Long-time Oskaloosa Police Officer Retires After 34 Years

Jim Willoughby and Troy Boston talk about their time together on the Oskaloosa Police Department.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – There was a feast and a celebration filled with smiles, handshakes, and tears. Some of those were tears of joy, while other tears were of sadness.

Oskaloosa Police Lieutenant Troy Boston hung up his belt and took off his badge for the last time on Friday. At 1 o’clock pm, he took a seat in an Oskaloosa Police squad car and made his final 10-42 call, which in police 10 code is ending their tour of duty.

Long-time friends and former coworkers like Jim Willoughby were on hand to share in the moment and the memories.

Willoughby was part of the committee and Assistant Chief of Police for Oskaloosa that hired Boston those 34 years ago. “I’m very proud of Troy. He was a really good officer when I was here, and I left in ’91.”

That close connection within the department also transferred into personal lives, and Troy’s wife Christy babysat for Willoughby’s son.

“Great young couple,” Willoughby remembers. “He was very ambitious, and he wanted to be a police officer.”

Willoughby says that, as his boss, there was never really a problem with the young Boston at the time, calling him very caring.

I caught up with Boston shortly after making his final 10-42 call.

Looking back on his years of service, Boston says there were many changes through the years. “I came in a very unique time when we didn’t have cell phones.”

At that time, officers communicated via their radios exclusively, and if you had to make a phone call, you had to go back to the station, or stop some other place to make a phone call. “So technology has played a major role in my career through the years, and it’s been challenging staying on top of all those new developments.”

“The one great thing about hiring new guys on the department is they can teach us older guys how to use the newer technology,” added Boston.

Boston worked his final years as the lead investigator for the Oskaloosa Police Department. That move was a natural one for him, and something that then Oskaloosa Police Chief Jake McGee saw, asking him if he would like to take over the investigations back in 1995.

Boston says that police officers have a tendency to move in two directions during their careers. You either stay on traffic, answering calls, working accidents. “Eventually you get to the point to where you start venturing out into other areas such as investigative wise, to where you start taking calls and doing all the follow-up yourself, which develops you into you having that investigative mentality.”

Even though he may be retired, Boston will carry many of those bad calls into his retirement years. He says that his support system through the years has been his family and his wife. “So I can go home, and I talked to her.”

Boston won the most recent BBQ-4-Badges event, and he’s been developing his craft for several years now. He shared that talent during his retirement party, smoking meat, and making other samples to share.

Boston will tell you that treated lumber isn’t good for smoking meat. “I decided that I kind of wanted to take up smoking meat. The novice that I was, I thought I would do that on my deck. It didn’t work out so well for my deck.”

“I ended up starting a fire on my deck, and the fire department had to be called, and my wife sprayed me with a fire extinguisher,” said Boston. “I can honestly say, if anybody starts smoking meat, it can’t get any worse than that.”

Those memories lead to friendly banter between the various emergency services. “Years ago, we used to play softball against the fire department, and the sheriff’s department and the state patrol. All these little inner department competitions and stuff. It’s always been good to just kind of jab each other a bit. It’s all in good fun.

Boston thanks everybody for letting him serve the Oskaloosa community for the past 34 years.

He’s not going away though. Boston has accepted the position as Director of Campus Safety at William Penn University, beginning in the first week of September.