No day is 'typical'
Editor’s note: The Press salutes the men and women who keep our community safe and whose hard work and sacrifice often go unheralded. Hats off to our neighbors, friends and relatives who serve.
By JULIA BENNETT
Staff Writer
Greg Marshall is a North Idaho native who’s been serving Rathdrum and surrounding areas for 12 years.
Marshall, 33, said he always wanted to be a cop. His father was — and still is — a police officer, and while Greg was growing up he had the opportunity to see what that career was like.
Marshall attended North Idaho College to study law enforcement. He earned an associate’s degree in 2003 and graduated from the police academy in 2005. He began his career as a marine deputy and later served as a detention deputy, a position he left in 2007. After working with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, he worked in Plummer as a Coeur d’Alene tribal police officer for seven years. He arrived in Rathdrum after working from 2014 to 2016 as a Spirit Lake Police officer.
Patrolling in a rural area is markedly different from serving in a more urban environment. Plummer and Spirit Lake, he noted, don’t have as many businesses as Rathdrum.
“Aside from that, it’s all pretty much North Idaho, so [you see] the same type of stuff,” Marshall said.
In the country or the city, though, Marshall said the one thing he could count on was that no day was “typical.” Every day is unpredictable.
Some days are tough: Marshall was called to the scene when two children fell through the ice on a fishing pond: They didn’t survive. Other days offer a measure of hope, such as the day he found an unconscious man who was experiencing a heart attack. Marshall performed CPR. The man regained his pulse.
“That was the best day: I was able to save someone’s life,” the officer said.
Marshall has pulled over a lot of vehicles and though some of the most common and weirdest excuses aren’t fit for publication in a family newspaper, he respects the drivers more when they just honestly admit to speeding and keep their excuses to themselves.
He still writes them a citation, of course. He has a job to do, after all.
It’s a career he loves — and one he would recommend. He knows being a police officer wasn’t the easiest career choice, and those who work behind a badge need to have four specific traits:
“The honesty and integrity kind of go without saying,” Marshall said. “We are trained observers; our testimony in court is important, and if we didn’t have those two things, we wouldn’t be effective in court.”
The other two necessary traits? Decisiveness is a big plus. Police officers constantly encounter situations where they need to decide on a course of action right away, never forgetting that they must consider what will be best for everyone involved.
The other trait is a thick skin. Citizens, after all, do have the right to say what they please about law enforcement.
“And not take it personally because they may not be trying to insult me, Greg Marshall; they are just insulting my uniform,” Marshall said. “And there is a difference.”
Marshall and his wife have one child. He enjoys spending time outdoors with his family. They like to hunt and camp. Marshall describes himself as a typical family man from Idaho.
“We are representative of the public we serve so chances are there is another guy driving around Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls or even Rathdrum who might be just like me. The only difference is I’m wearing this and he is wearing something else,” Marshall said.
If you’d like to recognize a local first-responder, please email Andy Obermueller: aobermueller@cdapress.com