By Mondell Keck | The Brookings Register
BROOKINGS — Fostering trust, building transparency and having an open-door policy are key tenets for Deputy Police Chief Ryan Baranyos, who’s the newest law enforcement leader in Brookings.
“We are partners. It’s not an us-versus-them. It’s a partnership between us and the community,” he told The Brookings Register in an interview.
Baranyos, who started Sept. 29, has spent the last few months familiarizing himself with the community’s institutions and residents. He comes to the city with nearly 26 years of law enforcement experience — almost 24 years in Maricopa County, Arizona, and another two years in Estes Park, Colorado.
“I dig deep in my tool belt to find ways I can help bridge what I perceive to be some opportunities throughout (the) different communities that I’ve had the privilege of serving in,” he explained. “And so, Brookings, I look at it as a blank slate in terms of moving forward and how I can best add value to the community.”
He’s already filling in the details on that slate, too, having spearheaded two efforts — raising disability awareness and the Blue Envelope program — that already or will soon have tangible benefits for law enforcers and residents alike.
“So, autism, special need groups, perhaps folks that cognitively don’t interact with one another as maybe perhaps we’re used to with routine contacts on the street,” Baranyos said. “I’m looking to bring an outside instructor in to help deliver some of that training to our folks. Which again helps bridge, sometimes, the communication gaps that we do encounter out in the field to show our indelible mark we’re looking to leave in terms of our commitment to the community.”
He said the effort dovetails nicely with the envelope program. The envelope is, yes, blue and has the BPD’s patch on one side and its badge on the other.
“(It’s for) somebody who may have some kind of communication disability or otherwise needs some additional assistance when they have routine contact with law enforcement — let’s say in the case of a traffic stop, for example,” Baranyos said. “The blue envelope is a signal to our people that this person may have some kind of disability that we may need to spend a couple extra moments with communicating.”
People can put their driver’s license, registration, insurance and whatnot in the envelope.
“It basically slows us down. It de-escalates it so we don’t have to — what we believe may be ineffective communication, maybe somebody just can’t effectively communicate with us,” he said. “It’s an understanding on our part that we’re aware that these kinds of needs exist throughout the community.”
An outdoorsman
Baranyos’s connection to South Dakota didn’t just start in September. No, it goes further back than that, largely in part thanks to his wife, Kim, who originally hails from Sioux Falls, where she grew up.
They met in Arizona and the rest, as the old saying goes, is history: They married, and that’s where their two children were born and raised. His oldest, a daughter, is now a freshman at Clemson University in South Carolina, while his youngest, a son, is a junior at Brookings High School.
Baranyos spent his youth in northern Indiana — he was born in Merrillville and raised in Hammond — and was drawn to South Dakota for reasons beyond family connections; namely, its natural beauty.
He described himself as an outdoorsman — “I love everything outdoors” — but one with a big heart who’s incapable of hunting.
“I did a little bit when I was a kid and decided I didn’t want to hunt anymore,” Baranyos said. “I got a real soft spot for animals.”
He brought up his Bronco Raptor that he used to go on offroad trails with, especially in Colorado. In addition to that, his family enjoyed boating while the children were growing up. Lastly, travel was another big thing for his family — and that included trips to South Dakota, especially the Black Hills area.
“We would leave sometimes because it would get so hot there (in Arizona) in the summer,” Baranyos said. “I would take summer vacation from work, and we would just travel for sometimes a month at a time.”
He finished, “Anything outdoors — anything that keeps the mind sharp and being at peace with the outdoors — is super important. The fresh air, everything to do — there’s so much to do in this state, this part of the country. Again, that’s part of my decision-driving, too, when it comes to relocating: ‘Hey, is this a place I can see myself living?’”
Scary moments
With years of experience under his belt, it’s only natural that Baranyos would have a tale or two to tell, even more so since most of that time was spent in Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to the Phoenix metro area and its more than five million residents.
“I try to best prepare the community to always be cognizant and self-aware of what’s going on around them in their surroundings and focus, really, on the quality of life,” he said. “But there are times when you’re in a big suburban community like that where crime is there, it’s everywhere. It’s just identifying it and helping solve some of those cases that are at the forefront, especially the ones that threaten public safety and people’s physical being — and even on the emotional side; what can we do to help better support the community.”
Baranyos has certainly had more than his fair share of encounters with crime — it comes with the territory in law enforcement — but one incident in particular stood out in his memories.
It was so intense that he wasn’t sure he’d see his family again.
As a sergeant working a graveyard shift patrol overseeing a group of deputy sheriffs — his children were still young, being only 14 months apart in age — Baranyos had just gotten off a shift and was pulling into his home’s driveway when a call came in about a vehicle speeding down an interstate.
He responded to the call and went to the interstate to deploy stop sticks, aka tire deflation devices.
“I sat up on the interstate, and as the car came barreling down — by the time my eyes told my brain what they were seeing and deploying those stop sticks, it was too late; the car was going that fast — it was a blur coming right by me,” he remembered. “But at the last moment the suspect looked over to where my patrol car and I was, in uniform, and quickly, sharply jerked the wheel over to my direction as he was passing me.
“No doubt in my mind that would have been one of those times that just would have instantly killed me, I’m sure, had he made contact with me at that speed,” Baranyos continued. “All I thought about was my wife and my young kids, who were probably 2, 3, 4 years old at the time.”
Following the ensuing pursuit, which ended with the suspect crashing the vehicle, Baranyos chased him on foot through a parking lot. The suspect’s gun fell out of its holster during the chase — Baranyos later learned it wasn’t a real weapon — but then there was another shocking turn of events.
“He turned and faced me and demanded that I shoot him — he wanted to die, didn’t want to live anymore,” Baranyos recalled. “I ended up tasering him instead of shooting; he wasn’t a lethal threat and … I was able to take him into custody.”
He said an investigation of the suspect’s vehicle turned up duct tape, a ski mask and other tools that the suspect would have needed to abduct people.
“It was a real bad guy; I call him 1 percent of the population that is looking to do the community harm and, on top of that, doesn’t care if I’m law enforcement or not,” Baranyos said. “That’s one of those cases that I still think about quite a bit because your life flashes in front of you.”
Aiming high
While he’s now the deputy police chief in Brookings, Baranyos started out just like any other soul who’s gone into law enforcement: Cutting his teeth at the lower levels and moving up to ever-greater responsibilities — patrol, investigations, watch commander and more.
He left Arizona as a lieutenant and became a captain in Colorado. And now he’s here in South Dakota. You can see the pattern, and yes, he aspires to someday becoming a police chief.
“Drawing on my two previous experiences definitely helped me prepare for this current stop I have in Brookings and perhaps even long term,” Baranyos said, adding that he’s now roughly halfway through his public safety career. “That much more closer to aspiring to achieve my dreams, which again is to be a police chief.”
When asked about if in the years ahead he might be interested in becoming the police chief in Brookings when current BPD Chief Michael Drake retires, Baranyos spoke thoughtfully.
“Perhaps. It could be an opportunity,” he said. “I have to be sure that the city wants me in that role, and they support everything that I’m trying to do. … right now, I’m just doing everything I can to learn faces, learn names, get to know the different personalities.”
In the here and now, though, Baranyos is all about contributing to Drake’s team.
“He has a mission and vision,” Baranyos said. “My role as the deputy chief is to support what he’s trying to execute here — the mission and the vision that he sees for this agency going forward. I support that part of it and lift him up and what he’s trying to do.”
He added that, in time, he would like to contribute along the lines of improving existing mechanisms, developing policies, and training components.
“Things that really keep the community safe but also show that level of professionalism that’s really front and center for the Brookings (Police Department),” he said.
Public’s input prized
Circling back to his open-door policy, Baranyos emphasized that it’s important for the public to be inquisitive and always look for better policing.
“We want folks to ask lots of questions on what ideas and different things the department is working on and how we can better serve them,” he said. “Without being a broken record, how we can best serve the community. We don’t know that without some of the feedback in the feedback loop.”
Baranyos said the BPD is here to listen — “we’re all ears” — and that events such as Coffee with a Cop are an excellent way to convey ideas to law enforcement.
“We’re always top of mind on how we can keep the community safe and, again, deliver those high-quality public safety services the community expects from us,” he reiterated. “We’re nowhere perfect and we never will be, but we do our very best to think about them first, always.”
— Contact Mondell Keck at [email protected].
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