‘Police work was basically a vocation of service, as was the priesthood, but it was very immediate and there was action.’

Master detective Sam Spade and Tom Basinski have a couple of things in common. Both have lurked around dark alleys and bad neighborhoods ferreting out crime and vice, and they both wear fedoras when they work. However, Basinski, 41, an investigator with the district attorney’s office in Chula Vista and a former homicide detective for that city’s Police Department, is also a regular contributor to True Detective and Master Detective magazines. Despite almost 20 years in law enforcement, first with the Flint (Mich.) Police Department and then with the Chula Vista department, Basinski did not start out to be a detective. He was in his last semester at a seminary in Saginaw, Mich., studying to become a Catholic priest, when somewhere along the line, he realized his interests lay more with police work. Times staff writer Caroline Lemke interviewed him and Don Bartletti photographed him.

I was laying the groundwork to get hired at the Flint Police Department while I was still in the seminary. I was writing letters and getting things set up. That was in 1969 and things were really popping then. Vietnam was going on and it was the age of activism and so . . . being involved in church like I was, it was kind of the age of let’s do something. Let’s get involved at the grass-roots level so you can do some good, so you can make an impact.

It was kind of the thing to do, get involved at the bottom level, to have an impact. Don’t be an administrator, don’t work in an office, don’t oversee a program. Get in there in the trenches. A lot of people I was going to school with and who I was associated with were perhaps a little more to the left than I was at the time, so I was sort of taken up with get in the trenches and let’s fight for the common good--only I thought I’d get on the side of the police. It was kind of an idealistic point of view, but I thought, boy, if a lot of people had this idea, the world would be a better place. So that’s what I did. I got into police work.

I think when I started off studying to be a priest I was a little naive. I sort of had a kind of motion-picture idea of a hard-working priest, doing good, when in fact priests can do that, but their primary job is to be a leader of worship. And within the framework of my own personality, this really isn’t for me, although I am a spiritual person still. There was also the issue of celibacy. Priests don’t get married, and although I didn’t have anybody in mind, I wanted to keep that option open.

The thing that attracted me to police work was the immediacy. For example, if you have a problem where you need a counselor or something, you call up and make an appointment, they fit you in. When people need help and they call the police, they got ‘em right there. And you were there when it was going on, whatever was going on. I liked that. It was basically a vocation of service, as was the priesthood, but it was very immediate and there was action.

Strangely enough, I didn’t start out working a beat with the Chula Vista Police Department. I dirtied up and did undercover narcotics work for about a year. After that, I started patrol, and I did that for about eight or nine years.

I was transferred to child abuse and adult sex crimes, which is the hardest I’ve ever worked in my police career. I mean, I worked non-stop, constant, but I also felt the best. I felt more like a priest in that capacity than anything I had ever done. When you work in child abuse, you can really be a force for good in some little rascal’s life.

I did that for a year and a half, then there was an opening in robbery and homicide and I took that. It was such a thrill working homicide. When you started out, you had no idea who did it or what happened. Then you start building things, talking to people, looking at evidence, examining things, and finally one day came when you knew who the killer was, and he didn’t know that you knew. And you knew that you didn’t have enough proof to nail him, but you had all you were going to get, and it was going to be up to you to arrest him and hope that he would confess.

Those are the things that are thrilling, and if those are the kinds of things that take years off my life, it was worth it, because it was so much fun, such a thrill and such an accomplishment.