By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — Police officers have to pass rigorous physical fitness tests to win their jobs in public service but that isn’t the only ability required to do the job well.
Police officers also have to know something about people and if they choose to become detectives — possess the ability to deduce the unknown with the help of facts, evidence and effective questioning techniques.

Det. Tony Wood possesses all those skills and that had members of the department feeling a loss on Friday as he headed off to a new job as a fraud investigator with Amica Insurance in Lincoln.
His partner of the last eight years, Juvenile Det. Roger Biron, summed it up best by admitting he is uncertain how things will be without Wood on job.
“He’s the best partner I’ve ever had by far,” Biron said. “I don’t know what will happen because I’m going to be lost without him,” he said.
Wood and Biron have worked many tough cases that have come into the juvenile division, cases involving capital crimes against children and cases that have involved children being killed by adults.
Wood said the tough part of the job is handling a case like the beating death of T.J. Wright, 3, who died in 2004 of brain injuries police allege were inflicted at the hands of his guardians, his aunt, Kathleen Bunnell and Gilbert Delestre. Bunnell and Gilbert are awaiting trial in Wright’s murder and Wood, the lead detective, will be involved when the case finally comes up in court.
There are many other sad stories that a detective like Wood could tell, but on Friday he was too busy getting well wishes from a steady stream of peers to be focusing only on those.
Wood, who is leaving with 23 years of department and military service, is the latest of several department veterans recently to head out the door of the police station for new opportunities in the private sector or the rewards of retirement — veterans like Det. Ron Tetreau, Patrolman Mike Cahill, Sgt. James Glode, and Pat. David Antaya — and like them had tried to slip away without much fanfare.
But Wood’s friends kept showing up during his last 4:30 to midnight shift to give him a send off he should remember for a long time to come.
“You were a great guy to learn the job from,” Lt. Kyle Stone told Wood while catching him at his desk in the juvenile unit Friday afternoon.
“You certainly always took pride in your job and the department, and did the job in an exemplary manner,” Stone told Wood. “We are losing one of the best that we have for sure,” he said.
Stone described Wood as a cop other members of the department could go to and someone who always had a positive outlook.
“He was just someone you could look to, to set the tone. People would watch what he did and look to follow in his footsteps,” Stone said of Wood.
Det. Sgt. Shawn Kerrigan, who has also worked with Wood for many years, said he hated to see him go “because he is such an asset here. He’s ethical, moral and does the right thing. I’m glad for him, but I hate to see him go because we are losing an awesome, awesome cop,” Kerrigan said.
Wood, who has a Master's degree in criminal justice from Boston University and a Bachelor’s degree in the same major from Roger Williams University, decided to leave the department when he got an offer of the Amica Insurance job and found the opportunity too good to pass up.
He and his wife, Patricia, have two children, Tony Jr., 19, and Laura, 23. He is a former president of Local 404 of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, and helped organize the department’s annual COPS Walk fundraisers for the Concerns of Police Survivors organization benefiting the families of fallen officers nationwide.
Wood, who was wearing a replica of fallen Providence Police Sgt. Cornell Young Jr.’s badge No. 373 Friday, said he got involved in the fundraising effort back in 2001 because many other states don’t provide the support Rhode Island has given the families of its police officers lost in the line of duty.
The local department has already raised more than $50,000 for the organization by walking 450 miles to the annual National Law Enforcement observances in Washington, D.C. each May and will be adding to the tally with the latest edition this spring.
Sgt. Mark Cabral will be taking on Wood’s past role to organize this year’s walk and said Friday he was proud to be following in his footsteps on such an effort.
"As a patrolman, I came to Tony Wood for advice on a lot of things and as a sergeant, I still come to ask him things and what do you think of this,” Cabral said.
That might be reason enough for someone like Wood to regret a decision to leave, but the local detective said Friday he isn’t going to spend time second guessing that step.
“I’m moving on to the next phase of my life. You’ve got future leaders of the police standing right here,” surrounded by his friends. “But it’s not me,” Wood said. The detective was 10-7 (police code for "Out of Service") from the department at midnight.