Lee White: A true patriot at heart

COEUR d'ALENE - Lee White's life has been one following in his father's footsteps of service.

White was born while his father was overseas - serving in the Army during the Vietnam War.

"I knew at some point I was going to do military service even though he was adamant I should not because of his experiences in the war," White said. "I think like most of the males in my family we're true patriots at heart and felt like we had to give back to the country that's given us so much."

With that in mind, White joined the Marine Corps and began studying aerospace engineering in college while going through officer candidate school. His goal was originally to become a fighter pilot and transition into flying for an airline after his service was done.

But when he found out that becoming a fighter pilot would require committing more than 16 years of his life to the armed forces, he reassessed that goal.

"I didn't want to be in the Marine Corps my whole life because we were gone more than we were home and I knew I wanted to have a family," White said. "At that point I decided I was going to change majors."

White said after he went on a police department ride-along and "spoke with my old man," he decided to join the police department.

"My dad was also a police officer," White said. "So I followed in his footsteps in that regard also."

While serving as a police officer in Mesa, Ariz., White quickly rose up through the ranks and became an assistant police chief, where he oversaw the department's $157 million budget and was responsible for members of the investigation bureau.

White said he hasn't regretted the decision to become a law enforcement officer for "even a day."

"It's a fantastic and rewarding career. It's an extremely noble profession," White said. "At the end of the day we get to give back to the community and it's all about service and protection. I love every minute of it."

On Sept. 2, White was sworn in as the chief of the Coeur d'Alene Police Department.

Why did you and your family select North Idaho? Obviously the job opportunity was a big part of it, but what drew you guys to the area?

About 10 years ago, my brother-in-law moved up here with his family. We came and visited them once and that was all it took. We fell in love with the area, the community and its residents and could not wait to get back here.

How do you define a good leader?

There are books that will tell you what a great leader is supposed to look like, and feel like, and sound like. But I feel like ultimately it's really kind of hard to define, but you know it when you see it. I think every body at some point in their careers has had the experience of working for an extremely good leader and an extremely bad one.

So it's kind of like what we do with our parents - you take the traits from them that you think are most important and are going to make you better as a person and you build on those.

So would you say you have one particular style of leadership or is it more of a meshing of all the different styles you've encountered?

Yes I think it's a meshing. And frankly, I have a master's degree in leadership and have been a student and practitioner of leadership my entire career.

Ultimately my leadership style is a blend and largely situational.

The relationship between our police department and the local community, I guess you could describe it as strained at the moment. Did you do anything to prepare to meet that challenge?

My experience in the past has prepared me. But I don't know if anyone can be completely prepared for the public outrage we saw in particular with the Arfee incident. At some point, as a community and as an agency we have to make the decision to move beyond it. I think that we are there now.

As much as I would like to, I am prohibited from telling people anything about discipline. It's a hard pill to swallow and since I can't be open about that piece of it I'm hoping at some point the public trusts that we have done everything we could do to rectify the situation.

Would you say that this situation in Coeur d'Alene is unique at all or have you experienced a similar sort of strained relationship?

I think every police agency at some point has a straining point with the community. Some agencies a lot more than others. I will tell you that if this incident is really the biggest issue that Coeur d'Alene has between its police department and the community we are doing fantastic because I've seen far worse.

I hope we don't have a lot of the other strenuous type of situations that I've been part of during my law enforcement career.

Do you have any goals for yourself and the department as a whole?

The biggest goals I have for myself are to learn as much as I can about the men and women who work in the department and the community members who have a true desire to work with the police department to make the department better. Not the people who just want to complain and yell at the top of their lungs about how broken things are - people who truly want to work with us to fix things.

It is my personal goal to make this the best police agency in North Idaho. The men and women here are very capable of making that happen.

There have probably been a lot of terrible things you've had to deal with as a police officer. But are there any particular times you remember where you got to make a positive impact in someone's life that has stuck out throughout your career?

There are the times when you take law enforcement action to prevent the death of a child. Those really stick with you.

But I will tell you that it's the small things we do as police officers that nobody ever hears about that really goes to the core of what it means to be an officer.

I hear stories of officers donating clothing and shoes to needy families in the areas that they work for. It's those small things like that that really warm your heart and I hear stories about that every day.

I would bury you guys with stories if every time one of our cops did something fantastic for another member of society I contacted you. You would get sick of hearing it and it would become white noise and you wouldn't want to hear from Lee White anymore.

What is the biggest misconception you think people have about police officers?

A lot of people think that police officers are there solely to enforce the law. That's not the case at all. We are there to help and to educate and to work with the public. Sometimes the best tool we have though is a law we have the ability to enforce.

We're like anybody else - we have good days and bad days. It just appears that, more than other public figures and jobs, our bad days become front page news.

What do you do to keep the stress of the job from coming home with you?

My wife makes fun of me because she says I don't get stressed out about things.

If you ask the guys back in Mesa, in the groups where we handled the worst of the worst every day, they would tell you that I'm the voice of calm and reason. I'm not the guy who gets stressed out about things.

But I'll tell you some things that help are having a fantastic relationship with my family and really blowing off stress through exercise and eating well. It's really about finding that balance in your life between having a great family life and having a great time at work and ultimately just not taking the job too personally. At some point we have to be able to close the book and walk away from the story for a bit and do what's best for us.