Business as Unusual for Compassionate Spokane Police Unit : It’s Law and Unordinary for the ‘Odd Squad’

Officially, it is called the Office of Special Police Problems. Unofficially, they call it the Odd Squad.

Mainly, it is Patrolman Robert Grandinetti, a 20-year veteran of the Spokane Police Department with a face like Fred Flintstone and a personality that has earned him the nickname of “Mr. Glad.” Grandinetti’s easygoing nature made him the perfect candidate for the Odd Squad, where he and a partner take care of all of the police calls no one else knows how to handle.

They deal with problems like the woman who had 67 dead cats stored in her freezer, another with four-foot piles of debris in her home, street kids who defecate in vacant buildings where they sleep, the elderly who are easily exploited out of their life savings, sorry hobos who subsist on occasional meals and cheap wine.

“We have situations where we either deal with them, or we’ll be dealing with their remains,” Grandinetti says. “I do what any reasonable person would do. I can’t walk away from it. I’ve got to do something.”

Began in 1974

The work started in 1974, with a grant from the state Department of Ecology intended to help clean up Spokane for its World Exposition.

Grandinetti’s training includes years on the force and the empathy he gained by watching his father, Carmen, die a painfully slow death years before. Today, Grandinetti believes doctors would say his father suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.

“I have real compassion because I understand,” Grandinetti says. “I know it’s real easy to make fun of people who are suffering, but I always think, ‘Hey, you could end up like any of them.’ ”

Grandinetti views arrest as a last resort. He says he has discovered that humor and friendliness are valuable tools when dealing with the public.

Working the department’s graveyard patrol shift 15 years ago, Grandinetti and his partner received a call about a woman having problems at her home.

Hundreds of Calls

“We get there and she says she keeps hearing voices coming out of her sink. So I scratch my head awhile and then walk over to the sink and bend over and yell, ‘Shaddup!’ down the drain hole. The woman tells me the voices are gone, but my partner looks at me as if I’m crazy.”

His current partner is Patrolman D. V. Willmschen, one of 13 officers who applied to join the Odd Squad last year when the operation fell hopelessly behind in its calls.

“He’s excellent to work with,” Willmschen says. “I take the bulk of the nuisance calls. Bob is more social, especially when he’s dealing with the elderly.”

Even with Willmschen’s assistance, the squad, which enforces the city’s public nuisance ordinance, is 200 to 300 calls behind, Grandinetti says. He and Willmschen now act on only the most important calls--those in which lives may be in danger. The Odd Squad’s tiny office, which also serves as a police storage room, has an answering machine. The two officers are rarely there.

Threatened by Budget Cuts

Police Chief Robert Panther credits Grandinetti with a superb performance. Like the rest of city government, the Odd Squad is threatened by 1987 budget cuts. Still, it is a bright spot for a department hit hard recently by scandals ranging from a former female officer’s charges of sex discrimination--a suit eventually settled out of court--to a recently fired corporal who kept evidence photos of nude, battered women in his locker.

Social workers in other agencies say eliminating the Odd Squad would leave many people out in the cold.

“Bob averts a lot of problems that could get bigger,” says Bob Hanson, an official with the state Department of Social and Health Services. “He’s unique in that he’s got a real social conscience and compassion for people in addition to, or even greater than, his law-enforcement presence.”

The pitiful situations he deals with sometimes wear on Grandinetti. He cites the case of a woman who had 12 cats.

Drums Didn’t Pay

“Well, something had to be done. We told her she could keep three cats. The people up at the animal shelter said she’d come up every day and hold every cat. She had to decide which three she wanted to keep. They were like her children.”

As Grandinetti steers his unmarked police Jeep through downtown Spokane, he talks about his wife and three children. His daughter, a University of Washington freshman, carries a 3.6 grade-point average in civil engineering. His older son is a high school freshman, the other a fifth-grader who has just started playing the drums--his father’s instrument.

Grandinetti became a police officer in September, 1966, after deciding that he needed to give his family more financial security than was provided by his job playing drums in bars at Stateline, Ida.

As the police department’s official Santa Claus, each December he visits every Spokane grade school in his red-and-white suit, taking along candy, Christmas cards and safety tips.

Whether working with children or adults, Grandinetti keeps in mind the same things.

“A lot of people are dealing with a police officer for the first time,” he says. “Each time, their situation is a big thing to them. I don’t downplay it. To them, their situation is the most important thing in the world. So you give them your time. If you don’t, you turn them off.”