Danbury chief looks at retirement from public service

Danbury Police Chief Randy Rhyne will retire at the end of the month.
MIKE FELIX/The Facts

The Facts
By KENT HOLLE kent.holle@thefacts.com
May 26, 2023

DANBURY - Chief Randy Rhyne is ready to retire his badge again, but he’s leaving the Danbury Police Department in a better state than he found it.

Technically speaking, nearly any action would have done so as the department essentially didn’t exist when he agreed to come in as the town’s lone peace officer in April 2022. Over the course of about seven months, he continued to be so, until he brought in two more officers, retired from the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office and Lake Jackson Police Department and looking for the change of pace that came along with policing a small town like Danbury.

Rhyne announced on social media this month he was ready to step down from the position after returning the department to full staffing and beginning upgrades to its computer network and equipment, something he hopes to take further steps on before he leaves.

His reasons for leaving aren’t limited to one, but he does admit that after a four-decade-long career in law enforcement, he wanted to remove himself from some of the darker aspects of the job.

In addition to an extensive career in multiple departments — starting in Angleton, spending time in Clute and having a long association with the sheriff’s office under sheriffs Joe King and Charles Wagner — he’s also jumped headfirst into nearly every position and training available to him. He began with five years as a patrolman.

“I don’t know if it was a dumb move or a smart move, but I took a promotional exam for the Criminal Investigation Division. I did that for 12 years,” Rhyne said. “I don’t know if it was naïveté or whatever, because I thought I should know everything about everything. Now they kind of specialize and compartmentalize in their units. No, I went to every school in every subject I could find.”

This led to an extended stint investigating crimes against children. His goal was always to get a conviction without the need for the young victims to testify in court, he said.

“One of them was child abuse and child sex crimes and the whole nine yards. Somebody had to do it and that’s what I did. I had a little over 700 cases in 12 years and there’s some pretty heavy-duty cases in there,” Rhyne said, choking up slightly. “I finally got tired when I did the Cub Scoutmaster that was abusing kids, including his own nephews, and that’s the one where I said, ‘I need to get out of this business.’”

The move he decided to make landed him in narcotics investigations for seven years, which, while different, was still intense, describing it as jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The move to take on challenging roles might not be all that surprising considering the reason he switched careers from being a licensed plumber to being a policeman — the disappearance of his brother.

“The local police — I didn’t feel that they’d treated my mother and father fairly. They never would return phone calls and I would watch my mother and father literally sit on the couch crying because one of their teenage kids is missing and nobody seems to care, because that’s the impression they left,” he said.

Rhyne decided to do what most people cannot or will not — he decided to become a law enforcement officer so he could give people the kind of treatment he felt they deserved from public servants. He received support from Angleton’s police chief in attending Brazosport Academy. He was not promised employment, but he was promised help achieving his goals.

“That’s been my goal and my driving factor all along is that we work for the citizens,” he said. “We should — as much as they will let us — be nice until they won’t let us be nice no more.”

Rhyne said that being nice hasn’t been difficult in Danbury, where he found himself after he finished his time with the county in an administrative role for many years, followed by a run for sheriff and a short stint as a court guard.

He expressed an admiration and affection for the community that he said has given him the leeway he needed to be successful in resurrecting their department.

“I’ve known quite a few people in Danbury. They’re all good people. They’ve just had some rotten luck getting good police officers. So I came over here, applied, told them what my plan was and they said, ‘OK,’” Rhyne said, singling out the City Council for additional praise. “They’re progressive enough, but they’re still frugal with the taxpayers’ money. They don’t get in my business. No one’s trying to run the police department. The only two questions they ever asked me were, ‘What do you need?’ and ‘What can we help you with?’”

His highly varied experience within the profession has helped him in Danbury, where he describes his role as having to wear multiple hats. It’s also part of why he’s decided to step away, citing the city’s need, with only three officers, for someone who will do all of the jobs that need done, while he wants to take a step back after some recent cases proved to be hard to stomach.

“I’ve worked child deaths. Anything you can do to a child, I’ve seen it done,” Rhyne said. “And I guess it’s like PTSD. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m not upset with the administrative side. I can do that all day long. But this is kind of like a three-horse town and every horse has to pull their weight and I would not intentionally not pull my weight.”

This is not the first time Rhyne has retired, as he previously decided to leave his position within the sheriff’s office for an attempted run at the office of Sheriff.

Some people have asked him in the wake of his announcement if he has aspirations to run for public office again. Rhyne said he is open to the idea, but realistic about it, saying he would likely need a war chest of nearly a quarter-million dollars to run an effective campaign in Brazoria County.

“If I had a plethora of support that would come out of the woodwork that would say, ‘OK, we’re here to help you’ and back me with financial assistance, I would probably consider running again,” he said. “I’m not even worried about it, because I don’t think anybody’s going to walk up and give me a quarter-million-dollar check. Would I love it? Yep. Would I run? Yep. But it ain’t going to happen, so there’s no sense worrying about it.”

Rhyne hopes council takes a look internally at his “hand-selected” officers for potential successors, David Hawkins and Christopher Henken, should they be interested. He said he was content to leave things in their capable hands.

“The two guys I have under me — they’re both qualified,” he said. “The biggest thing to me is that I didn’t want to leave the citizens of Danbury without some good officers and so far I’ve got two.”

Without solid plans, Rhyne said that two things were looking to occupy him in his newly found downtime.

The first is to continue with his education. While he is stepping away from active-duty policing, he’s open to performing administration duties or teaching in the future, he said. Pct. 2 Constable Willie Howell will continue to hold his commission, which will allow him to continue learning about the civil side of law enforcement.

The second is working at home and trying to make up some lost time with family.

“My wife — I probably owe her a lot because in this line of work, you miss a lot of birthdays,” Rhyne said, saying he often has stepped in to make sure his officers don’t miss out on their own family lives. He credits his wife and both sets of grandparents with his son turning out as a successful chemist at Shell Oil.

“There’s seven years of my son’s life that I don’t really remember. The narcotics thing was just overwhelming,” Rhyne said. “I remember him being in elementary school and the next thing you know, I’m teaching him how to drive. So I’m going to go back and see if I can repay my wife a lot of down time.”

Of all the roles he’s filled over his career, two stand out for Rhyne.

“There’s no doubt that being the chief of Danbury is one of the high points, but there was one particular criminal case — a homicide — it took me three years to get the guy. It was a 16 year-old-girl out of Clute named Michelle Webster,” he said. “That’s one of the cases I’ll never forget. I could pick it up right now and tell you who, what and when.”