Police Profile Series: RPD Chief Dave McCormick

Ritzville Police Chief Dave McCormick has been in Ritzville for a long time. He was born in Germany when his family lived there while his father was in the military. When McCormick was a year old, his family moved back home to Ritzville and he has been here ever since, save a year or two.

Now, McCormick has the responsibility to protect the community he has called home his entire life. That is a responsibility McCormick takes very seriously.

"I went to school here," McCormick said. "I graduated here. I know people I graduated with. I know their parents."

McCormick's experience is made even more unique by the size of the city. While a police officer serving in their hometown of a city the size of Spokane may go months without seeing anyone they know personally while on the job, that doesn't happen in a small place like Ritzville.

McCormick says this adds an extra challenge to the job.

"You have to deal with a lot more politics than you would if you were in Spokane, because the majority of the people you deal with are from the community and you know a lot of them," McCormick said. "I've dealt with classmates and a lot of people who are my age. And I've dealt with their kids."

McCormick is quick to point out that a lot of these interactions are positive interactions.

"It's not all negative," McCormick said. "A lot of it is good. But some of it just has to happen. So in a lot of ways I think it's harder [in a small community] because you know people. Because you're friends with them. You go to church with them, you see them at the grocery store. You see them downtown. You have lunch with them. Sometimes you are related to them. A lot of my family is from eastern Adams County."

While McCormick acknowledges the challenges, he wouldn't rather be doing anything else, anywhere else. Ritzville is his home. The one time he moved away from Ritzville made that even clearer to him.

"I lived in Spokane a couple years right before I started in law enforcement," McCormick said.

That happened after he graduated from Ritzville High School. He worked at a manufacturer's plant for a little over two years.

He decided that was not for him. He wanted to fly with the military, but his vision did not meet the minimum requirements. So he remembered back to a time when he had a lot of interactions with police officers.

"My dad owned a Chevron station down on First Avenue," McCormick said. "He had service contracts with the state patrol and the sheriff. So I was always around the troopers and the deputies and became friends with quite a few of them even when I was in high school."

So McCormick decided he wanted to become a state trooper. There was just one problem.

"It was the same thing, the state patrol had a minimum eyesight requirement, uncorrected," McCormick said. "I couldn't meet that requirement."

It's then that McCormick took a job with the sheriff's office working in the jail. He started that job three weeks after turning 21 in 1978.

After working in the jail for three years, he accepted a position as a warrant officer for the county. Soon he began transporting inmates between Othello and Ritzville.

Eventually that position ended in 1986. Meanwhile, McCormick went to the police reserve academy and became a reserve officer for the City of Ritzville while still working as the warrant officer for the county.

In 1987, McCormick was hired full time by the city and attended the police academy in Spokane. He has worked for the Ritzville Police Department ever since.

McCormick worked as a patrol officer for five years before being named chief of police in 1992.

Over the years, he has maintained his focus on helping people.

McComick said he has had a lot of memorable moments while on the force.

"Once we got a call about a theft at a restaurant," McCormick said. "There was a group of motorcycle riders up there who had created some problems. They may or may not have stolen some food. They took off."

McCormick caught up with them on First Avenue. When two bikes and a pickup truck pulled into a gas station he made contact with one of the men. He soon realized the case was bigger than some stolen food.

"It turns out he was wanted for a homicide," McCormick said. "When we searched the pickup he got out of, I located a handgun. At that point in time we contacted the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] because they were investigating counterfeit money back at the restaurant. So they came down and took all the evidence, including the gun."

It turned out that the homicide that the man was accused of committing was caught on tape, but the handgun was the missing piece of evidence.

"That gun I found was the one used in the homicide," McCormick said.

While that was one of the bigger cases he has worked on, the smaller cases are just as important. He says some parts of the job are very hard to perform.

"I've had to take kids out of houses that were unfit for children," McCormick said. "And that's for their safety, but it's hard. Everytime you need to do it, it's hard. But to see where they go after that gives you a good feeling. Sometimes they get reunited. Sometimes they get placed with another family member ... It's tough but it has to happen sometimes."

McCormick stresses that not all calls require police to arrest people. He also often responds to help people. Again, because of the size of the city, this often involves people whom he knows.

"The majority of the time I have to perform CPR is on somebody I know," McCormick said. "I've done CPR on a friend's dad. I've done CPR on a baby, who lived ... It can be hard because you know everyone."

McCormick says he sometimes wishes people thought more about those times police officers are out to help people.

"Some people think we are here to create problems for them, write tickets and throw them in jail," McCormick said. "But in actuality, we are here to prevent crimes and to help people when we can, and help them find resources when we can't. We aren't bad guys."