'Officer Friendly' dedicated to public service with a smile

BY DALE ELLIS

Managing Editor    10/20/2002

With his easygoing manner and engaging grin, Searcy patrol officer Bill Higginbotham has earned the nickname "Officer Friendly," and plays the part to the hilt.

A self-proclaimed army brat, Higginbotham's father was a 27-year career army man who is now with the Drug Enforcement Administration working out of Seattle.

"He's not an agent," Higginbotham said. "He's just part of the paperwork machine."

The 38-year-old Higginbotham was born in 1964 in Berchtesgaden, Germany, in the German Alps.

"Remember The Sound of Music?" he asked. "That's the area. In the movie, the castle, the Von Trapp house, I went to school a half-mile away in Salzburg."

He started school when his father was stationed in Panama, then lived several years in Colorado, back to Salzburg, and graduated in Columbia, South Carolina.

"I was planning to go on to college at The Citadel, the southern counterpart to West Point," he said. "But the class was full and I was put on a waiting list. By then, all the other universities had already passed their registration deadlines. I ended up at Harding because that was the only school that would take me without waiting another year."

While at Harding, Higginbotham's parents were working in the American Embassy at Kuwait, where a terrorist's truck bomb damaged the embassy in 1983.

"The bombing happened the same year all of those marines were killed in Lebanon," Higginbotham said. "I saw the building my mom worked in flattened on CNN."

Both of his parents survived the bombing, although each of them had a narrow escape as the building blew apart around them.

"Mom had just come down the staircase and walked behind a six-inch security door," Higginbotham said. "The blast blew everything down except the door."

His father was sitting at a typewriter, he said, and when he leaned over to answer his telephone, the bomb went off.

"A beam fell and cut off the back of his chair right where he had been sitting just a moment earlier," he said. "Someone was really watching out for them both."

After the news hit the airwaves, Higginbotham spent several days in limbo, not knowing anything and unable to make contact with his parents or his sister, who was also in Kuwait.

"I was like a cat on a hot tin roof," he said. "I didn't know where to go or what to do. It was three or four days before my dad could contact me and I could tell the phone was tapped. Everytime he would say something about the embassy, the line would go dead for eight or 10 seconds."

After leaving Harding in 1986, Higginbotham joined the U.S. Army, serving as a military police officer for three-and-a-half years.

"I went to Harding and studied computers," he said with a laugh. "Now I'm a cop. Go figure."

In April 1990, he returned to Searcy and joined the Searcy Police Department as a patrol officer, a position he still holds.

"I like patrol," he explained. "I've never aspired to be a detective, to go into support, or anything else. I like the work we do in patrol. That's my niche and it's what I like to do."

It was his exposure to the city through his association with Harding that drew him back to live in the town he now calls home.

"Searcy is a great place to be," he said. "I really love it here. It's home."

Higginbotham also serves as a motorcycle patrol officer whenever staffing is such that the department's motorcycles can be utilized.

"I really enjoy that," he said. "That enables me to get even closer to the people we serve."

Higginbotham said that his love for police work is all about the people served by the department. It is serving the citizens that he said is his favorite part of the job.

"I like to see the kids, go into the schools, I like riding the motorcycle in the Be a Winner graduation," he said. "There are a lot of things I enjoy about this job, and all of that is centered around serving the public. That's why we are here. That is our only reason for being here."

The variety of the work is one of the things that has kept Higginbotham involved in police work for the past 12 years.

"It's not like going to a factory and making widgets all day," he said. "Every situation is different. Even a routine traffic stop is not routine. Every person is different and has different circumstances."

He said that the concept of Community Oriented Policing (COP) is one that particularly appeals to him, primarily because it puts the police into close proximity with the citizens they serve.

"I've always said, why should we close the doors to the people we serve?" he said. "I've always felt like it should not be an us against them concept, that we are all part of the community. I think the people should feel comfortable coming into the police department and we should feel comfortable having them there, because we do work for them."

One of his most memorable cases he ever worked on involved an incident last year that had police dealing with a barricaded suspect who was threatening the police.

"He threatened to kill us and wound up having a loaded shotgun," Higginbotham said. "That was interesting."

He said that Captain Ken Edmunson was able to de-escalate the situation and allow officers to move in to take the man into custody, although not without a few tense moments beforehand.

"We struggled with him a little bit but we got him into custody," Higginbotham said. "It's always a good day's work when we can resolve a situation without anyone getting hurt. That's our preference."

Higginbotham lives in Searcy with his wife of nine years, Wendy, and the couple's three dogs. When not working, he said they enjoy motorcycling and playing with their dogs.

"We have a personal bike that we like to get out and ride," he said. "We'll go out touring on days off and just have a big time."

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