Police Profile: Officer Matt Carlson

RITZVILLE - Matt Carlson grew up here.

But if you told him he'd be back working as a police officer, even he may be surprised, not about being a police officer though.

He knew he was going to be in law enforcement since he was a teenager, but he never imagined it would be in his hometown.

In fact, Carlson knows the moment he made the decision.

"I was 16 and I went on a ride along with the Washington State Patrol here in Ritzville," Carlson said. "It made me want to be a police officer."

Carlson said he was excited to get an up-close look at what officers do.

"It was a pretty good night," Carlson said. "As a trooper, of course, he made a lot of traffic stops. But he also made a couple of arrests and showed the versatility of everything they do."

Carlson said the trooper he rode with also was instrumental in him to plan his path to become an officer.

"He was the one who explained that the best way to do it is to go into the military," Carlson said. "Then it's easier to get into law enforcement afterward."

While Carlson grew up in Ritzville, he spent the final two years of high school in Odessa.

After graduating from Odessa High School, he took the advice he got that night on the ride along and joined the United States Army.

"It sounded like fun," Carlson said. "I joined the military, not just to have something to do, but also to get that college if I wanted it and to serve my country."

In the Army, Carlson kept his focus on becoming a police officer. He says the Army didn't make this difficult.

"The good thing about the army is you get to pick your job," Carlson said. "I thought, 'Well, I want to be a police officer later in life.' So I decided to be a [military police officer]."

Carlson spent 15 years in the Army, all in law enforcement. His first posting was in New Jersey. He also traveled to Germany, Korea and several places inside the United States as well.

Carlson was in Texas when he left the Army. At this point, returning home to Ritzville was not a priority. So he searched for jobs near where he was at and found one in Killeen, Texas, a city with a population of about 128,000 people.

Despite Carlson's experience in the military, he still had to attend Texas' police academy.

"It was pretty hard, I'm not going to lie," Carlson said with a chuckle. "It's not an easy thing to do to become a Texas police officer."

Carlson still had no plans to return to Ritzville.

"I really thought I was going to enjoy the big-city policing I was doing there in Texas," Carlson.

After experiencing the job for awhile, he started to change his mind.

"The further I got, I was like, 'This is not what I want to be doing,'" Carlson said. "You didn't get to do anything but go from one call, to another call, to another call. You didn't really get to help anybody. You didn't get to interact with anybody. You took down what was stolen, passed it off and went to the next call. You didn't get to do any proactive stuff."

This was eye opening to Carlson because helping people is what he wanted to do.

"I wanted to be able to help people out, but I found out that on the job, you are dealing with people on their worst days and you don't get to help people as much as you want," Carlson said. "When we deal with people, it might be because someone is going to jail, someone is getting a ticket or someone is going to get upset with us because we tell them they can't do what they're doing."

After doing this for about two years, he left. He took some private jobs before deciding to move home. After being back in Ritzville for about a year, an opening came up at the Police Department and he applied for it and was hired.

Carlson said he has enjoyed being an officer here in a small town a lot more than he did in Texas.

While officers in a small town may not see horrific crimes as often as an officer in a large town, Carlson was reminded that these types of incidents can happen anywhere last June when he responded to a call about a rape in Ritzville.

"That particular situation was the worst sexual assault that I ever responded to in all my years, and I've responded to quite a few," Carlson said.

Carlson said these kinds of cases can be difficult to deal with.

"We all have a coping mechanism," Carlson said. "Law enforcement's coping mechanism is we all stick together. We know we can talk to each other about things, more so than we can to even our families. I feel like we do a pretty good job of keeping each other from really letting those things bother us. Because it does get really intense."

Carlson said that the fact that the police investigation of the rape led to a conviction made him feel a lot better.

"That is one way that we can help people," Carlson said.