The Reporter family loses a valuable contributor this week. Boston Police Officer Paul Johnston, the popular member of Area C-11's community service staff and the author of "The Beat Goes On," submitted his final column.

As Officer Johnston retires this week from the police force, he leaves behind a wonderful legacy. For it was Johnston and his bosses at C-11, former Deputy Supt. Paul Bankowski and current Supt. Bob Dunford, who defined community policing. And these three men, working with the other officers from Gibson Street in Fields Corner, crafted a model that has been replicated all across the city &emdash; indeed across the country.

It was Bankowski who first began to aggressively reach out to residents, and he found a willing partner in Paul. Officer Paul was so good at the job, he was assigned temporarily to the Police Academy, where it was his task to teach his vision of community policing to all new recruits coming into the Boston Police Department. And working with Dunford, who was the longtime commander of the academy, this vision was fostered and taught to every new young cop who came on the force in the last dozen years. And when Dunford was assigned to command this district, he encouraged Johnston to continue his efforts.

None of us can quite remember whose idea it was for Paul to write a weekly police column for this newspaper, but he took his task a good deal further. Rather than offering a cut-and-dried police blotter of incidents which concerned police on the district, he developed his weekly report into a delightful distilling of some of the bizarre yet everyday happenings that warrant the attention of local law enforcement.

That Paul was able to report on these incidents with his special brand of humor and good will only enhanced the popularity of his weekly reports. "The Beat Goes On" became one of the most popular features in these pages and&emdash; one that will be difficult to replace.

Paul took on the extra job of culling the police reports for unusual events and could always be found with a yellow legal pad, reporting the old-fashioned way- handwriting everything. And it was not enough for him to write it down. Like any good reporter, he wrote, revised and rewrote, until he got it right. In more than 12 years, he never missed a deadline.

Paul Johnston has been a cop's cop, but he has also been a community's cop. Current Area C-11 Captain Tom Lee ended the December police-community meeting with a surprise tribute to him and the event was attended by more than 50 community leaders from across Dorchester. Their salute to Johnston was genuine and it was clearly coming from a place important to all of them. They were there to say, "Paul Johnston's been there for us all these years and we want to be here just to thank him."

He's been a remarkable public servant, and we will miss him on our streets, but we will welcome him back anytime he wants to visit. Thanks a million, Paul.

- Ed Forry