Police chief retires after 35 years in Winter Park

It’s difficult for Winter Park Police Chief Brett Railey to wrap his head around it: the fact that he will wake up next Monday morning and not put on his uniform. That he’ll walk out the door, but have no place to go.

“I’m going to be going from 100 mph to zero,” Railey said.

That’s the feeling that Railey gets when he realizes that he’s retiring from the Winter Park Police Department after 35 years this Friday. It’s gone by in a blur, but Railey still remembers well what it was like to be a Winter Park police officer in the 1980s. Police cars had no computers and officers didn’t carry cell phones; instead they carried a roll of dimes to make urgent calls to dispatch from pay phones.

A smaller city population at the time also meant that Winter Park would sometimes have as few as three officers patrolling the city at a time during holidays. Railey remembers one Thanksgiving Day when he and another officer were rolling around on the Winter Park train tracks on U.S. Highway 17-92 with an escaped mental patient from Florida Hospital trying to apprehend him. The struggling officers had to wait for an officer to drive all the way from far east Winter Park to assist – the only backup they had.

“Back then you had you and your backup and many times that was it,” Railey said. “You did what you had to do to stay alive.”

Railey’s career in law enforcement all began with a step into the unknown behind a radio microphone. Florida Highway Patrol 1st Sgt. Jim Johns recruited a young Railey into running dispatch for the Florida Highway Patrol in 1977. From there Railey would go on to apply for a job as a campus security guard at Rollins College, where he worked for two years. As a Rollins security guard, Railey already qualified as a reserve police officer for the Winter Park Police Department – and that’s the exact role he filled when he was assigned to watch over the Winter Park sinkhole in June 1981.

People came from all over to see the sinkhole that swallowed a car dealership and five Porsches at the corner of Fairbanks Avenue and Denning Drive. Railey’s duty: to keep people from falling in.

Railey admits that it was a boring first assignment, but that was the start of a 35-year career at the Winter Park Police Department, where he rose up in the ranks and never looked back. He was named chief in 2009.

As a captain, Railey developed and commanded a multi-agency Rapid Response Task Force. He planned, directed, organized and commanded deployments to Escambia County, Fla. following Hurricane Ivan and twice to Biloxi, Miss. in response to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation.

He also began a Crime Prevention Academy for the citizens of Winter Park, and rejuvenated the department’s Neighborhood Watch and Business Watch programs

During his tenure he received multiple awards, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police 2014 J. Stannard Baker Award, recognizing lifetime achievement in highway safety, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s 2014 Public Service Lifesavers Award.

Coming from a family of preachers, Railey said he might have been the “black sheep” of the family, but his reason for going into law enforcement was with just as good intentions: to help those in need.

Railey said he was honored to have served the people of Winter Park.

“This city is like no other,” Railey said. “I’ve been blessed to have gone around the country teaching and gone around the world and I’ve found no city as unique as Winter Park from a policing standpoint.

“It’s because of the support we have from the community, and that’s not something we take for granted. I feel that over the years we have earned that support.”

But what will Chief Railey being doing in his spare time during retirement?

“Whatever my wife tells me,” Railey quipped.