Police Profile Series: Sgt. Mark Cameron

RITZVILLE - In the past two editions of the Police Profile Series, we met officers who served in law enforcement in the military before becoming police officers. Today, we meet a third. But Sergeant Mark Cameron's story is a little different.

Cameron served in the U.S. Air Force from 1997 to 2006. Unlike Ritzville police officer Matt Carlson, who joined the military to help him become a police officer later on, Cameron wasn't thinking about a civilian police job yet.

Instead, Camaron's focus was on the military.

"Ever since I was [little], I knew I wanted to be in the Air Force," Cameron said. "I kind of followed my dad's footsteps. He was in the Air force for 21 years."

Cameron's father was born and raised in Georgia. Though Cameron was born in Alaska and raised all over the country since his father was in the military, he says "home remained in Georgia." That is where he graduated high school.

After graduating, Cameron didn't plan on working in law enforcement in the military at all.

"I had aspirations of going to college, becoming an officer and flying planes," Cameron said. "But I torpedoed my GPA in my junior year [of high school] so I screwed my chances of getting into one of the senior military colleges. So my plan was to attend community college, get my grades up, and transfer to military college."

After one quarter at community college, Cameron realized this wasn't going to work.

"I couldn't afford it," Cameron said.

So Cameron decided to enlist instead. He got assigned to security forces working in law enforcement.

"In security forces in the Air Force, you do a lot of things," Cameron said. "You are a jack of a lot of trades by certification and a master of some."

Right out of training, he was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base in Airway Heights, where he met his wife. Later, he was stationed in Korea, before returning to Fairchild, where he was "separated" from the Air Force.

After doing law enforcement for nine years, he decided a career as a police officer made sense.

"While I was getting out of the Air Force in Spokane, I saw an opening here at the Ritzville Police Department and I applied," Cameron said. "Ritzville was the first place to offer me a job, so I took it."

That was 13 years ago.

Cameron said while he believed some of the places he was stationed at before were small, Ritzville is a lot smaller. But he says he's OK with that.

"If I'm walking down the street here, I like being able to have a conversation with somebody," Cameron said. "That's why I kind of gravitated toward a smaller town."

Cameron says he never saw Ritzville as a stepping stone to a larger city and police department.

"We were looking for a place to raise kids," Cameron said. "A smaller town environment was where I wanted to raise my kids in, so it worked out."

Cameron named some of the same benefits to working in a small town that Officer Carlson mentioned last week.

"In a big department, you go from call, to call, to call, to call," Cameron said. "You write stuff down and if you can't solve it in five minutes, you pass it on to detectives and move on to the next call ... You always have a dozen calls on the screen, and it never gets smaller. Here, though, you take a case start to finish."

Cameron said the recent rape case here in Ritzville brought the entire department together to work the case and they investigated it start to finish.

Cameron, like Carlson last week, said that case was one of the toughest cases to handle because of the violent nature of the crime.

"I have only dealt with a handful of cases that I would consider major cases in my 13 years here and that one was probably the worst one," Cameron said. "We've dealt with other cases, like shaken baby cases. They are difficult to get through, but they don't happen every day."

Cameron said leaning on fellow officers is important to getting through the hard cases.

"Admitting that we need help isn't easy. That's why we help each other by just talking," Cameron said. "By the time I get to the end of the road and hang up my belt, I'll be 34 years in this job. You can't carry around 34 years around because we all see things that are terrible."

After being in Ritzville for a few years, the other two officers in the department left, leaving just Cameron and Chief Dave McCormick on the job. Cameron was then promoted to sergeant and two new officers were brought in.

Cameron said looking back, he's very happy with the way his career has gone.

"The job means a lot to me," Cameron said. "Keeping people safe means a lot to me. I would like to be able to talk to more people about it and have them see it from our side ... We all care. Especially in a small town, we all wear our hearts on our sleeves. I would really like people to know that. We do what we do because we care. I can't think of anything else I'd rather do."