CHAMPAIGN — Gary Spear had no intention of working in Champaign.

Now you'd have a hard time getting him away from here.

Spear, 57, is spending the last day of a 35-year career with the Champaign police department Thursday.

As the first crime analyst for the city, he has seen technology play an ever-increasing role in law enforcement.

"When I first came here, we did not have any computer system," said Spear. "I remember the first time a word processor came into the department."

Now, officers have cell phones and squad cars have laptops. He has been creating maps of crime in the city for officers and others for years; even those maps have more data than ever before.

"We've moved from a generation where every officer had his notebook," he said, pointing to his shirt pocket. "There's so much data today that the police officer does not have enough time ... to go through all the available data."

Spear envisioned a career with the federal Bureau of Prisons when he was studying at Illinois State University and finished his degree at the University of Stockholm, because Sweden had an international reputation for progressive approaches to prisons.

He came back from Sweden, got married and started graduate school at what was then Sangamon State University (now the University of Illinois at Springfield).

But his wife was reading the newspaper and saw an ad for a position with the city of Champaign.

"I really didn't want to work in municipal government," he said. Then his wife read the salary from the ad: $10,000.

"We were living on $400 a month," he said.

His first job in 1976 was aimed at using data to reduce burglaries, under a federal grant.

In his early years, volunteer retirees would sort copies of police reports by geographic areas within the city.

"We could look at times and dates," along with the geography, he said, but "it could take you a long time to do that."

The goal was to provide police with information that would help them solve crimes.

Much of the data is the same now, but because most of it is generated electronically, it is far easier to make connections in the data and get it to officers.

Officers are "no longer driving around the beat. When officers hit the streets, they know what the problems are, they know where to go."

Is there a risk that there's too much data?

"Not in my opinion," he said. "I'm of the opinion that you can't have too much information. The challenge is to decipher that information" and make it meaningful before sending it to the officers, he said.

Spear "helped tie different pieces of information together that would make sense, so officers know who to go after and what areas to patrol with more resources," said Troy Daniels, a deputy police chief in Champaign.

He noted that Spear also was the person many anxious parents would talk to before their children moved to town to attend the UI.

"Gary's reassuring voice was there to answer that our city was safe, and a good place to live," Daniels said.

Bill Curry shared an office for a couple of years with Spear, before moving to work for METCAD — where he continued to work with Spear on mapping and crime data.

He said Spear has a "strong work ethic and customer service attitude. He took (and) takes many calls from people who are moving to the area who are concerned about neighborhood crime levels."

Spear leaves at a time when public employees are under some criticism.

"I've been here 35 years," he said. "Have I seen officers who didn't do everything they should? Sure. Are there people like that in every job? Sure."

"They put up with so much," he said, "to do a job that not many people want to do."

He acknowledges the criticism.

"I accept people who want to say whatever they want — that's fine. They are paying my salary and they have the right."

But, he said, the people he works with "want to do a good job. ... You can impact an entire neighborhood. The officers I see really take that to heart.

"I'm proud to say I've worked here," he said. "I'll always be proud of that fact."

Spear has no immediate plans — he told a friend he wasn't sure of his schedule for Friday morning after the newspaper and coffee. But his wife, Edna, continues to work at the UI, and they have two children and five grandchildren living close by.

He may resume volunteer work. He has worked on mission trips to help rehabilitate homes, and with Habitat for Humanity.

He helped launch Crimestoppers of Champaign County in 1986. The actual phone that rings when someone calls Crimestoppers was, for years, on his desk. (Now it rings at a call center in Texas that handles Crimestoppers calls from all over the country.)

"For what we put into that, it gives you the biggest bang for the buck," he said, recalling a very specific tip about a double homicide in Champaign in February 1988.

Former UI football player Harry Lee Gosier was a suspect almost immediately.

The next morning at about 6 a.m., the caller told Spear not only that Gosier had committed the killings, but where he was at that moment, "hiding in a basement in a little room behind the furnace."

"I have never doubted in my mind that we would have solved that case," he said. "But (with the tip) we solved that case in about 24 hours."

Daniels said Crimestoppers tips have led to more than 1,100 arrests.

"That will impact the safety of (the area) for years to come, for as long as Crimestoppers exists."

But he said Spear's career is more than that.

"On a personal level, Gary is always a gentleman, always has a positive attitude and he is going to be sorely missed."