Zephyrhills/East Pasco News

People of Zephyrhills: Do not adjust your eyewear. You can believe your eyes. The facial hair you’ve noticed on your policemen is not an illusion or a sign it’s time to change your prescription.

In a scheme to raise a treasury for an awards banquet in January, the department has altered its position against hirsute cops, meaning, at least through the end of the year, you’re going to be seeing more than a few beards on the boys in blue.

And Officer Caleb Rice, for one, couldn’t be happier.

Mere weeks ago you wouldn’t have guessed, but thickly thatched faces have been part of Rice’s family tradition for, literally, as long as he can remember.

“I have never seen my father’s face,” Rice says, flipping through smartphone photos until he arrives at the image of a proud man sporting a beard the color of a bronze statue, cooing into a baby’s smiling mug.

“That’s my dad,” he points, “and that’s me.” The picture is nearly 35 years old.

Then, another photo, a recent family portrait. All the men, save one, boast beards worthy of Vikings. Which is appropriate. His mom descends from Norwegians, and there’s a rumor about a family connection to Erik the Red.

“We can’t nail it down,” Rice says, a little forlornly, “so I don’t claim it.”

Now, about the bare-cheeked one: That’s Caleb looking alarmingly like Steven Furst’s sweet-faced “Flounder” from “Animal House.” Small wonder Rice readily concedes, “When I don’t have a beard, personally, I feel like I’m less” — he pauses, getting his mind around the confession — “manly.”

Let’s get this much straight. Aside from soft, beguiling features that promise to age well, there is nothing anyone would consider unmanly about Caleb Rice. Pushing 6 feet 3, he’s built like an offensive tackle: square-shouldered and sturdy, with a low center of gravity. He’s no pushover.

For the first 10 years of his working life, Rice was a truck driver, a profession famously lax regarding codes of appearance. When he became a Zephyrhills policeman about four years ago, however, the beard had to go.

“Maybe I’m old school; maybe it’s the way I came up,” says the town’s Dickensian-named — for the purposes of this story, anyway — police chief, David Shears. “I just never thought it was a good idea for policemen to have beards. It was part of the image. We were a clean-cut profession, and we ought to look that way.”

In his day, he says, if a patrolman showed up with so much as an overnight stubble, his sergeant would shove a Bic disposable in his hand and point him toward the locker room.

But, with an end-of-the-year banquet to fund, Shears was persuaded by a couple of entrepreneurial subordinates to give bristles a chance.

Here’s how the plan, cobbled together by Capt. Derek Brewer and Sgt. Nathan Gardner at the urging of patrol officers, works:

In exchange for $10 a month, Zephyrhills police are allowed to grow and keep modest, well-tended beards, no longer than 3/8ths of an inch in length. Civilian staff, who are not facial-hair restricted, can buy a full week of wearing jeans each month for that same $10.

Because in his family the beard makes the man, the day the fundraiser policy became official, Rice dropped $40 on his sergeant’s desk, announcing himself good to go through New Year’s Day.

In all, about two-thirds of the sworn staff is participating, including all the overnight shift — which somehow seems appropriate — as well as Brewer, a first-time beard grower.

“There have been times on vacation when I didn’t shave for a couple of weeks,” he explains, “but, that’s just ‘not shaving.’ It’s not the same as actually growing a beard.” Every man knows the truth of that.

At home, the reviews are mixed. While his wife loves it, he says his 9-year-old daughter “looks at me sideways.” Explaining the situation, and also that Mommy has blessed his dashing new look, the following exchange occurred:

Daughter: “Do you always do what Mommy likes?”

Dad: “I always try to.”

Daughter: “You’re going to regret that someday.”

Gardner, who, as a sergeant directly responsible for his troops, played the linchpin role of guaranteeing order despite this break from tradition, personifies irony. His cheeks sprout only fuzz.
“The only beard I can grow is a neck beard,” he says, “and nobody wants that.” So Gardner, 32, shaves and donates, donates and shaves, because, “It’s been great for morale.”

Heaven knows cops patrolling beats, even in little, relatively peaceful towns like Zephyrhills, can use some spiritual pick-me-up. Truth be told, Gardner says, interactions with Pasco County Sheriff’s deputies during the early weeks of beard-growing season have produced clucks of envy.

“I expect,” says mustachioed Sgt. Billy Adams, a Dennis Quaid double who plans to keep applying the blade until hunting season, “our recruitment pool numbers will skyrocket.”

Rice, for one, couldn’t be more pleased.

While readily declaring, “I’ve never loved doing anything more than I love this job,” Rice concedes giving up the beard he’d had since he was 15 was “a sacrifice.”

With his face once more ear-to-ear whiskers, he says, “When my three-day weekend is over, I say, ‘I’m ready. Let’s go.’ ”

This sort of happy talk is a rhapsody to those who endured and survived the department’s dark days in 2014 — well before the nation’s current unrest over policing began — and ended only after Shears and City Manager Steve Spina tackled the department’s shortcomings exposed by an external review.

And Shears, who’s still getting accustomed to the idea of patrolmen looking a little like Serpico-meets-Hans Gruber, concedes that cops wearing beards helps achieve one key law enforcement goal. “It makes us look more like the people we interact with,” Shears says. “It makes us look more like individuals, like people.”

See that? Everybody wins.

Tom Jackson, a resident of New Tampa, is interested in your ideas. To reach him, email .

Published September 28, 2016