Robin James has come a long way since being a high school drop out in North Carolina.
Last month, James stepped down as chief of the Puyallup Police Department and will officially retire at the end of June.
For the last five years he’s been the Puyallup chief and was with the Durham Police Department for almost 30 years before that.
“I think I bloomed a little later than some,” James said. “I just wasn’t ready.”
He dropped out of high school his junior year with no direction in sight. Often times he’d get a job to make a little money, then spend his time at the beach until it was time to make more money.
About a year later, he got his GED and enrolled in a junior college. It was there he met people who were in law enforcement and he found what would be his calling for 34 years.
“I don’t ever remembering thinking about it specifically,” he said about being a police officer when he was a child.
But the games he played all revolved around getting the bad guy, whether it was cops and robbers or soldiers.
“As I was coming up that’s what I played with,” James said.
Many of the police officers he met were former athletes or former military. They were roles he did not fit in to.
“(At that time) I wasn’t your typical cop,” he said. “I don’t know why they hired me.”
But the career fit, so he took the police exam to get into the Durham Police Department. That choice turned into 20 years of work in multiple units from patrol officer to commander.
A leadership role was something he found out he’d be suited for early on in his career. One of his first evaluations stated he showed strong leadership abilities.
When he was ready to leave Durham he began searching for a chief of police position. James wanted to find a place that would be challenging, interesting and a great community. An online search showed a vacancy in Puyallup.
“That’s how I found it,” he said. “It’s not Mayberry and it’s not Kansas City but it’s a great place to live and work.”
Councilmember Kathy Turner found James had a polite charm about him during his initial interview. He was the epitome of a southern gentleman, she said.
“It showed his friendliness,” Turner said. “Anybody can go up and talk to Robin.”
He’s always made people feel comfortable and he emphasized that comfort in proactively combatting crime in the city.
“Under his leadership, solving our meth problem was a priority and he emphasized making Puyallup a drug free community,” Turner said.
That proactive approach is what James is most proud of about his time in Puyallup. Too often law enforcement is reactionary to problems, but with proactive units like the Problem Oriented Policing Unit, the department has made strides to attack problems before they get out of hand.
“We don’t look at a problem as a one-time deal,” James said. “It always involves analysis at several levels.”
Under James’ leadership Puyallup has become a force in pushing legislatures to pass laws that make it more difficult for crystal meth makers to get the products they need and making it more difficult for would-be scrap metal thieves to sell their haul.
“I’ve done everything in law enforcement that I wanted to,” he said.
His time in Puyallup wasn’t without its share of controversy. In 2006, a grievance letter was signed by 20 officers opposing his leadership. When the letter was leaked, a contingent of 13 officers filed a lawsuit against the city because the leak was in violation of the city’s whistle-blower policies. The city and the officers later settled.
With both accomplishments and controversies behind him, the 54-year-old is ready for the next set of challenges.
He recently earned his master’s degree in Public Administration at the University of Washington and will put some of that knowledge to work in Honduras. Later this week, he and his wife will move there. She has family there and he is ready to work toward providing school supplies, guidance and facilities for children in the third world country.
“They’re good people; they just don’t have money,” James said.
He feels blessed that he is in a place in his life where he can spend a retirement trying to help those less fortunate.
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