In his 26 years with the Lawrence Police Department, Sgt. Mack Pryor earned a reputation for keeping a level head.

Once, when Pryor was negotiating with an armed man who was holed up inside an apartment, Pryor threw a two-way telephone onto the man’s doorstep so they could communicate. The suspect opened his door and fired his gun at the telephone.

According to Lt. Dan Affalter, Pryor turned around and said, “I think I’m establishing a rapport with this guy.”

Pryor, 55, who joined the department in May 1978, will work his last day with the department on Monday. A morning ceremony in his honor is planned.

“Twenty-six years ago, I could never have hoped to have fallen in with such good and dedicated people,” he said.

In addition to supervising detectives, Pryor is the department’s chief hostage negotiator and teaches the department’s new recruits about negotiating skills.

As a detective, Pryor had a knack for catching scam artists, said Affalter, Pryor’s supervisor.

“He’s considered an old-timer. His hair’s turning gray. He’s been there, done that, and doesn’t get excited about a lot,” Affalter said. “He just plugs along real steady.”

Affalter said Pryor had the most important job in the detective division. The duties include reading through reports each day, assessing the solvability of each case, assigning them to individual detectives and guiding their work.

Pryor said he was proud that the department had no unsolved homicides and that the streak hadn’t changed in his years in charge of detectives.

Pryor grew up in Wyandotte County and served an Army tour of duty in Vietnam. He said he planned to spend the next year as a stay-at-home parent to his two 11-year-old children.

“I’ll miss the challenges and the people — mainly the people,” he said.