After spending more than half his life with the Alexandria Police Department, Bennie Evans Jr. is taking a small break.
Not for long, he says, because he wants to get back to doing what he considers his passion — working with people. Last month, Evans was congratulated for 28 years with APD and four years with the Sheriff’s Office at his retirement ceremony with city and APD leadership at police headquarters.
“This is the first time I’ve been unemployed since I was 15,” Evans told ALXnow. “I gotta find stuff to do. The hard part for me is to stop working.”
A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Evans joined the U.S. Marine Corps after high school. Following the career of his uncle, Albert Evans, who was a Marine and then a Louisiana State Trooper, Evans spent four years in the Corps before joining law enforcement.
“Uncle Albert encouraged me, because I was always the small dog in the pack,” Evans said. “I was always a little guy, and no matter how it got with me and my cousins, wrestling, fighting, whatever it was, he would always tell me, no matter how big you are, you still got to be a dog.”
In 1994, with his young family in tow, Evans got a job as a deputy with the Alexandria Sheriff’s Office. Four years later, tired of the monotony of working at the city jail, he joined APD.
Evans recalls covering major events, including the D.C. sniper attacks, last year’s tragic plane crash over the Potomac River and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“I witnessed the plane that hit the Pentagon fly up the 95 corridor with [former officer] Peter Laboy,” Evans said. “I remarked to him that the plane was real low. Then there was an explosion like I had never heard before, and then behind that came the sonic booms of military aircraft.”
Evans was a longtime Crisis Intervention Team instructor, and for years was APD’s homeless outreach liaison. He was named the city’s Crisis Intervention Team Officer of the Year in 2011 and the Field Operations Bureau Police Officer of the Year in 2015. The next year, he received the U.S Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service in Policing, was named the Commonwealth of Virginia Crisis Intervention Team Instructor of the Year and the Alexandria Sunrise Optimist Club Police Officer of the Year.
“I’ve had a great career,” Evans said. “I started off in patrol and did nine years of straight patrol, mostly working evenings. I watched the city change multiple times.”
Evans, who has three children, said a hard part of retiring was not seeing his eldest son, Cameron, there with him. His family lost Cameron to suicide in 2013, and Evans, who was working patrol that day, remembers responding to the call at this own house when it came over the radio.
Today, he finds peace in his son’s organ donations. “It’s a beautiful thing,” he said.
“We gave one of his kidneys to a teacher in Fairfax County, and we gave his heart to a young lady who went into cardiac arrest playing soccer in New York state,” Evans said.
Four months later, Evans lost his father. After their deaths, Evans got a therapist, started group therapy and was medically treated for depression. He said he’d like to see more mental health resources available for officers.
Evans recently bought a house for his mother in Dallas, Texas, and will split time between there and Alexandria. He said he’s been talking with the city about working in homeless outreach and community engagement — work similar to what he was doing for the department.
Evans said he is thankful to retired Sheriff Dana Lawhorne and the late officer David Hoffmaster for their support.
“These are officers who invested in me and saw something in me,” Evans said.
Lawhorne, who was a detective and crisis negotiator for APD for years, said Evans cared about the department and community.
“Being a police officer is an awesome opportunity and Bennie understood that,” Lawhorne said. “He made the best of it, and his long record of exemplary service speaks for itself.”
Evans, who now has grandchildren, said this retirement is a new beginning.
“I want to be out to help people,” he said. “This community has embraced me, and I love Alexandria.”
Photos 2-7 via APD/Facebook.
