Officer Timothy Robert Bradley

In this portion of the interview SPPHS’s Sergeant-at-Arms Bradley discusses the creation of the largest law enforcement time capsule in the USA.

Interviewed December 29, 2005 by Kate Cavett of HAND in HAND Productions

The Interview

I’m Tim Bradley. Timothy Bradley. I’ve been a police officer now for a little over thirty years. I started my career in 1975, in September, I believe it was the 8th. Quite a changing day in my life, the start of a tradition, actually a calling of what I would look to as being the calling of a street cop. And with that calling I became committed to preserving the traditions and the history of the department I love.

When people talk about history to me, I usually think about my grades in junior high, high school and college and there was always a lot of room for improvement, trust me. A “D” like my girlfriend’s daughter says, stands for done. I got it done. So, it’s really kind of funny, when a person would bring up the word time capsule, usually what comes to mind is a sense of history, and that had not been my thing.

History, as I got caught up into it, was from looking at a police department from the very beginning of its existing in the city of Saint Paul up to its current time. The millennium was a HUGE thing that society was, not only suspiciously embracing to the point where we didn’t know whether computers were going to stop functioning or time chips and different chips in cars and that were going to fail and automobiles were going to sit idle in the roadway and not go anywhere, or planes wouldn’t fly. It’s actually kind of humorous to look on it, but it did raise a lot of thoughts of who we are, where we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going. A lot of people looked at time capsules as a way of marking the millennium.

I really like hands-on things. The more difficult it is, especially when people say you can’t possibly do that, it won’t work, it’s too time intensive, too much money. Those things—when you say things like that to me it’s very intriguing. Actually, it nudges me on.

Everybody has got a little bit of procrastination in them and I certainly had mine for about ten years in my life, from the age of 25 to 35. Then all of a sudden I realized that I had a lot of projects, a lot of irons in the fire that weren’t necessarily completed and I kind of just all of a sudden changed. One of the things that really showed that I had tackled that part of frustration in my life was the time capsule.

I’ve done a lot of research. A curiosity to a lot of people, there are a great number of time capsules that are buried and never found. I found that rather disturbing, so I when I started designing this incredible time capsule, I decided it can’t be buried and it should stay visual because it’s such a tease. With the generations that we have raised within the last forty years of, I would really like a slice now and maybe a slice while I’m waiting for the slice, and then if there’s a piece left over, well, we’ll see if it stays there. The bottom line is that this thing started to take on a life of its own and I realized it had to be a visual. And, of course, when you talk about time capsule then and you’re not going to put it in the ground, well then you’ve got protection issues and you’ve got to, not only protect it against the elements, but you have to protect it against criminals and people that would like to take the contents of the capsule and walk away with it and maybe sell it or keep it for themselves. So, a lot of things came into play.

As I put pen to paper and made sketch after sketch after sketch, this thing, it basically wrote itself. Its dimensions wrote itself, its particular structure, the angles that were cut on it, what type of iron it would be made out of, what type of stone it would rest on, and it really took on a life of its own. It consumed me.

I’m a typical police officer, since I started thirty years ago, like I’ve told other officers, I’ve probably never worked less than a sixty hour work week and sometimes a hundred and ten hours a week.

Working off-duty is not a stranger to me. I’m really fortunate because a lot of the jobs that I worked off-duty on, were ones where I was just sitting and protecting either an art exhibit or whatever. It allowed me a lot of time to do research and to make phone calls and to sketch and re-sketch and redesign all these different projects and, of course, the time capsule being one of them.

I was really fortunate, because the Saint Paul Police Department, through this window of community policing and the concept of having your street line officers, your street cops, having a say in what happens in the police department. It gave me a voice, so they were all kind of already in tune to this fact that, “Let Tim run with his idea, at least let’s see what he’s got going.” I had a foot in the door.

When I gave the presentation to the chief [Finney] and all of the deputy chiefs and the commanders, I brought in a sword from the 1500s, the Renaissance period, and this happened to be a German hand and a-half bastard sword and it’s gorgeous. I borrowed it. It was used by the knights in battle and it was extremely visually impressive to see this. I brought it along in a blanket and halfway through the presentation, I took it out of these wrappings and wielded it and everybody backed up and they said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m showing you a piece of history. And this particular sword is worth the price of a Glock handgun.” I said, “If you put it into perspective, what I’m asking the department to do is per officer make a lot less of a donation to making sure that the history of the Saint Paul Police Department, the fabric frozen in time at the year 2000. Is there a hundred years from now and presented to a police department and to a community so they can look at it and say ‘this was the Saint Paul Department in the year 2000.’” That was the spin of it.

Then I proceeded to lay out the things telling them about the ten inch Lake Placid blue stone granite that it would be carved out in with Honor, Pride, Service and Dedication in letters around this capsule, which is about seven feet six inches tall, twenty-two inches in diameter, its quarter-inch stainless steel with a thirty-six inch bevel on the top. A hundred years from now, can you imagine what the value of those artifacts will be in the time capsule, it’s amazing.

I had all these sketches and all these visualizations and I just told them, I said, “Here’s the deal. I will go out, I will raise the money, I’ll take care of the business, I’ll design it and I’ll have it constructed. I will write the ceremony for the dedication and all’s you have to do is say yes.” Well, it’s pretty hard to say no. I had a track record of successes, whether it was putting up the Christmas decorations on Eastern District or playing Santa Claus for Gillette Children’s Hospital or the 1999 photo shoot of the entire police department at the State Capitol, so there were a number of successes which I could draw from, including the bike patrol, just to say trust me a little bit and I’ll spend the energy, I’ll spend the time. They said yes, they gambled and I appreciated that, but it was a monster, an absolute monster.

To research , design the time capsule took Hundreds of hours. Hundreds of hours. Channel 4 did a special on it, and I do have the special. What I had done, I already had the capsule built and the granite was on site and they were going to bring in the capsule portion with a crane. The Chief [Finney] showed up at Eastern District where I had all the artifacts, I was numbering them, photographing them and writing a little bit of information about everything. Now, I need you to imagine this. This is a collection of six different complete uniforms, from socks all the way up to tie tacs to gun belts, firearms, to seven dollars in a police officer’s shirt. Actually I think it was eight. A five and three ones, representing what a street cop usually has on him at any particular time. Of course, sometimes they had more, sometimes they had less, but just current at that time, the year 2000. The ink pens, the tag book, the number one tag book from the year 2000, which had the 01 on it, the first tag book issued that year. It had the American flag, the State flag, the Department flag, all of the badges, from patrol officers all the way up to the chief’s badge, the entire set. All of the arm patches with all of the different rank insignias. All the different pins that were given out, the canine pins, the bomb squad pins, the mounted patrol pins, the motorcycle pins, all of those pins. The Chief’s own personal Glock, a squad shotgun, the license plates and the graphics and the badges off of a squad car, the computer from a squad car, the five top restaurants where cops ate in the city, the menus from which they could chose selections from.

Handwritten reports on the murder trial and investigation of Jones and Ryan, with personal signed notes never to be laid on eyes for 100 years, simply because the investigators that wrote their personal thoughts wanted to be deceased before their true feelings were made public. Except they told me, I could lay eyes on it. What an incredible gift they gave me.

We had a canine officer that year that won a medal, not won, he deserved a medal of valor from a situation he was in, Grady Harrison was his name. He had just gotten married, his entire wedding ceremony is in the capsule. A DVD player to play it is in the capsule. His wife was given a necklace with his badge number engraved on it. There’s a full shot of both of them, a close up of her neck, a super close-up of her necklace, and guess what is in the time capsule – the necklace. You talk about Titanic, it’s such an incredible gift to give any romantic a hundred years from now, because when they see that they will just sob because it’s just so incredibly romantic and valor. It’s some of those things that police officers really stand for.

We are knights, we are the old realm, we are the protectors of the village, we are the protectors of the king and the protectors of the truth. A lot of people say, “You’re nuts Bradley.” And I just look at them and go, you know what, it’s the 1500s, that’s where I draw my strength from. I don’t know where you draw yours from, but good luck to you and I’ll just be where I’m at because that’s where my comfort level is. But that’s where I draw my energy from. So the capsule did come to light and when the Chief came out to see all the medals, any medal that you could get as a police officer was in the time capsule. I’ve hardly even mentioned a small portion of what’s in there, but it’s absolutely incredible. When he saw that, he became misty eyed and he ordered one of his members from up in the Chief’s office, he said, “Here’s a list of what I wanted added to this. You give Officer Bradley these things immediately.” He added all these other things. So that really, to me, was significant, because I realized that the Chief, who had said yes to the project, now was even adding even more to it. He had totally bought into it. Chief Finney is very dedicated to history, and, I guess I am too, but who knew.

The day that we dedicated, which was the Police Memorial in May, it was great because it was a ceremony to honor all the police officers and families in the past that had given up a loved one in the performance of the duty of being a police officer in that trust put on them by the badge. And they were there and we had a rookie, a brand new rookie cop, and we had a retired police officer unveil the time capsule. What was so neat about is that all these survivors’ families, a lot of them took pictures of their families next to the time capsule because it was significant to them. It meant something, it was a visualization, and it was way better than I anticipated. It’s a wonderful gift to give to the city, because it speaks so well of who we are and where we are and where we’re going and where we’ve been.

The time capsule dedication plaque states:

On this Tuesday afternoon on May 15, 2001 in the year 2001,
the men and women of the Saint Paul Police Department
dedicate this time capsule to be reopened in 100 years
by our brother and sisters officers,
who share in our bond of pride, honor and dedication to service
for this city and her citizens.

Originally, it was in front of headquarters at 11th Street, 100 East 11th Street. And then it was moved to Grove and Olive, the new headquarters building at 367 Grove Street. That was fun because I could bring my children down there to see that and it just really, it took a tremendous amount of energy out of me, but it was worth it. It truly is worth it.

It took over a year to put it together. When I’m saying a year to put together, I’m talking about [heavy sigh] at least twenty to thirty hours a week. It was a job. But I knew every inch. It was funny because Finney was kind of chuckling, he goes, “Tim, all this isn’t going to fit in there.” I looked up at the Chief and I said, “Sir, it will fit, trust me. I’ve spent so much time on planning this, it will fit.”

I went to the Minnesota Historical Society, interviewed several people down in the artifacts portion of the Minnesota Historical Society. We ended up hiring a curator, a person that handles artifacts at the Minnesota Historical Society. The police department hired him to personally pack these items so that even the folds in the shirts and the way that the tie is put with fabric in between it to keep the acid over time from dissolving thread counts. There’s so many things that come into play. All of the paper in there I had to recopy on cotton paper, very, very dense cotton paper, because it reduces the risk of the acids wearing down and becoming gases inside of this time capsule, which could destroy everything. So, there was a lot of research done.

Additional research indicates ours is the largest time capsule in this country.

It is one of my contributions to my department that I am most proud of.