Three longtime Kent Police officers to retire; 97 years of experience

When Kent Police officers Brian Jones, Mike Painter and Wayne Himple each hang up their blue uniforms for the final time over the next month, they will take away 97 years of experience from the department.

Jones spent 35 years in Kent, Painter 32 and Himple 30. They each served in a variety of roles over three decades. Painter’s final duties are as an assistant chief, Jones as a detective sergeant and Himple as a detective.

“We have three outstanding employees we hate to see walk out the door because of the great contributions they made,” said Kent Police Chief Ken Thomas, a 23-year department veteran named chief one year ago. “But they are all well-deserved retirements.”

Other officers will receive promotions to replace the three.

“The department will recover,” Painter said. “We’ve always recovered when people left that had been here a long time.”

But the trio takes a ton of leadership and experience with them.

“It’s a lot of years to see go out the door,” Painter said. “We think we’ve done a pretty good job of succession planning trying to bring people along. But I don’t know how you reconcile almost 100 years of experience very easily.”

Brian Jones

Jones, 62, joined the department in 1977 when it had 25 officers to serve a city of approximately 25,000 over about 10 square miles. Now the city has 130 officers who serve a population of 118,200 over about 30 square miles.

“There has been a lot of growth and change and the majority of it has been positive,” said Jones, who has worked under six chiefs. “Clearly the goal is to serve the community and I think we do a pretty good job of that. It’s been a very rewarding career.”

Jones received two lifesaving awards from the department. In 2007, he responded to a 911 call of a 6-month-old baby that had been injured in an alleged abuse case. Jones provided cardiopulmonary resuscitation to save the baby’s life.

In 2006, while working at the scene of a traffic accident, Jones spotted an elderly man in a passing car suffering a heart attack and helped save the man’s life.

“I’ll miss all of it,” Jones said. “The activity, the camaraderie of the officers and staff here. And the ability to help the public and the citizens. Because when they call us, they need or want something and it’s our duty and obligation to help them.

“We respond the best we can, sometimes better than others, but always having the goal that our job is to help citizens the best we can. That is a guiding principle police officers should have and one I’ve had the entire time I’ve been here.”

Jones was born in New Zealand and grew up in Scotland. He moved in 1966 to Washington at age 16 with his single mother. He worked five years as a firefighter for Fire District 40 in Renton and four years as an operations coordinator for King County Medic One, which provides emergency medical services.

During his time with the county, Jones also worked as a deputy reserve with the King County Sheriff’s Office and served as a paramedic for the county SWAT team. That introduction to law enforcement led Jones to join the Kent Police.

Jones worked much of his career as a traffic sergeant and spent 15 years riding a patrol motorcycle. He also oversaw the Kent SWAT team before the city joined a regional squad.

“He ran a very tight ship,” Thomas said of Jones. “He was in charge of the traffic unit for several years. Brian was a really great contributor to our department and for members of the squads he supervised. He developed officers and got the most out of them.”

Few officers are as organized as Jones.

“He was always known as the guy who was completely squared away.” Thomas said. “His equipment was in order along with his units he was in charge of, everything had its place and was operationally ready.”

Jones, who retires in March, decided several years ago to walk away after 35 years with the department. Jones, who is married with three grown sons, will travel and work on his property in the Enumclaw foothills.

“It was time,” he said. “My personal goal was to work 35 years and I met that goal. It’s time to move on.”

Mike Painter

Painter, 51, decided to go into law enforcement in part because his father worked as a Port of Seattle Police officer.

Since joining Kent in 1980, Painter has worked a variety of jobs. He especially enjoyed his time as a field training officer, a K-9 officer and detective.

“The officers that I had a hand in shaping all have been highly successful,” Painter said.

Painter also spent two years in 1996-98 as commander at the police training academy in Burien.

“I love being a police officer,” Painter said as he reflected on his long career. “I love the work, the people. Everybody misses the people – the people inside and outside the department. The community has been absolutely terrific. This has been a first-class organization to work for.”

Painter said Kent Police strive to be a well-respected department.

“The citizens of Kent are very lucky to have this police department,” he said. “The hard work, the creative and contemporary policing strategies that we employ. And we have tried to not only produce high-quality work, but to inspire compassion with our officers and how they treat people. And that does not exist across the country not even across the region.”

One of the work highlights for Painter came with the K-9 unit in the late 1980s. He helped track a man who broke into an Auburn apartment while the husband and wife were asleep. The man shot the wife in the head (she survived).

“We did a dog track and ended up catching the guy about three-quarters of a mile away in some very dense brush,” Painter said.

There also are horrendous cases Painter cannot shake from his mind.

“I was not directly involved in the case but it continues to haunt me in ways,” Painter said. “It’s the tragic case up on the East Hill where the two children starved to death. It was a horrible case and I know it had a profound effect on the detectives and officers that handled it.”

Kent Police found two babies dead in the apartment in November 2004. The mother, Marie Robinson, received a 34-year prison sentence for two counts of first-degree manslaughter.

Painter, of Federal Way, leaves Kent this week to start a new job as director of professional services for the Lacey-based Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs.

Thomas said Painter supervised him for many years and greatly influenced his career.

“He worked a lot with me to help me develop,” Thomas said. “I have told him I attribute a lot of my personal success and believe a significant reason why I am sitting in the police chief’s chair today is because of the assistance and mentor-ship he has provided to me over the years. I’m very grateful to Mike and the contributions he has made to our organization, the city and to me.”

Painter said he will miss Kent.

“There have been very few if any days that I woke up and did not want to go to work,” Painter said. “It’s been a tremendous ride.”

Wayne Himple

Himple, 53, has worked 17 of his 30 years as a detective. Raised in Granite Falls, he decided to become a police officer after he served three years in the Army with the Military Police.

He joined Kent in 1982 after 18 months with the Port of Seattle Police. Not too far into his career, Himple got a chance to work an unsolved rape, burglary and robbery case. He helped solve it when a fingerprint on an apartment window pane led to the suspect.

“That was my first significant case and kind of propelled my career into the detective unit and major crimes,” he said.

Changes in technology over the years gave Himple more ways to close cases.

“There is so much information just on a cellphone itself that can be evidence to what you’re investigating,” Himple said. “There’s more of a technological-minded emphasis to have technology help us solve the crime.”

DNA evidence turned out to be a major help for Himple and all detectives. In fact, Himple worked a murder case in the late 1980s that was solved after he sent evidence to the FBI lab in Washington, D.C., to test for DNA because the State Crime Lab at that time did not have the equipment to test for DNA.

“Those kind of scientific breakthroughs have been tremendous in helping us to solve crimes,” he said.

Himple was part of the investigative team that solved the 2001 shooting death of Des Moines Police officer Steven Underwood. He also led the team that investigated the murder of Federal Way Police officer Patrick Marr in 2003.

Other murder cases Himple worked on included the stomping death of a homeless woman in the 1990s in South Kent and a triple murder in 2003 when three men were found dead in a vehicle along the West Valley Highway.

“A pretty significant part of my life has been devoted toward solving or participating in some pretty heinous crimes and violent murders,” Himple said. “I’m looking forward to other challenges in life.”

Thomas said the department definitely benefitted from Himple’s detective skills.

“He is an absolute top-notch investigator with outstanding credibility and very thorough,” Thomas said. “We could not have asked for or gotten any better performance as far as investigations of very difficult and very serious cases as what we got out of Wayne.”

Himple, of Lake Tapps, plans to travel with his wife. He wants to start a home business of sharpening knives and beauty shears. The couple might even move to Arizona for the warmer weather.

“After doing 30 years of this job you get a little tired day in and day out dealing with the types of criminals we’re dealing with and the crimes,” he said. “One day you wake up and say ‘I’ve had enough.’ It’s time to do something else.

“But I’ve had a great 30 years. It’s been a very rewarding job. I’ve worked on some very heinous murder cases but was a big part of solving those crimes and making sure justice was done.”