Officer Joe Harris' decision to return home works out

MATTAWA — It didn’t take Joe Harris very long to figure out he belongs in eastern Washington.

He had worked for one year as the civil rights investigator for the state attorney general in Seattle, when the opportunity to work in Mattawa came up last summer. He took it.

Harris moved back to Grant County to become the interim Mattawa Police Chief after John Turley retired. He hoped that decision would lead to the permanent chief’s assignment. It did, last Thursday evening.

“I just wanted to come back to Mattawa,” Harris said.

Harris has been in law enforcement since 2001, starting with the Quincy Police Department. He worked for the Grant County Sheriff’s Department before taking the job with the attorney general.

One of the reasons Harris wanted to come back is that he is familiar with Mattawa and its population. Because he was fluent in Spanish, the sheriff had him work in the Mattawa area and later assigned him to the School Resource Officer post in Mattawa.

Harris thanks his first wife for being fluent. He met the Mexican woman in Los Angeles while he served in the U.S. Marines.

“She didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Spanish. We learned together,” Harris said.

Harris continued to learn Spanish with his second wife, a Colombian woman, and now his third wife, another Mexican woman.

Although Harris’ parents were from Yakima and Kennewick, he was not a Washingtonian in his early life. He was born in New Mexico but lived in Arizona once, Alaska twice and New Mexico twice as his father pursued his U.S. Air Force career.

While that was going on and Harris was enjoying a military hitch of his own, his maternal grandmother was one of the first people to purchase property at Sunland Estates. After she aged and became ill, she sold at Sunland and bought a new property in the area of George. Retired, Harris’ parents moved to the area to be near her.

“My whole family was here when I got out of the Marines,” Harris said.

Harris missed the Gulf War when he entered the Marines in 1993. He missed the Iraq War when he separated in 2001. But when the twin towers were taken down by terrorists, he thought about going back in.

“I was already hired at Quincy, and I was driving to the police academy on the west side, and I almost turned back,” Harris said. “My wife said that if I did that, she wouldn’t be here when I got back.”

Harris continued on and started his law enforcement career, which he said is similar to serving in the Marines. And he and his first wife divorced.

Serving in the Marines was something Harris “always wanted to do.” His grandfather, father and brother had served in the Air Force.

“I wanted to be different,” he said.

According to Harris, Mattawa has been peaceful for eight years, rated as the third safest city in the state. Gang activity is down compared to before 2009, he said, and he credits Turley’s community policing program for that.

Harris intends to continue community policing. He noted that a recent community policing project headed by officer Maybel Pantaleon was highly successful. She drew 500 people to a licensing seminar by the Department of Licensing.

Harris said his office has launched a Facebook page to help with community policing.

The budget for Harris’ office supports four officers, in addition to the chief. He has two and is in the process of hiring two more, doing background checks on two applicants.