Michael Spremulli is no stranger to public service.

The lifelong East Providence resident (calling Riverside home since 1999) joined the U.S. Marine Corps. out of high school, where he would serve nine years between active duty and the reserves. He attained the rank of sergeant, and is a veteran of the Persian Gulf War.

In the midst of his service he earned a history degree from Rhode Island College, and was on active duty in California when he got a call from the East Providence Police Department; setting up the next quarter century of his professional life.

Starting as a patrolman for a number of years, Spremulli was ultimately selected to become one of the first school resource officers (SROs) in the state for Riverside Middle School. It was a role that Spremulli looks back on with a lot of gratitude.

“It kind of paved the way for what the program is today. Them [students] learning that the purpose of a school resource officer was not to arrest kids, but to actually build bridges within the community,” he said. “I really enjoyed it. I loved working with the kids. I loved bridging the gap between them seeing police officers as people who arrest people to people who are actually there to help you.”

But life and his career progressed, and in 2010 Spremulli left the SRO position to become a detective, which had been his initial goal when joining the police department. He started in major crimes investigating all felonies, then did a short bid for the Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

His next big move came when the department revived its special victims unit (SVU), which investigates crimes involving sexual assault and crimes against children, among others. Spremulli was hand-picked to lead the unit as detective in 2014, while still working homicides when they happened. He would perform the job for the next 11 years until his retirement in 2025, finishing with 26 years of service total on the force.

Spremulli looked back on his time with SVU as some of the most challenging, but most important, days of his professional career.

“It was a toughest job I ever did. There were days where you were just ready to walk away from it. I stuck with it because I just felt that someone had to do that job, as difficult as it may be,” he said. “As difficult as it was, it was kind of a calling. I wouldn't take back the days that I spent doing that.”

A new chapter, and a new challenge

Spremulli announced earlier this month that he would be running for the Ward 4 seat on the East Providence City Council. The seat, which represents all of Riverside, is currently held by Rick Lawson. Lawson has officially stated he won’t be running for re-election, so currently Spremulli has one challenger in 43-year-old small business owner, Jason Botelho.

Similar to his calling with the police department and the Marines, Spremulli said that going into politics is the most recent impulse derived from an upbringing steeped in community engagement and volunteering.

He mentioned his father, Vincent Spremulli, who was a special educator for 35 years and an avid youth sports coach and mentor. His sister, Dr. Sandra Forand, has spent 26 years in public education roles in the city, including the past four years spent as the East Providence Superintendent of Schools.

“That's just the way I was brought up,” Spremulli said of his family’s drive towards public service.

Asked what he specifically wants to see change in the city should he be elected, Spremulli took a wait and see approach.

“It's a new challenge,” he said. “I’m not going to say that I dislike the way things are going, but I feel there's always an opportunity that we can do things better.”

He said that he would first and foremost be an advocate for the constituents in Riverside, and take a detective’s approach to figuring out the real issues and how to improve them for the residents.

“You have some investigators that come up with the theory and they use the evidence to support their theory. I was always the type of an investigator where I would take the evidence and use the evidence to create my theory,” he said. “People are going to say, ‘Well, what is your position on this? What is your position on that?’ And in my opinion, everything is fluid, because I don't have all the data yet. The data is going to come when I go to door-to-door and start talking to Riverside residents and then, at that point, my theories are going to be created based on what the constituents want.”

Spremulli did mention specifically that he didn’t think a large housing complex at the former Oldham School — which has not been formally proposed as a plan for the building but was floated as a possibility during a tumultuous community meeting last year — was the right choice for the area.

As for general priorities, Spremulli said it was important to him to continue to see the schools be properly funded and maintained. He said that he was still forming an opinion on whether or not the city was pursuing too much (or too little) development, specifically in regards to housing.

“Say you want to add 5,000 more people to Riverside. What are we going to do with the schools? Are we going to add more police? Are we going to add more fire? How do we service this? Is the infrastructure going to be able to maintain the additional people that we were bringing into a certain area?” he said. “If I had all the answers right now, which I don't, these are things that I want to know.”

Spremulli said that he had seen people trying to attach him with one political party or another, and opted to correct the record straight away.

“I want people to know that I am an Independent,” he said. “My job, if elected, is to represent constituents of Riverside, and my concerns are always going to be Riverside, and my door is going to be open to answer any questions regarding Riverside. And that's where my concerns are going to be.”