When you spend 26 years in a job, you wear a lot of hats and see a lot of changes, and retired Major Brian Burke, who stepped back from his post with the Bristol Police Department on Oct. 13, is no exception.

The Tiverton native, who earned a degree in Administration of Justice from Salve Regina and recently returned to his alma mater for a Masters in Cyber Security, most recently served as Chief of Administrative Services. But his career in law enforcement goes back to the mid-1990s when he graduated college and launched his career with the Nantucket Police Department, part of their annual summer program augmenting their department when the island’s population swells for the season.

Following that, he sent out applications to departments all over the region — happily for Bristol, he was one of the five young officers selected by the Town from a pool of 300 applicants. He would graduate from the Police Academy and join the BPD in 1997, under Chief Rusty Serpa. He has since served under three more Chiefs, including Josue Canario, interim Brian Peters, and Kevin Lynch — and four more if you can say he served under himself, when he was the interim between Peters and Lynch for three months in 2019.

“That was rewarding,” he said. “It exposed me to a whole other side of policing.”

“It was not like it is now,” he said, initially referring to the intense competition for police jobs he faced when he was fresh out of school — though the conversation quickly veered to the myriad ways policing has changed over the years. Though Burke would eventually serve as the Department’s information technology coordinator for many years, he launched his career at a time when the rank-and-file officers did not use technology of any kind, as we know it today.

“No computers. We were writing tickets by hand,” he said.

Burke admits that while the advancements in technology have gotten easier to assimilate department-wide with the rise of a younger, tech-savvy generation, it was often Burke’s job to be a first adopter. “I was there through the transition phase,” he said.

Though in many ways the advent of technology has made a lot of their day-to-day tasks more streamlined, the nature of policing itself has changed tremendously in the past three decades.

“The expectation to protect and serve was the same then as it is now. You went out, patrolled, and responded to crime,” he said. “Now you really have to multitask, and you are responding to medical issues, you are acting as a counselor, you name it. The police are the first to be called in many situations.”

“You learn the basics of law enforcement early on, but the job is really ever-evolving,” Burke said. “Officers need to be educated and well-versed; able to use different skills to achieve objectives.”

Burke is leaving the BPD with a lot of great memories, but despite his climb up the chain of command, some of his fondest are of his earlier days. “I really enjoyed second shift, in the trenches,” he said. “It was different every day, and I worked with great people.”

Burke may be retiring from the BPD now that he is pension-eligible, but at age 50, he still has a lot to offer the law enforcement community, which he will be doing as a Law Enforcement Coordinator with NESPIN (New England State Police Intelligence Network). NESPIN is part of the Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS) Program which assists criminal justice partners by helping facilitate information sharing, support criminal investigations, and promote officer safety. He is looking forward to staying the course professionally, but as a civilian employee.

His new job will bring him home to the BPD every now and then, and he is happy to continue to call Bristol home, with his wife Adrian. The couple have two adult daughters, Cailin and Allison.

“The men and women of the Bristol Police Department are so dedicated and passionate about what they do,” said Burke. “And safety is one of the many things that has put Bristol on the map. Often when I tell people where I’m from, they know the town, or have heard great things. And I’m really proud to say that for 26 years, I was part of that.”