Gary Craig

@gcraig1

On a blocked-off section of Hudson Avenue, with police tape keeping bystanders and gawkers away, Capt. Lynde Johnston did what he has done thousands of times before.

A 48-year veteran of the Rochester police force, he was at yet another crime scene. He pulled his trademark 4- by6-inch notebook from his jacket pocket, and began writing explicit details in his exquisite penmanship, the letters so tiny they appeared Lilliputian.

He has more than 100 of these notebooks behind glass in his office at the Public Safety Building. They contain details of church bombings, child beatings, the investigation into notorious serial killer Arthur Shawcross, corrupt cops, armored car heists, drug murders, domestic murders, murders of a sort so grotesque they defy characterization.

He has seen it all and recorded it all — so he thought, at least.

Before Wednesday evening, he had never responded to the fatal shooting of a fellow officer.

"Unless you experience it, you just can't imagine the hurt you go through and how heavy the heart is," Johnston, the commander of the police department's special investigations section, said. "I've never experienced it before."

"I can't think of another crime that we haven't had our fingers in one way or another. You name it — we've done it, investigated it."

In many ways, Johnston is the historian of the Rochester Police Department. It is a role he has largely carved out for himself.

He has rummaged through, neatened up and organized a chaotic mess of archived material that had been stored away at the police department. There he found newspaper articles and remembrances of other Rochester police officers who had died in the line of duty. He separated the materials out, ensured they were protected from the elements and stored each in individual well-maintained boxes for others to access.

When he joined the force in 1965, there were many officers who remembered the murder of Officer Harold Shaw six years earlier. A burglar fatally shot Shaw. Johnston now has a box dedicated to the slain officer.

Through the years, Johnston said, "I've thought, 'Boy, we've been blessed it hasn't happened to us.' ''

And then came Wednesday.

Johnston received the call after 9:30 p.m. He and the criminal investigators he oversees responded to Hudson Avenue, fearful at the initial reports of an officer down.

That officer, 32-year-old Daryl Pierson, had been shot as he pursued an alleged parole absconder. The parolee, Thomas Johnson III, is now accused of fatally shooting Pierson, shooting a bystander and attempting to kill Pierson's partner, Officer Michael DiPaola.

DiPaola shot Johnson in a gunfire exchange, police allege. Johnson was listed in satisfactory condition at Strong Memorial Hospital Sunday.

Investigators set to work, just like any other crime scene. They interviewed witnesses; they found projectiles; they re-created, best they could, the shootout.

Shortly before 11 p.m., they learned that Pierson had died.

They continued working. The shooting was now a homicide.

"Nothing changes," Johnston said. "... You can't even get caught up in the emotion because you've got a job to do."

He and his colleagues worked through the night. The next afternoon, he sat in his office, drained but logging information into his computer. He checked his email, and had one from a Charlotte High School classmate.

The email expressed condolences, and relayed how much the work of the police force was appreciated.

"Then I started getting two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight," Johnston said of his email inbox. Some were from other classmates; some from friends. All had similar messages: We grieve with you, and for you, and thanks.

Then, Johnston said, the tears came. The job had waylaid the pain, keeping it in check. And Johnston thought back to the men whom he'd met when he joined the force, the colleagues who'd ached at the loss of Harold Shaw, even though years has passed.

"And I knew how they felt," Johnston said. " ... Those guys never forgot it. It changed the whole way they looked at their job."

Johnston has two sons in law enforcement — one a Rochester cop, the other a State Police trooper.

Each May, he and his son Adam, the Rochester officer, join hundreds of others in a four-day bike ride from New York City to Washington, D.C.

The Police Unity Tour, as it is called, remembers fallen officers and raises funds for the National Law Enforcement Officer's Memorial and Museum in Washington. The spouses, children and extended families of slain officers await at the end of the ride, which includes a stop at the memorial wall with the names of nearly 20,000 police officers.

"It preserves the memory of sacrifices of officers killed in the line of duty," Johnston said.

As he watches the families of loved ones visit the wall, and do etchings from the engraved names of those dear to their hearts, Johnston too recognizes the dangers of his job, and the contributions of the thousands being remembered.

But never has it been as personal as it will be this coming May. Each rider wears a bracelet with the name of an officer who died while serving his or her community. Johnston's bracelet will have Pierson's name.

He is trying to prepare himself for the emotions at the wall.

"I'll probably lose it," he said.

Pierson's name eventually will join those on the wall, but only after it is approved by the memorial's board of directors. And Johnston is amassing the newspaper articles and other materials that he will forward to the board to ensure that approval.

Those materials also will end up in the box that will document Pierson's life, career and death.

"I'm thinking about his legacy already, and how to preserve it."

GCRAIG@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/gcraig1