Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
New Palouse Police officer
The Palouse Police Department has a new officer.
After a search which began last September to replace the retiring Joe Merry, the city issued the oath to Joel Anderson March 27 at the Palouse city council meeting.
Anderson, a 17-year veteran, began his career with 14 years in the King County Sheriff’s Department including seven years covering the unincorporated area of Vashon Island. That was followed by 16 months with the Spokane Tribal police and two years with the Kalispell tribe as an officer at Northern Quest Casino.
Anderson, 47, started for Palouse the day he was sworn in.
He first interviewed at the end of February, meeting with Palouse Police Chief Jerry Neumann and later Mayor Michael Echanove and the city council.
“I could tell pretty quickly this is where I wanted to go,” Anderson said.
Background checks were completed March 23.
“It’s been quite a process, but I think we got the right guy,” Neumann said.
Since the Town of Garfield contracts with Palouse, Anderson will serve both towns.
“I plan on making this my last stop,” he said. “I told the Chief, ‘You commit to me, I’ll gladly commit to you.”
Starting
Officer Merry retired Nov. 28 and in turn became a reserve officer for the Palouse department. In Merry’s place, during the search for a replacement, reserve officer Terry Snead came in. His last day will be April 22 as he goes to North Carolina for his other profession, to act in summer stock theater.
Merry is still a reserve, while Anderson works his first weeks alongside Snead, Officer Joe Handley and Neumann.
“We’ll be four strong for about a month,” Neumann said.
Anderson will now learn the area.
“We don’t need to teach him to be a police officer, he’s been one for 17 years,” Neumann said. “We just need to teach him to be a Palouse police officer.”
Now moving to Palouse with his wife, Rainy, and three-year-old daughter, Rainy will continue to work as the business manager for the Wellpinit School District – spending three days a week on site and a fourth working from home.
The couple sold their house in Nine Mile Falls and are now looking to buy in Palouse.
Anderson also has a 13-year-old daughter from his first marriage, who lives in Olympia.
Career path
He became a police officer after years of working elsewhere.
After graduation from Sehome High School in Bellingham in 1988, Anderson went to Western Washington University for a degree in Parks and Recreation Administration with a minor in Philosophy.
He began his career managing the Gig Harbor Athletic Club, after which Anderson left because he disliked the pressure of sales. He then worked as a reservations supervisor for Alaska Airlines at a call center in the city of SeaTac. The whole time, his best friend from high school, a police officer, was saying Anderson ought to be a cop.
Anderson said no, but he did take his friend’s suggestion to apply with the Washington State Patrol dispatch – similar to his job with Alaska Airlines but with more pay.
He interviewed and soon left the job through which he once flew to Puerto Vallarta for $6 in first class.
Working for the state patrol dispatch in Bellevue, Anderson played in softball and basketball leagues with cops and they said, ‘come on, you gotta be a cop.’
“After about two years, I got the bug,” Anderson said.
Eventually, he went to police academy in Burien at age 31, starting his law enforcement career the day after Sept. 11, 2001.
Starting out working with field training officers in King County’s unincorporated areas, he was soon assigned Vashon Island, the unincorporated island in the San Juans with 10,000 residents – or 40,000 during the Strawberry Festival in July.
“I fell in love with community-oriented policing there,” Anderson said.
He lived in Gig Harbor and took the ferry to work. If and when he had to arrest someone, he put the suspect in the patrol car, and drove onto a state ferry – first car on, first car off – to meet another officer in West Seattle to take the accused from there.
In November, the city of Palouse increased the wage in its search for a new officer.
Approved Nov. 14 as part of an overall city raise wage package for the 2018 budget, the new rate offered was $44,000 per year, up six percent.
Anderson’s stated plans for the long-term are now set, thinking about his older daughter perhaps going to WSU.
“And I want to give my three-year-old a house to grow up in,” he said.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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