By Jeremy Burnham
Reporter 

Police Profile Series: RPD Officer Tom Gracie

 
Series: Police Profile | Story 2

Last updated 2/12/2020 at 3:43pm

Tom Gracie

In last week's debut of the Police Profile Series we met Ritzville Police Chief Dave McCormick, who started law enforcement work at the age of 21. While starting a career in law enforcement early in one's life is common, Ritzville police officer Tom Gracie entered the field a little later in life.

Gracie joined the Coulee Dam Police Department at the age of 40 in 2005. He then joined the Ritzville Police Department in 2010 and has been here for the past nine years.

"I was working in the auto parts industry and it got really unstable," Gracie said. "Jobs became fewer and fewer and there was no real retirement or anything like that. So I decided I needed to make a change."

Before his time working in the auto parts industry, Gracie did have some related experience. He joined the army and served as a military police officer for four years in the 1980s.

So when he decided to move on from auto parts, choosing his next path was not a difficult decision.

"It's the only other thing that I had done so I knew it," Gracie said. "It's a good thing to do. Make a difference in the world, so here I am."

This wasn't the first time his military experience influenced his life decisions. Gracie grew up on the East Coast. He only came to Washington because the army sent him to Tacoma. After leaving the military and returning home for about a year, he decided to permanently move to Washington.

"The affordability out here back then was a lot better than the East Coast," Gracie said. "It was just nice. I liked the water and I like the mountains."

He returned to the Tacoma area and started selling auto parts. Gracie's move to law enforcement took him to the east side of the state.

"I hated the weather over there [in Tacoma]," Gracie said. "The east side is always nicer. The jobs came open over on this side so that's where I went."

Despite Gracie's past as a military police officer, he still had to go through the whole process of becoming a police officer. This included many tests and exams, all of which had to be passed before he attended the police academy.

Gracie's first job as a sworn police officer took him to Coulee Dam Police.

"There was a lot of overtime," Gracie said. "It was a small department, kind of like it is here. We had a contract with the dam to law enforcement for them too. Half the city was on the reservation, half wasn't. We were also in three different counties ... So there were a lot of different issues of where you had to go, who was who and whose jurisdiction you were in."

Gracie also said that due to the department's contracts with the dam, uncertainty always existed regarding the stability of the job.

"A lot of the positions were actually funded by that government contract," Gracie said. "So you are always on the bubble ... It just got to be too much. I wanted something more stable where I didn't have to be worried about a contract."

So when a job came open with the Ritzville Police Department, Gracie jumped at it. The fact that his jurisdiction is now all in one county was also a selling point.

"There's one county, one jurisdiction, so everyone is under the same laws, which is perfect," Gracie said.

While the job was attractive to him, he didn't know a whole lot about the community.

"I had no idea," Gracie said. "I had passed by on the highway and that was the only thing here I had ever done."

Gracie was hired and has enjoyed working with the department. Eventually, he decided that he wanted to live in a larger area, so he moved to Cheney. However, he loved his work in Ritzville and decided to keep his job here.

"I've always like working here, but living in such a small town wasn't for me," Gracie said.

While Gracie says many people's impression of police officers are that they are just people who want to "hand out tickets and harass people," he says his favorite part of the job is when he doesn't have to enforce the law and just gets to help people instead.

"The majority of the calls aren't even law enforcement," Gracie said. "They are more public service, just helping people with this or that."

Gracie says that is what he'd most like the public to realize.

"We're just trying to do our job and make our corner of the world a little better than it was yesterday," Gracie said. "[The majority] of the people you deal with are going to be good people. Maybe five percent make mistakes, but aren't bad people. Then you have a [small percentage] that, OK, yeah they cause problems. But most of the people are good, so I just treat people the way I want to be treated. It has worked out for me so far."

 

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