Book chapter on Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter, March 2005

CHAPTER 6 Michael Reiter: March 2005 sea calms, human cargo fickers aim the bows of the order their passengers to Most of the passengers who stake all they have or to time, Palm Beach cops Things get busier dur it, the season. It’s when ties and balls, shop, and Worth Avenue. The popu who work under Chief R ers, and snotty skateboar tic disturbances. Chokin stuff, but there’s always women who work for Rei Chief Reiter’s proud ( knows, they’re lucky to ha for the job. If anything, h the John F. Kennedy Sch terrorist training at Quan up often at cocktail partie hijackers lived in Palm B local airstrips. A few, incl had been regulars at 251 There they had regaled made-up stories about the But 251 Sunrise is shu 2004, after an avalanche of Beach is as quiet and calm For the moment. C hief Reiter looks more like a bank president than a cop. He’s well built, with an air of formality and discretion. But he’s got twenty-four years on the job. Decades earlier, he was a campus police officer in Pittsburgh. Then he rose, steadily, through the ranks in Palm Beach, moving up from patrol officer to detective, working vice, narcotics, and organized crime, then becoming a sergeant, captain, major, and assistant chief-a job he held for three years-before becoming chief of police. Reiter is what you’d call seasoned, although chief of police in Palm Beach is a job that calls upon his political skills as much as his street smarts. Then again, from time to time, things do happen. Once in a blue moon there are murders-though these are so rare that they tend to be remembered for decades. Sometimes there are hurricanes to contend with, and, when the 18¶