“Wow, there’s some stuff that goes on in Fort Dodge,” the Lehigh native, then about 21 years old, thought.

His first call was to a domestic situation with Officer Curt Ruby. Right off the bat, a man charged out of the house pointing a shotgun at them.

“Curt was out of his seat belt and drawing down the guy,” Nelson said. “I was still trying to get my seat belt off, I was so nervous.”

From August 1988 to October 2020, Nelson gave his entire law enforcement career — 32 years — to the first department to hire him, a tenure virtually unheard of today. A few things changed in those three decades, to put it lightly.

-Submitted photo
Patrolman Quintin Nelson of the Fort Dodge Police Department appears in his squad car circa 1988 or 1989. Nelson retired recently as a captain from the department after 32 years of service. He spent his entire law enforcement career with the department.

Turnover used to be constant, every car was a two-man car, shifts had about twice as many officers as they do now and mental health issues were a relative rarity — one or two encounters per month then compared to two or three per day now.

The war on drugs was getting well underway in Fort Dodge, with two or three search warrants executed each day, compared to one or two each month now. Back then, crack cocaine and marijuana were the big substances, before the advent of more dangerous drugs like methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl.

Over the years, Nelson seized close to $250,000 worth of drugs in large quantities along with Lt. Dennis Mernka, forming one of the first drug officer teams.

County and city law enforcement leadership didn’t care for each other, Nelson said, and did not work together. Ditto with other state agencies. Nelson said the City Council and mayor didn’t quite give the Fort Dodge Police Department the respect it has today.

And to top it all off, the agility test went from requiring a timed 300-yard run in 1988 to a 1.5 mile run in 2020. That impact didn’t quite reach Nelson.

-Submitted photo An early photo of Captain Quintin Nelson, who served with the Fort Dodge Police Department from 1988 to 2020.

“Let’s face it, there’s not many police officers that run a mile and a half,” he chuckled.

Over a revolutionary span of time for American law enforcement, Nelson got in on the ground level for several programs and positions. In his first few years, he served as a school liaison officer (now called a school resource officer) with Officer Lisa Campbell. He also educated kids in school with the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program starting in the early ’90s.

“Kids saw officers in a different way, instead of just arresting mom or dad,” Nelson explained of the role’s importance.

Working his way up the ranks, he served as a detective for gruesome crime scenes and elicited satisfying confessions from killers before retiring as a captain. But he’s also been shot at, jumped and had bricks thrown at his car. When his kids were young, death threats prompted them to leave the house, his wife, Rhonda Nelson, said.

“In Fort Dodge, you see a lot of different types of situations,” he said, something that spurred both high turnover and poaching of FDPD officers from other departments in Iowa, some of which could afford to pay more. “Looking back, I’m like ‘oh man, I can’t believe I did these things.’ But at the time, you just did it.”

It was just part of the job, even if the job wasn’t glamorous or didn’t pay well. His pride in the community may have been the only thing that made it possible to do a job that, at its starting wage, qualified his family of four for some types of public assistance.

No matter how much experience he gained, he never became the stereotype of a grizzled, jaded cop. In his final 10-42 sign off, the veteran officer was seen adjusting his glasses as his eyes welled up, his hand trembling to do so.

“It’s hard, after you give over 32 years to a city,” Nelson said. “The different situations I’ve seen over the years… it’s just emotional.”

Despite what he’s seen with experience, Nelson said he has gotten more emotional with age — the mark of a man who has truly invested himself with care and passion for the community he swore to protect and serve.

“That comes with time,” he said. “The longer you stay and become part of something, the more invested you are in it.”

His pride in giving back to the city also made it hard to leave, he said.

“If I was a young person starting out in law enforcement today, I’d look at a different career,” said the retiree.

Over time, he said the approach of the job become less clear cut with more hoops and paperwork to jump through. In his early days, the job was simpler.

In middle school, the officer’s career aptitude test informed him of his destiny. Though law enforcement always interested him, he wanted to be a stock broker at that point — “a big thing in the ’80s.” Nelson’s fate was sealed after he filled out an application, passed out by his Iowa Central course instructor years later, on a whim.

Now, the school-age kids he mentored stop Nelson to remind him of what he accomplished: being a friendly officer, changing the course of wayward youth and cementing bonds with kids that have paid dividends not only for them, but for the department he left in better shape than it was in 1988.

Before community relations was a publicly discussed priority for law enforcement agencies, the man known as “Gumby” more often than Capt. Nelson had an impact on pupils and the folks he arrested alike.

The nickname was coined by a fellow officer when he wore his crooked, gelled high top haircut with a green sweatshirt, giving him an apparently passable resemblance to the clay animation franchise character.

“Yeah, it wasn’t a get rich job, but I personally felt satisfied when I was able to help some. It definitely opened my eyes up,” Nelson said.

And help, he did.