A retiring Gilroy police officer known for his friendly demeanor
caps his career with a high honor
GILROY – Kim Merrill is quick to admit he wasn’t the kind of cop who struck terror into criminals’ hearts.
“Quite the opposite,” Merrill said in a Monday interview. “I’d rather talk than fight, any day of the week. … Very seldom have I ever had anyone really hate me.”
That’s part of why this city police corporal – who retired recently after 25 years on the force – liked bicycle patrol so much. A car, he said, is a “steel cage” between an officer and the public.
“You’re more approachable on a bicycle than in a car,” Merrill said. “People like that better. … That PR stuff is more valuable than people think.”
Plus, Merrill said, bike patrol was fun and helped him maintain a positive outlook.
For Merrill, who co-founded the Gilroy Police Department’s bike patrol in the early 1980s, a bike once served as a launching pad. In a solo arrest on May 27, the 54-year-old cop sprung from a speeding bike to tackle a fleeing armed-robbery suspect.
Merrill had been trained – and had trained other officers – to trip up dangerous suspects by sliding his bike’s wheels into their legs. He was concerned, however, that this man had a weapon in his waistband, and he didn’t want the guy landing on top of him. On the spot, he decided to jump from the bike.
“An old fart taking off from a bike at 19 miles per hour really wasn’t what he was expecting,” Merrill said.
It worked. Merrill flattened the young man and took him into custody. While police later found the suspect had dropped his knife before Merrill caught him, they also discovered he was wanted for armed robbery in Campbell.
The American Policemen’s Hall of Fame recently honored Merrill for this arrest. The Hall of Fame, based in Titusville, Fla., was founded to memorialize fallen officers and honors a few U.S. officers every week. Mayor Tom Springer announced Merrill’s honor at a City Council meeting on Oct. 20.
“I was a little taken aback, to say the least,” Merrill said. When he was asked to attend the meeting, “I thought they were going to give me Employee of the Month.”
He got that, too.
“Had it not been for Corporal Kim Merrill coming in hours early on his own time to ride a department bicycle to actively assist GPD units on patrol, it is likely this case may never have been solved,” GPD Sgt. Noel Provost and Detective Daniel Zen wrote in nominating Merrill for city Employee of the Month.
“Kim has the enthusiasm of a new police officer,” Provost said Tuesday. “He’s motivated, he’s a go-getter, and he’s not afraid to take the lead. He’s a kind of guy who follows the bad guy, and if I knew Kim was after me, I’d be pretty sure I was going to get caught. He’s just a valuable asset to the department and to the community. It’s going to be huge to try and fill his shoes.”
Although Merrill’s retirement didn’t officially go into effect until Nov. 1, he’s been using stored-up vacation time and has only worked a week since mid-July, plus teaching a couple of bike patrol and defensive tactics classes.
He’s been spending time with his family, but he’s also been training for upcoming competitions by working out and shooting billiards.
Among many, many other things, Merrill is a champion pool player. And that’s not “champion” as in, the guy who cleans house at Garlic City Billiards (although we’re not ruling that out). That means more than two dozen medals from state and international games reserved for police and fire personnel, active and retired.
As a testament to his versatility, he also has won medals at these tournaments for springboard diving and wrestling, and he’s been gearing up lately to compete as a bodybuilder.
In addition to the annual California Police and Fire Games, he’s psyched about the 2004 International Law Enforcement Games in Las Vegas and the 2005 World Police and Fire Games in Quebec City.
“I’ve been busier than I thought I would,” he said. “I’ve got a full schedule.”
Although Merrill grew up in Gilroy, he and his wife haven’t lived here for about six years. They moved to Corralitos in 1997 to start a care facility for mentally-handicapped people but failed, losing about $300,000 in the process. They’ve lived in Salinas for the last year and a half.
Gilroy is “a great community” in Merrill’s opinion. His family moved here in 1953, when he was 5. His father was a math teacher at Gilroy High School for 35 years.
After a time in the Navy, Merrill dropped out of a master’s program at California State University at Hayward in February 1978 to join the GPD.
“I was only going to do it for four or five years,” he said with a chuckle. “It didn’t work out that way.”
It was a different police department then, and a different city, he said. For one thing, there were three to four times more bars than now (despite half the current city population) and a third to a fourth the number of officers on duty. Friday night, for a Gilroy cop, meant constant bar brawls – more than they could handle alone, so California Highway Patrol and county Sheriff’s officers were “bailing us out left and right.”
There also was an active gang of ex-convicts, whom Merrill characterized as “just nasty human beings.”
“A lot of the gang stuff you’re getting now is younger people, not the career criminals,” he said.
The GPD then didn’t acknowledge gangs’ existence – publicly, anyway – under the thinking that recognition might make them more attractive. Merrill helped the transition to the current approach by helping write a grant to fund the GPD’s Anti-Crime Team – specialists who both react to gang activity and work to convince children and young people that gangs aren’t for them. It’s worked, Merrill says.
“If we didn’t have that Anti-Crime Team, we’d be in a world of hurt,” Merrill said.
Merrill’s favorite job as a cop was teaching the law in Gilroy schools. He taught “Administration of Justice” in the high school, “Youth and Law” to middle-schoolers and the D.A.R.E. drug/alcohol/violence resistance program to elementary schoolers.
He especially loved the teen-agers’ fresh perspectives. He’d teach them why, in the history of law enforcement, certain things are done, but he loved the fact that the students questioned and challenged him.
Merrill also taught GPD officers in defensive tactics and bike patrol.
“He’s got teaching in his blood,” said Police Chief Gregg Giusiana, who helped train Merrill 25 years ago.
In addition to Merrill’s affability – “He also had a good joke to tell or a smile on his face,” Giusiana said – the chief added that “We’re going to miss his maturity and stability. He’s one of those people who makes good decisions.”
Some of that level-headedness was inherent to Merrill, Giusiana said, but much of it was earned over 25 years.
“That’s stuff that we can’t replace by just hiring someone else.”
