Two of a Kind

Georgetown’s Tommy and Joey Enricco have heard all the clichés associated with being identical twins. They look alike, often act alike, and even graduated from the University of Kentucky together with interpersonal communication degrees. 

So it should come as no surprise that the brothers have pursued the same career field and have served with the same agencies – the University of Kentucky and presently the Georgetown police departments.

“We’ve always had similar interests,” Tommy, who is a few minutes older, said. “We’ve always worked together growing up, and we just wanted to continue that. We’re both happy that we still get to be around each other, and we have a great work ethic with the way that we were raised.”

The adage “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” applies to the Enriccos. Their father, Thomas, has a law enforcement and military background.

“We learned a lot of good values from our father,” Tommy continued.

Their father served in the Army as a military police officer and later worked for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, Joey said.

Watching their dad put on the military police uniform during his time in the Army helped fuel a desire for the twins, and that desire was reinforced on a Christmas morning in the late 1990s while the family lived in Alabama.

“We saw a police officer driving down the street, and our friends just got a go-cart for Christmas,” Tommy said.

As the story goes, the police officer was patrolling the neighborhood and saw the kids playing with the go-cart, and fearing the worst, the Enriccos – now 30 – were surprised when the officer drove up with a disarming smile and said, “Hey, that’s a cool go-cart.”

“That was something that stuck with us,” Tommy said.

Community Policing

The Enriccos have mimicked the Alabama officer’s example of community policing as they approach their respective careers with aplomb.

“(Many Georgetown police officers) make fun of us, but we love vehicle lockouts,” Joey said. “We see it as an opportunity for community relations. You know how it is when people are happy to see firefighters? (But) not everyone is happy to see police officers when we arrive on a scene. However, with vehicle lockouts, we’re pretty much there to save the day for someone – obviously free of charge. But they’re so happy once the job is accomplished, and they’re very thankful.”

Community policing starts with an eye toward service, Tommy added.

“It can become contagious,” he said. “Not just with community members, but also your peers at work. Once you encourage that, the morale is high, everyone is motivated, and we get a lot of good, positive feedback from our community.

Community policing is also an attitude, Joey offered.

“My number one core is passion,” he said. “If you don’t have the passion to help people or even like people, this job is not for you. There are bad apples out there who shouldn’t be in this profession; it’s unfortunate, but our main goal is to change (the perception). Many people are skeptical about policing nowadays, especially when they watch the media, but our main goal is to change that around and hopefully give the people of Georgetown a positive experience with law enforcement no matter what the call.”

Additionally, if an officer goes through an entire shift where they don’t feel a sense of personal satisfaction that they got to help somebody at the end of the day, “Then you’re doing it wrong,” Joey said.

Policing Together

The twins say they were interested in policing from an early age, but it wasn’t until a co-op class in college that Joey got his first real taste of law enforcement.

“We had to do an internship, and I chose the (University of Kentucky) police,” he said. “That sparked the interest. I did a couple ride alongs and I enjoyed it.”

After graduating college in 2010, Joey said he was hired on at UK and went through Department of Criminal Justice Training Class No. 418. About a year later, Tommy followed suit by being hired at UK and graduating DOCJT Class No. 429.

After working for UKPD for just over three years, Joey decided to make a change, and he took a break from policing.

“I wanted a change in direction as far as leadership experience, so I looked to the military,” Joey said.

Soon, he found himself in a recruiter’s office. Shortly thereafter, Joey was in basic training, then officer’s candidate school and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

“The time when I was in the Army was the first time we were ever separated in our lives,” Joey said. “We took every single college course together, but Tommy and I vicariously live through each other. I told him about my Army experiences and he told me about Georgetown – shortly after I joined the Army in 2013, Tommy got on board with the Georgetown Police Department.”

After two deployments overseas, Joey learned he was in line for a third deployment, but decided on a life course change back into policing.

“I had to reevaluate my life, especially being 29 years old,” Joey said. “My main goal was to settle down somewhere, and I didn’t want to go to a huge department, but I also didn’t want to go to a very small department where there weren’t going to be advancement opportunities.”

Upon leaving the Army, Joey followed his twin to the Georgetown Police Department.

“After talking with Chief (Mike) Bosse, and some other officers here, I knew that Georgetown was where I wanted to be,” Joey said. He was hired on to the department in June 2017.

Rewards of Georgetown

Both Enriccos say the Georgetown Police Department is special.

“Everyone has such a great relationship with each other,” Joey said. “Not all relationships here are perfect, but we’re a close-knit enough department. You’re not just a number here … everyone knows you to the point where you’re recognized for your daily duties. That really helps with morale.”

Georgetown also offers a wide array of opportunities, Tommy said.

“We’re one of the fastest growing cities in the state,” he said. “We’re keeping up with new innovations and technology and we’re constantly improving. Because we are a growing city, we’re also going to have to be a growing police department. I know that Chief Bosse has that vision as well, and here we are in a brand new police department, and we have excellent equipment and we constantly keep moving forward.”

Both officers are young in their careers, but neither can imagine policing in another city, and each hope to move up the ladder in due time. But ultimately, being a police officer is about helping people, and it’s something the brothers intend to keep on doing.

“Helping people is the main reason most of us come into this profession,” Tommy said. “It can be something as small as doing car lockouts or maybe finding the purse that just got stolen and catching the perpetrator. It’s the little things like that which makes your day.”