About Town: After 13 Years, KPD's Audra Weber Still Loves Being a Cop

AUDRA WEBER isn’t sure why she wanted to be a police officer, but it might have something to do with the fact that she grew up around a lot of them. Her dad was an attorney and a judge, and many of his  buddies were Pierce County deputies. “I actually wrote an essay when I was in 5th grade about wanting to be a police officer,” she remembers. It’s a career decision she’s never regretted.

“I love my job,” she says. “It’s always exciting and interesting.”

During almost 13 years with the , she’s been a patrol officer and a detective. In December, she became the Neighborhood Resource Officer (NRO) – a position that serves as a liaison between the KPD and the community. So far, it’s a perfect fit.

“The job was sort of made for me,” she says with a grin. “I’m a total people person. It gives me a chance to meet people and community leaders in a different fashion.”

She spends much of her time answering phone calls and emails from citizens, and says it can be time-consuming to investigate each query. She attends neighborhood association meetings as often as she can.

In addition to her role as NRO, she is also a KPD Public Information Officer, responsible for media and public relations.

She likes every aspect of her job, and wishes she had more time. “I can’t do all the things I want to do,” she says.

Redmond, with half the population of Kirkland, has six people doing what she does, including one assigned full-time to its Neighborhood Watch program.

Like many police officers, Audra, a Redmond resident, doesn’t live in the city she works in. This allows her to have more privacy when she’s off duty. “It reduces the likelihood of running into someone who doesn’t like me very much,” she says.

It also gives her a chance to take a break from her police officer persona. “I’m a girlie girl off duty,” she explains. “I want to be a girl and not always be on alert.”

After getting an undergraduate degree in criminal justice and a master's in law, Audra took a break before launching into her law enforcement career. She managed a men’s department at Nordstrom, and spent lots of time with friends.

At age 28 she told herself, “I’ve had my three years of fun. It’s time to start doing something I want to do with my life.” Soon after that, she was hired by the KPD.

She feels very lucky to have a job she likes going to every day. “It’s not the common thing that people find a career they’re passionate about,” she says.

ON THE subject of crime, she says that Kirkland’s per capita crime rate is about average for the Eastside and adds, “Kirkland is not criminal central.”

As for the recent spate of burglaries in Kirkland and Redmond, she thinks it’s a temporary spike. “(Crime) goes in spurts. I’ve been doing this for 13 years and nothing has really changed.”

She says that burglaries increase in the summer, due to warm weather, and cautions people to leave windows closed and locked when they aren’t home. When people ask her for crime prevention advice, she tells them, “Become a part of your neighborhood association.”

She’s excited about a new online crime mapping program that will soon be available to citizens. When you enter an address, you will see the police records for that area for the previous six months. You will also be able to sign up for automatic crime alerts.

Audra is one of the few officers who have had a gun pulled on them in Kirkland. It happened at noon on a sunny Saturday downtown. As she approached a suspect, he pulled out a gun. She had microseconds in which to respond. Just then, an elderly couple, oblivious to what was happening, stepped between her and the suspect, who backed around a corner and took off.

“I would never second guess another cop’s actions,” she says. “The decision that you are tasked with making in such an amazingly short amount of time is phenomenal.”

One of her favorite parts of the job are visits to schools. “I like demystifying the police officer image,” she says. At a preschool recently, she told the kids, “We’re moms and dads and normal, fun people doing a job.”

Eventually she’d like to be a supervisor, but she’s not in a hurry. “I have a long career left,” she says. For now “I want to be one of the worker bees who’s out doing the fun stuff.”

How does she process the upsetting things that she sees in her job? “I kind of compartmentalize it,” she says. “It makes me very thankful for my life and what I’ve been given, and reminds me not to take things for granted.”

She credits her supportive family and friends with helping her bounce back from the tough stuff, and says, “It’s important to have a healthy home life and activities outside of the job.”