A 'Militceoner' for Soap Lake

Ukrainian reserve police officer, a first-ever for Grant County city

Go ahead, you can say it: Militceoner (Mee-lit-see-ON-er). It's 'police officer' in Ukrainian.

It may come in handy if you live in Soap Lake, as the city welcomed 26-year-old Benjamin Kozlov, its first-ever Ukrainian-born reserve police officer earlier this month.

"The community needed it," Soap Lake Police Chief Scott Stokoe said. "With our Russian-Ukrainian community, he will be quite an asset."

Born in the small village of Bratskoe (Brats-KOH-ya), 186 miles away from his country's capital, Kiev, Kozlov has made Soap Lake his home since 1992, and after volunteering for the city's ambulance service for two years, he finally made the decision to join the SLPD, and in the process, unknowingly make history in his adoptive hometown.

"I read the article in the Herald where (Stokoe) was saying it would be nice to have somebody on board," he said. "I stopped by to pick up an application, and two weeks later, I filled out some paperwork and the chief told me 'welcome,'"

Stokoe hinted it was not as simple as it sounded.

"We ran a background check on him first," he said. "He came out clean. Before he goes to the academy, we will run a polygraph on him."

Joining the police academy is the next big step in Kozlov's career. "It starts in October," Stokoe said. "Once he completes that, after six months, he will get his American citizenship and become a commissioned reserve officer. After that, we might look into something else, maybe."

That 'something else' is steady employment with the SLPD. Kozlov believes hiring him would be a plus for a community with a significant amount of people of Russo-Ukrainian descent.

"It would be a great benefit to have somebody who knows the culture and the language," the trilingual (Ukrainian, Russian and English) Kozlov said. "Moses Lake has a large Hispanic population and they have Hispanic officers. The same thing happens with Quincy and they have a Hispanic chief."

Kozlov said he does not want to paint himself as indispensable. "There is a lot of [Ukrainian] people who do speak English," he said. "I don't want to say 'without me, they can't survive.'"

With 12 years living in Soap Lake, he does feel like there is a need for somebody to be a bridge of sorts between the cultures. "As many years as I have been here, there is always a need for somebody to interpret," he said. "When I was in High School, a person from (the Department of Fish and Wildlife) took me to translate for somebody in jail."

He added that part of the Ukrainian population of Soap Lake arrive to the city as children, and "sometimes, they commit crimes, so you have to have somebody."

Now that that somebody is there, he has undergone 18 hours of observation, and has participated in several ride-ins with the officers of the departments.

"The officers are cool," Kozlov said. "Even if they are busy, they take me on the ride-ins and they show me how to do everything, the radio communication, the day-to-day operations. It's fun."

Kozlov's enthusiasm has been helpful to him as he learns what it takes to be a police officer. "I have to learn everything," he said. "I have to observe what a full-timer does."

Stokoe has high hopes, not only for Kozlov but for the effects of his joining the SLPD might have on the community.

"We are hoping the Ukrainian and Russian people feel more at home in the community," he said. "The department is striving to serve them as well, which we do automatically, but (Kozlov) will be an asset to convince them that we are."