By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — Just as some had predicted, the doors of hastily-planned retirement have begun to swing open for experienced city police veterans as they attempt to exit before possible budget-balancing rollbacks in pension benefits take effect.

The latest to call it quits was Detective Lt. Timothy S. Paul, who, among other things, had served until recently as the department's public information officer. After 21 years on the force, Paul, 47, suddenly found himself cleaning out his locker on Tuesday, his last day.
“It's just the uncertainty of the future,” said Paul. “I'd love to stick around, but with the economy and the governor and the mayor facing all these decisions about pensions and salaries, it seemed like the right time to move on.”
Of course, says Paul, none of the threatened rollbacks that could, in effect, rob him of thousands of dollars in retirement benefits in coming years are cast in stone, and there is no guarantee that all of them will take effect. But after much consideration of local government's dilemma, Paul says it seems inevitable that city workers will take a hit. As he puts it, “Something's coming.”
Paul is the fourth veteran police officer to put in for retirement in the last several weeks.
The others included Juvenile Detective John Donlon who, with 28 years on the job, was the most senior policeman on the force.  Patrolman Earl P. Ledoux from the traffic bureau and Detective Lt. Marc Turcotte of internal affairs also retired.
And Paul says he won't be the last policeman to file retirement papers with the personnel department in coming days.
Though it remains unconfirmed, he says Detective Commander Walter Warot and Detective Lt. David Crepeau are on their way out, too.
If the sudden trickle of retirements grows into the much-predicted wave, the loss of manpower through attrition would throw yet another variable in the mix that is muddying-up the forecast of staffing patterns of the police department. Mayor Susan D. Menard is threatening to lay off as many as 37 policemen if other savings are not achieved in the city budget through voluntary salary and pension rollbacks.
Among the money-saving ideas floating about the public sphere are the abolition of annual 3 percent cost of living adjustments, or COLAs, for government employees who retire after March 1. Gov. Donald Carcieri also wants retirement benefits to be available only after government workers have reached 59 years old, an age few police officers ever reach while still on the job. Menard is looking for across-the-board pay cuts of 5 percent from city employees and first-time-ever health co-pays of 25 percent.
The root problem is that Carcieri is attempting to close a $357 million gap in the state budget. Part of his solution was to impose mid-year cuts of about $55 million in state aid to cities and towns, including $3.6 million for Woonsocket.
Police Chief Thomas S. Carey is hopeful that the feared tsunami of retirements never materializes, but he's keeping a watchful eye on the situation. Cops with 20 years on the job can retire with a pension of just 50 percent of their salary – hardly a bonanza for people with kids and mortgages, he says. As of this week, however, the department, which would have 101 members at full strength, was down about 10 positions, including the new retirees and that of deputy chief, which remains unfilled in another administration money-saving move. Another five members of the department are listed as injured on duty.
Nine more members the department is counting as part of the active roster are either enrolled in the Municipal Police Training Academy or they are recent academy graduates  who are still in field training with more experienced officers.
Ultimately, said Carey, when police veterans retire, their shoes are filled by lower-ranking officers rising through the ranks. The impact eventually reaches the patrol ranks who do most of the street-level policing in the city.
“Patrol is a major function of any police department,” said Carey. “Anytime you have any movement, you've got to be mindful of the impact on patrol and do what you have to do to make sure all shifts are covered.”
As Paul took in the shape-shifting economic landscape of late, he reluctantly began looking for another job. Though he would not be specific, he said he landed a position as an administrator in the field of health services for disabled. His first day was Wednesday.
A onetime policeman for the now-defunct state Park Police, Paul says he loved his job as a city policeman, but he says he didn't want to play roulette with his income because “I have a family to worry about.”
Paul was involved in some of the most-high profile police investigation in the history of the department and found personal satisfaction in getting the bad guys off the street. As a member of the police department's forensics unit, he helped put rapist Gary Rasey behind bars in 2001, and, a few years before that, while assigned to the detective bureau, he was a lead investigator in the brutal torture murder of Pamela Plante. That probe led to the capture and conviction of James Brown, who was sentenced to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole for the crime.
For Paul, however, the arrest didn't have to come in a high-profile case to be satisfying.
“They're all pretty stinking good,” he says. “When you can take a bad guy off the streets, it's better than winning the Super Bowl or the World Series. There's no better feeling than getting a creep off the streets.”