ryan Kelly
Two days after my ride-along with Evan Blodgett, I joined Officer Ryan Kelly in his police car on a Sunday night at 10 p.m. Officer Kelly is a SUNY Brockport graduate with a degree in History. He was also a Brockport football player. He met his wife, now a SUNY Vice President, when she was a student at SUNY Brockport. The Kellys live not far away, and in good weather, Ryan rides his bike to work on the canal path. “I’m the big guy on the bike with the headphones trying to get home to go to bed.”

Like Blodgett, Kelly has a military background. After graduating, he lived at home and worked at 84 Lumber. He didn’t like the job at all, wasn’t happy living at home, and wanted a change. His student loans kicked in, and he enlisted in the Army. He hoped for Italy or Germany but ended up at Fort Drum, three hours from home. “Anyone else would have been super happy, but I’m like, ‘Oh come on, not Fort Drum!’”

Following his Army tour, Kelly got hired at Wegmans, took the civil service test, and was eventually reached on the civil service list to secure a job with University Police (UP) at SUNY Brockport in 2017. He served five years there and then had an opportunity to transfer to the BPD in 2022. Policies at UP and BPD are different, especially in regards to all the education laws that apply to the former, so once with BPD, Kelly did the rigorous field training on all shifts required of a new village police officer.

Our two-hour ride-along was fairly unremarkable. We stopped a car on Main Street with a headlight out and another going 44 mph down Main Street. A pickup parked sideways at Barry Street Park held a couple watching a YouTube video before the female was to be dropped off at her parents’ home in the village. Officer Kelly reminded them that the park closed at dusk.

Readers may recall back at the end of April when a section of North Main Street was shut down due to a major criminal investigation. Officer Kelly played a central role in the apprehension of a suspect involved in a homicide in the city of Rochester. Ryan had stopped the suspect vehicle in the crime for running a four-way stop in the village and recognized it as one known locally to Brockport patrols. The RPD took over the investigation, aided by the BPD, Sheriffs, Odgen PD, and University Police.

Officer Matt Adams
My third night shift ride-along was the following night, Monday, May 12, with the newest officer in the BPD, Matt Adams. Matt had only recently completed field training, during which he worked every shift.

Days (2nd Platoon), he said, are unbelievably fast; afternoons (3rd Platoon) are the hardest for him because of family life – dinner, bathtime, and bedtime for the kids. He prefers the night shift.

Officer Adams grew up in Churchville, and he, his wife, and his young family live there now. Matt graduated from SUNY Brockport with a degree in Criminal Justice. Following graduation, he took a job as a Monroe County 911 dispatcher (2009-2018) “to help people,” he said, “but I couldn’t see myself doing this for 30 years.” University Police dispatch offered more options, including transitioning to road patrol, so he transferred there. “I was pretty close to the cutoff age of 35 for a police officer, so it was now or never. I switched to UP dispatch, put myself through the police academy, and finally got full-time road patrol at UP in 2020. UP is a good starting point because they have downtime during the summers when kids are off, and they send all their guys to training.”

“I like to do one giant lap of the village at the beginning of the shift so I know what’s going on,” Matt explained as I climbed into his car. Our first call was to Nichols Service, where a couple of men were grappling with a car on a trailer. Sgt. Hagen had reported them to the BPD to check on as he left for home at the end of his shift. It turns out they were just dropping off a car that was stuck on the trailer. They were advised to leave the car there on the trailer.

Monday night was relatively quiet. We stopped a car with a taillight out and gave the driver a warning to get it fixed. After 11 p.m., we sat for some time by the old Senior Center to look for speeding traffic from the Nortera shift that had just ended. “See that guy just leaving work with a headlight out?” Matt said. “I’m not going to harass him. I’m sure he’s had a long enough day.”

Describing the weekday night shift, Matt noted, “Up until bar close, you have traffic and stuff like that. And past that, we do parking tickets, which takes an hour to hour-and-a-half. And then we like to do directed patrol somewhere for at least an hour – get out of the car and walk – foot patrol. Check the locks on businesses. We still keep busy with call volume on the night shift, but the bar volume dwindles in the summer. Also, we issue fewer parking tickets. Checking for parking after 2 a.m. is a good way to drive every street in the village. Even if everyone is sleeping, maybe we catch a wave from someone who can’t sleep and now knows that we are out there, not just sitting in our car in the back of a lot scrolling on our phones.”

Officers Blodgett, Kelly, and Adams echoed their colleagues when discussing policing in Brockport. They are here because they want to be. They are strong advocates for community policing; they value policing in a small community where they know people. They see themselves and the BPD as a team. Matt summed up the sentiment: “I feel very lucky to be a part of this department in this community.”

Author’s Note:
The research for this project began in February of 2024 and ended just as my tenure as Mayor concluded at the end of June 2025. I did ride-alongs (sometimes more than one) with the officers featured in the articles. I sat with the Lieutenant and Chief for interviews and also with Investigator Dawson, who was on light duty due to an injury on the job. The project entailed 26 hours of interviews with 11 BPD members; I missed interviewing Sgt. Hagen and Officer Lucas VanderVort. Readers would also have benefitted from knowing Police Clerk Kim Rademacher, who manages the voluminous departmental paperwork and is critical to the smooth operation of the BPD. I hope these articles accomplished their purpose of looking beyond the uniform and badge to the humanity of the Brockport police. I thank them for their time and candor. I learned a lot.