NEBRASKA CITY – Police Cpt. Lonnie Neeman was selling cars for a struggling car lot when he approached the county sheriff for a dispatching job 40 years ago and has experienced the struggle of life with the community he served in law enforcement.

Neeman: “I always tried to help people out, you know, maybe get to know people. I always tried to talk to people with respect. I never did like labeling people good people and bad people, or kids as good kids or bad kids, or teenagers or whatever. I never did like that.”

Neeman: “Maybe this is a simplistic way of looking at it, but I think there is some good in everybody and there’s some bad.”

Looking back on a generation in uniform, Neeman says he is impacted by times when community members reached out in gratitude for the way he approached the job.

He recently responded to a disturbance call and met a woman on her front porch. After listening to what she had to say, Neeman was surprised when she said, ‘you don’t remember me.’

A small-town cop butters his bread by knowing the people and former Chief David Lacy said Neeman is among the best, but the captain had to admit the 30-year-old woman was right. He didn’t remember.

She had been 12 years old when she last met Neeman and said he saved her life by believing her when she described abuse taking place in her home.

Recently, a woman he did not recognize greeted him with a hug at Walmart and said the respect he had shown her many years ago helped her change her life for the better.

 

 

Neeman recalls a domestic call where he stood nose to nose with a man with a pistol in one hand and clench fist in the other. Somehow in the moments that passed, it was decided they would sit down and talk.

Neeman recalled seeing the man again in different circumstances.

Neeman: “He gets out and he says Lonnie I want to thank you for saving my life. I go, I didn’t save your life and he says yeah you did. Had you left that day,  you wouldn’t have made it back to the patrol car and you would’ve heard the gun go off. I was ready to kill myself.”

A few winters back, Neeman knew the city had a surge of homeless people.

On his day off he walked down below the 11th Street viaduct to warn a man about temperatures dropping to 20 degrees below.

He was able to convince the man to accept a hotel stay for a couple nights. Neeman then went to a nearby church who helped the man make it through the week long cold snap.

Neeman: “You know you’re just trying to help people out. I’m sure there are officers all over the country, all over the world, that do that.”

Former Police Chief Dave Lacy, who encouraged Neeman to file for the radio dispatcher job 40 years ago, said he learned that Neeman has a long fuse for his temper.

Lacy: “We always said he could interview somebody and kind of bore them into a confession. It really is humanistic. He was able to express to them that we all make mistakes. He had made mistakes and he would share stories of what he had done and I think they found out that Lonnie is not really a cop,  he’s just a guy here trying to find the truth.”