People remember the officers who treat them with compassion. Spokane Police Sgt. Richie Plunkett is one of them

When Spokane Police Sgt. Arthur “Richie” Plunkett is attempting to coax someone off the Monroe Street Bridge just before they plan to jump, he might start out with a joke.

He’ll point to the nine or 10 other officers blocking the bridge – all are standing there watching Plunkett do what he knows best – connecting with people at their lowest point.

“Look at these ‘jamokes’ all standing around!” he’ll say, using slang to jokingly call his colleagues ordinary and unimpressive. He does it to build rapport and make the scene less intimidating. “They’re not even doing anything!”

The person sitting on the bridge’s guardrail, letting their feet dangle 100 feet above the crashing water of the Spokane Falls, might let out a small laugh. When they do, they avert their eyes from the danger down below and turn around to see a 6-foot-6 bearded man in uniform smiling back at them.

Richie Plunkett quickly became a known name on the streets of Spokane. Those who answer the phone at the Spokane Regional Stabilization Center, where police can refer people who are in crisis or struggling with substance abuse, recognize Plunkett’s name immediately. It’s why before he left the behavioral health unit in August, his phone would ring all day from service providers asking for his help.

Other times, it would ring from people whose lives he’s touched.

“I got a guy in prison that calls me once a month and tells everyone I’m his best friend,” Plunkett said. “This guy is my size, and he always threatened to kill cops. Him and I duked it out in 2021, and he lost. It’s not like I came out of it unscathed, either. But I worked with him a lot after that. We kept trying different things.”

The man’s father still calls Plunkett, too.

“He still remembers the cops who treated him well,” he said. “I think that went a long way with him.”

Plunkett, 38, wasn’t always a member of law enforcement. He obtained a degree in cultural anthropology, but then went back to school to get his masters in mental health counseling, where he started a career counseling LGBTQ+ people and people who were recently released from prison. He also became a social worker and investigator for Child Protective Services.

But sitting at a desk wasn’t where he wanted to be. He wanted to be out in the community and reaching people who would otherwise never be able to get help. It’s why he first became a police officer in Kent, but then moved to Spokane, where he joined the city’s force in 2018. It’s also why he became a foster parent to two children.

The in-depth connection with the community really began when he was assigned to the Spokane Police Department’s downtown precinct as a neighborhood resource officer. Plunkett was contacting nearly the same people every week as part of a plan to be more proactive, rather than reactive, he said. At first, Compassion Addiction Treatment reached out. Then the Salvation Army, the Trent Resource and Assistance Center and Catholic Charities.

The employees at the housing and treatment centers knew Plunkett had a rapport with homeless people, so much so that they would call him and say, “We need you to find this person who is living on the street as soon as possible.”

Plunkett didn’t mind, though. “Give me 30 minutes,” he would reply.

“It’s a lot better for them to have someone with mental health experience to come,” he said. “And I’m not the tiniest guy, so it can be a little intimidating when a 6-foot-6 cop shows up at your apartment. But, I said, ‘We’re here to help. We don’t want you to get in trouble. And we don’t want you to get evicted.’ “

Most of Plunkett’s tactics revolve around listening. He doesn’t tell people what they should do or how they should feel, but guides them through their thoughts instead. It’s how he’s gotten people into detox management, into shelters or off of a city bridge.

Plunkett recalled a time when he was dispatched to a downtown parking garage. He made his way to the top floor, where he found a man who had climbed outside the garage’s barrier.

“I moved here from Florida,” the man told him, as he hung off the garage’s fence in the pouring rain, ready to jump. “I’m gay and I’m Black.”

Rather than a joke this time, Plunkett decided on a new tactic – honesty.

“I’m not even going to try and say I understand how you feel,” Plunkett responded. “I’m a straight white guy.”

Being a listener and using compassion goes a long way, he said, and it’s a big reason why he hasn’t felt the need to shoot at anyone in a high-stress situation during his time as a police officer.

It’s a trait he tries to instill in others by teaching officers de-escalation and crisis management. Obviously, he said, the academy does a lot of firearms training, “but officers seem to forget talking is what they have to be good at.”

Through the eyes of an officer

Spokane is facing a fentanyl crisis in the middle of a housing crisis. The city of Spokane can afford 100 emergency-weather shelter beds through next year. Meanwhile, drug deaths in the county are increasing, fentanyl foils still litter the downtown streets and the county jail has frequent periods of overcrowding.

According to local health district data, 262 people in Spokane County died due to drug use from April 2023 to April 2024. That’s an 18% rise from a year earlier. And, as of Oct. 3, at least 19 organizations that receive funding from the Spokane Housing Authority will no longer be able to connect people to homes through the federally funded housing choice voucher program. More than 2,000 people in the city are homeless.

“We were clearing out some campers along the river near No-Li. We don’t have enough North Side officers to do it, so we have to send south side officers. And then, as we’re doing that, we have an in-progress (domestic violence call) happen,” Plunkett said. “We had someone die on the South Hill. We’re just getting overwhelmed by calls. It’s hard for us to be proactive on these things.”

It’s also difficult if an officer sees open drug use and wants to make a stop, Plunkett said, but is outnumbered by a large group on the street. It’s too dangerous to pick that fight if your team is busy on other calls.

At the same time, officers are getting burned out by the constant cycle of arrest-and-repeat, he added. Washington law says everyone arrested and accused of a crime is presumed innocent and subject to release, meaning if there are no other glaring, dangerous factors attributed to that person and the alleged crime, they will be let out of jail pending trial.

That consideration is subjective and up to the discretion of the individual judge.

“They’re in and out within five minutes. We don’t have enough jail space, we don’t have enough resources and we don’t have enough officers,” Plunkett said. “I just don’t think there’s enough money for all of it.”

The Spokane Regional Stabilization Center has 15 withdrawal management beds, he said, which isn’t enough. There are days when people call him to get someone into one of those detox beds, but he has to tell them, “I’m sorry.”

“Some of the people that are on fentanyl, there’s a window of time where they’re ready to go to treatment,” Plunkett said. “If they don’t have it available, then they just go right back to using.”

There is a man with whom Plunkett has frequent contact who is often in crisis and is no longer allowed back in certain shelters for assaulting the staff. There are people Plunkett runs into who he has tried to help for three years who just can’t get clean from methamphetamine because they have schizophrenia and use drugs to cope.

Others he kept working with until they finally got help.

“I don’t give up on people,” Plunkett said. “We have got to help people, even at their worst. I’m not going to say I know what it’s like to be homeless or use drugs. I don’t. But I try to keep the open mind because I have kids of my own, and I hope that if they were in that predicament one day, that they’d have compassionate people around them.”

Since leaving the behavioral health unit, Plunkett has had some time to reflect, he told The Spokesman-Review on Thursday. When he teaches classes, he’ll play a slide of a professional wrestler who wears a mask. It’s a gimmick, he’d say to his class.

“When I throw on my uniform, this is my gimmick. I’m a completely different guy as a cop than I am off duty. And when I take my uniform off, the gimmick is over. I get to go home, and it’s not supposed to transition,” he said. “But the longer I do this job the more I realize stuff does carry over.”

Stuff like seeing things no one else should have to see. Plunkett recalled a time he was dispatched to a child’s home where there was no food or water. The boy’s father was mentally ill and believed the child had to be sacrificed because he was a “plant” from the U.S. government.

“It was the night before I adopted my son,” Plunkett said, “And I thought, how many foster kids are in this type of situation?”

A ‘local hero’

Plunkett received the “Community Impact Award” for “local heroes” on Thursday night from Light a Lamp, a local nonprofit, for his role in the behavioral health unit. The ceremony is the nonprofit’s first annual community impact award night meant to honor people who have made significant contributions to inspire and uplift others.

His award came in between two standing ovations by the audience.

Alyssa Ecklind, the health and resource coordination manager at Spokane Regional Stabilization Center, sang Plunkett’s praises to the crowd. But for her, the accolades were also personal.

Ecklind told the story of when a relative was in a mental health crisis at her home and she had to call for help, she said. But she was afraid to call 911. And she was afraid of what the police officers might do if the situation got out of hand.

“Here came Officer Plunkett with four other guys,” Ecklind said. “I looked at him and said, ‘Boy, am I glad to see you.’ ”

Darla Hall, who also works at the stabilization center, sent in a surprise video for him where she joked to the crowd that so many people on the streets love Plunkett so much, they’re always seeking his approval. If they get in trouble, they’ll tell the staff, “Please don’t tell Officer Plunkett I’m here!”

As he accepted the award, he acknowledged to the attendees that he’s really only great at talking to people who are in crisis. But as his friend, Officer Daniel Strassenberg; the police chief, Kevin Hall; other officers and his wife proudly looked on from the crowd, he gave a speech anyway.

“Drug use isn’t just about, ‘I wanted to try it.’ They’re dealing with their trauma. They’re trying to not feel pain anymore. They’re trying not to deal with emotions. Dealing with mental health is about the same thing,” Plunkett said. “A lot of these people don’t have control over what’s going on in their lives. It’s not all criminal.”

During Plunkett’s interview with The Spokesman-Review, his young foster daughter crawled around his feet and his legs. She played with a police coin and spooned Goldfish crackers into her mouth.

“We’re not going to fix the world,” he said as he gave her a toy police car. “But we make the little differences, and I think that goes a long way.”