By Stacey Mulick
The News Tribune
TACOMA, Wash. — Did you know that, at the beginning of the 1900s, Tacoma police officers held changing-of-the-guard ceremonies three times a day, and marched to their beats in formation from the station at Seventh and Pacific Avenue?
That one of the department’s chiefs ran an automobile repair shop but had no law enforcement experience?
That a group of patrol officers nicknamed the Vigilantes helped change Tacoma’s government and clean up a corrupt city and police force in the 1950s?
Neither did Erik Timothy when he joined the Tacoma Police Department 22 years ago.
He did own three worn police badges, though, and was curious to learn more about the department and its embattled history. The 46-year-old patrol officer since has become the most knowledgeable person about the department’s history.
As the department’s official historian, he’s spent thousands of hours reading old newspaper clippings and interviewing retired officers, and invested more than $10,000 of his own money collecting Tacoma police memorabilia.
“As I started to research, I found there was story after story of things fascinating, amusing and unique to Tacoma,” Timothy said recently.
For instance, the first Tacoma officers had to pay for their own uniforms, received no training and worked seven days a week. In the early years, many were dismissed if an election brought in a police commissioner with different political alliances from the previous commissioner.
Timothy could open a police museum stocked with all his treasures.
“Basically, I started gathering up any artifact tied to the Tacoma Police Department,” he said. “I’ve just been pack-ratting it ever since.”
He’s got an 1892 photo of the police force, an 1880s TPD badge he found on eBay and the oldest known picture of a uniformed TPD officer - an 1889 photo of policeman David Dowden. (He’s also got Dowden’s commissioning paper.)
In addition to about 300 old badges, he’s got a couple of dozen handcuffs, clubs and old uniforms, plus hats, commissioning papers and manuals.
Many items have been given to him by retired officers or their surviving family members. He believes every artifact tells a story. He tries to find the person who wore the badge or the uniform, or those in the photographs.
Dressed in a uniform jacket, a tie, a badge and a hat from the 1950s, Timothy can tell anecdote after anecdote about oldtime policing in Tacoma, often making 30 minutes pass without a second thought.
“It is just fascinating to listen to where we are today compared to where we were back then,” said Don Ramsdell, the department’s current chief.
Passing on a sense of legacy
Timothy is among the most popular speakers during the Police Department’s citizens academy. He’s given a one-hour time slot but can go longer. Many participants stay after to hear more.
“Everybody loves him,” police spokesman Mark Fulghum said. “Not only does he have the history and the facts, he’s got the stories to go along with it. He runs out of time before he runs out of stories.”
Timothy has tried to fold his passion for police history into the current force.
He’s spearheaded efforts to return jackets to officers’ dress uniforms, designed gold buttons for the dress uniform and redesigned the badge.
Last November, he helped get a marker placed on the gravestone of William Wickman, a Tacoma officer killed in the line of duty more than 80 years ago. Wickman’s widow didn’t have money at the time of his death to get a marker.
“I don’t think anything would have happened without his guidance,” Wickman’s granddaughter, Kay Kenison, said of Timothy. “He was very instrumental in the whole process coming to finality.”
He’s also has helped bring historical elements to the department’s new headquarters and substations.
“It’s important for all of us to know our department history,” Ramsdell said. “It gives us a great sense of being a part of something bigger than our own careers.”
Timothy grew up in the Seattle area. His interest in history started early and, as a teenager living in Redmond, he began collecting police badges and patches. He bought his first one at 14.
After high school, he worked as a jailer in Kent and as a police officer in King County and Sumner before joining the Tacoma force in 1985.
By then, a retired Renton police officer had sold him three old Tacoma police badges - a silver star with the number 200 in the center, a star with the number 98 in the middle and a special traffic badge.
Timothy asked around about the history of the badges, but no one knew. He spent hours combing through old newspapers and looking at photos until he figured out the badges’ tales.
The No. 200 badge was worn from 1910 to 1946, the No. 98 star badge in the 1880s to 1910 and the traffic badge from 1900 to 1910.
“That kind of launched the adventure,” Timothy said. “It just snowballed from there.”
In 1986, he was appointed as the department’s official historian. Each chief since has let him keep the job.
He does most of his research on his own time and with his own money. He checks stories in newspaper archives and chats with retired officers, commanders and even newspaper reporters.
He’s more interested in the department’s older history than its more recent past.
“My interest wanes in the 1950s,” Timothy said, adding that things settled down after the 1950s. Plus, with many of those retired officers still alive, opinions on the department and its officials vary.
He started out talking with officers who served in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.
“None of them allowed me to record them,” Timothy noted.
He learned that, in the 1960s, Bob Major, a captain in the identification section, interviewed three officers who joined the department in 1908, 1910 and 1925. Before he died, Major passed along his notes to Timothy.
“The job was awful,” Timothy said of the early police work. “There was a lot of corruption. There was no training at all. They were underpaid, they were overworked and they were chronically understaffed.”
A bit of personal history
Ramsdell describes Timothy as a traditionalist.
Timothy often wears a tie with his uniform and the eight-point hat not worn by most patrol officers. He also has a strong sense of pride, a commitment to the uniform and a dedication to service, and he treats people with respect, the chief said.
Timothy has even become a historical footnote himself: He was the last permanently assigned foot patrol officer in the city, walking the beat downtown along Pacific Avenue, Commerce Street and Broadway from June 1986 to June 1991.
He’s also remained on the same shift (1-11 p.m.) and in the same sector - Northeast Tacoma, the Hilltop, Upper Tacoma, downtown and the Tideflats - for 21 continuous years. That’s longer than any other officer in Tacoma police history.
“I don’t want to get up early or stay up late,” he said with a hearty laugh.
Since 1996, Timothy’s worked the Hilltop and downtown, neighborhoods he likes.
“That’s the most historical part of the city, other than Old Town,” he said.
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