‘Treat people as well as they allow you to treat them’

Lt. Roger Park has been with the Baytown Police Department for more than 20 years.

“Years ago, I was at the video store renting some movies when this guy approached me. He said, ‘Hey, didn’t you use to be an officer at Sterling High School? I don’t know if you remember but you arrested me one time, and I appreciated the way you did it.’

“Having worked as a school officer for five years, and dealing with about 2,500 students a year, it’s hard to remember everyone. But as soon as he started telling the story, I remembered what happened.

“It was his senior year, and on finals day he came to school intoxicated. He was messed up pretty bad. The principal said, ‘He can’t be here,’ so I ended up arresting him.

“It was a major thing in that student’s life because he couldn’t take his final and he couldn’t graduate with his class. You’d think someone like that would be totally irritated and want to hunt you down, but not the case. I guess because I treated him fairly and didn’t make a big scene, he appreciated that.

“Because of my size, I’ve been told a lot that I’m intimidating. Actually, I’m a pretty happy-go-lucky person. Now, I can be mean just like that if I need to, but I don’t need to start that way.

“My motto in police work has always been to treat people as well as they allow you to treat them. It’s one of the keys to good police work. If you follow that, you’ll reap the rewards of people coming up to you years later saying, ‘Thanks for arresting me that day.’ You’d be surprised how often that happens.

“That’s really the big thing that’s made my career so enjoyable. I’ve dealt with thousands of people and to this day, however many years later, there are still those who come up to me and say, ‘Hey, I remember you,’ in a nice way. Of course, I was a lot thinner and had hair back then.”

— Lt. Roger Park

(Note: Roger Park passed away on April 30, 2020.)