By CARA LORELLO
Staff Reporter
Ask Medical Lake Police officer Abram Bingham what he likes best about his new job; he'll likely say it's the 10-minute commute and pace of the environment that makes it work.
Bingham started at MLPD Oct. 1 as a lateral entry officer who brings three years experience as a federal security officer in Adams County. He attended Eastern Washington University and is currently building a house in Cheney, where he, his wife and their two sons, one in preschool and the other 15 months, now live.
Prior to being hired by Medical Lake, Bingham was commuting 150 miles one way to his job in Hanford, where he said he spent some time patrolling the decommissioned nuclear complex, where government waste disposal activity continues since nuclear activity shut down in the 1970s.
As an officer for a tactical response team, there wasn't a whole lot of action, he said. Bingham hoped to break into regular law enforcement, and when he heard MLPD was hiring, he answered the call.
“The money was better [at Hanford], but the commute was getting to be too much for me. Cheney was where we'd always hoped to end up,” Bingham said.
Moving from a town of about 13,000 in Hanford to the rural West Plains requires no big transition either, he added.
“I'm used to the rural, small town atmosphere here. It's exciting to have good calls now and then, but not every day,” Bingham said of why he prefers work with a small agency to larger jurisdictions, Spokane and Spokane Valley being two local examples.
“You can get your call and finish it without having to hand it off to a detective. You get to do more police work that way, I think, which is nice,” he added.
Bingham is now one of five police officers at MLPD, including its interim chief. As a lateral entry hire, he won't have to go through extended police training at Burien, Wash.'s police academy. He will, however, be required to complete a two-week “refresher course” there since he served the last three years in a security position where the nature of the work is less intense compared to full-time patrol duty, he added.
Bingham was also hired as a reserve office with the Cheney Police Department in April, a post he said he intends to keep if he can manage it with his full-time schedule.
Bingham and his wife, who is employed with the Spokane County Medical Examiner's Office, are set to spend the rest of the year in their summer home on Badger Lake until next spring.
“We just started [building the new house] in September, starting with the foundation. We'd hoped to be moved in by Christmas, but that probably won't happen…but you can't beat that commute,” he added.
Cara Lorello can be reached at [email protected]
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