Joey Scimone’s line of work requires him to watch people’s faces and pick up on non-verbal cues.
With the pandemic in play in the last year, most people wore masks in public, and the mask covers up at least half of an individual’s face – the mouth – thereby eliminating part of the way people can communicate.
“We’ve always been trained and accustomed to look at people’s mouths and their eyes when you speak to them,” said Scimone, a Wylie police officer who has been an officer for 20 years.
But now, people have become more verbal, he said, and because of that, officers have had to adapt to when they interview someone, he said.
Scimone hails from Southern Arizona and moved around a bit when he was young because his father was a federal police officer. Scimone attended Pima College in Arizona and then moved on to William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa, where he played left field and first base for the baseball team.
“I became a cop a month after I graduated college,” he said.
His first job was in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he worked for the police department for three years. After that stint, he spent 14 years with the Wyoming Highway Patrol. He started in Laramie and then went to Cheyenne for several years before going to Douglas.
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By Don Munsch • [email protected]
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