Homegrown: Aaron Garza relishes job as school resource officer

OTHELLO — Aaron Garza said he wanted to come back to his hometown.

Garza is a 15-year veteran of the Othello Police Department and the department’s newest school resource officer. He’s back at the buildings where he went to school while growing up in Othello.

A 2000 graduate of Othello High School, Garza enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps after graduation and served four years, including one tour in Iraq. A lot of guys in their mid-20s weren’t interested in coming back home, but Garza was.

“I came back to Othello because I missed it,” he said. “The people here are amazing.”

People in Othello form some strong bonds, he said.

“When you grow up in a small town, small town living, you grow some pretty deep roots within the community,” he said.

He wanted his kids to experience the kind of childhood he’d experienced, he said.

“I had also gotten married, and I wanted to build a family in a place I felt was safe, in a place I felt my kids can feel at home. Just like I did,” he said.

His Marine Corps tour convinced him he wanted a career in something like law enforcement, he said.

“I thought to myself, ‘What careers would I enjoy doing?’ And I enjoyed serving my country, so I figured serving my hometown would be an easy thing to transition to, considering I was interested in continuing to serve,” he said.

He was hired by the OPD in 2006, he said.

“There isn’t another agency I would rather work for than the Othello Police Department,” he said.

In a small department, officers do a lot of different jobs or at least a police officer can, if he or she wants.

“A lot of it depends on your desire to pursue different assignments. And I wanted to,” he said. “I wanted to be valuable within my agency. I wanted to progress and move forward.”

So he kept looking for new opportunities.

“I’ve held and still hold a lot of different titles here,” he said.

He’s worked patrol and been a detective, he said, and worked as the department’s firearms instructor. He’s the OPD accreditation officer, and was a training officer.

“I’ve trained many upon many new recruits out of the academy, to be better police officers and make sure they’re ready when they get on the road,” he said.

He was promoted to sergeant in 2011.

The opportunity to be a school resource officer came late last year, when the department was approved for a second SRO.

“And I was very interested in it,” he said. “I have seen other officers in the SRO position, and I was always interested in what they did, and the role they played.”

He said he gets a lot of questions, from the kids at school and people in the community, about what a school resource officer actually does.

“Honestly, the answer is it’s pretty big. It’s really broad,” he said. “I like to categorize what I do into three separate categories,” he said. “(First) I’m a police officer, second, I’m a law-related counselor and I’m also like a law-related educator.”

Not everybody understands that the SRO is still a police officer, he said.

“The only thing is, being an SRO your assignment is your school district,” he said.

While he’s still a police officer for the entire city, he focuses on the school district. He still conducts investigations, and if necessary makes arrests.

But while in some ways the job is the same, new responsibilities have been added. He’s dealing with kids every day, and in that role, he’s a counselor.

That isn’t unusual for a police officer – a lot of police calls involve dispute resolution and counseling, he said. And those skills are needed at school. As the SRO, he gets calls from school officials and parents looking for ways to help kids.

And as a SRO, he can help support kids who don’t have many other options, he said.

“Building relationships is really important. At times a student might not have the trust to confide in their teacher or their counselor,” he said. “But with the relationship I can build with them, hopefully they can confide in me, and they can speak to me about some of their issues. I can help be that positive example.”

Garza said the relationships with kids are a crucial part of the job. It’s good for kids to know police officers are human just like them, and can give them advice and support.

His primary location is OHS, he said. The second SRO, Seth Carlson, is based at McFarland Middle School, but both spend time at Desert Oasis High School and the district’s elementary schools.

“Another part of my job is to be a law-related educator,” he said.

The SROs talk with students about things like active school shooters, cyberbullying and internet dangers, he said. But kids also ask them questions about things going on outside Othello, things they’ve heard or seen on social media or in the news.

“Staff and students are curious. They do want to know. ‘What would happen in this type of situation? What would you do? What do you think about this situation I heard about?’ Often I’ll get called into a class where a teacher will have a question. Sometimes it’s clearly law-enforcement related, sometimes it might be civil. But I always enjoy that,” he said.

Kids and adults alike shouldn’t hesitate to come to him with questions, he said.

“Even if it’s not law enforcement-related, I’ll direct you to where you need to go,” he said.

Garza has been an actual instructor as well, talking with students in the OHS law and justice class.

“I instruct the criminal law portion of the class,” he said.

He gives kids some of the basics of Washington law.

“It’s a great opportunity to interact with the students. They often have many, many questions and it gives us the opportunity to answer them,” he said.

While he’s new to the SRO role, he really likes the job. Talking with kids, teachers and administrators is almost always positive, he said.

“When I go to these schools and people come and talk to me about positive things, or they have questions about law enforcement, it’s really enjoyable just to speak to them in a positive context,” he said.