Page 22 - SEPTEMBE 2018 Newsletter

Portraits by Peter Bucks
Tributes to officers from the CPD Officer, Lodge 7 member and renowned artist
From civilian to police officer to chaplain
■ BY AMBER RAMUNDO
Rita Pritchett can say with confidence that she has worked for the Chicago Police Department her en- tire adult life.
And she basically has, since it was only six months after her 18th birthday that she began her commitment of service, first as a civilian secretary in the 18th Dis- trict.
What started as a job to support a young, single mother of two turned into an instrumental prerequi- site for a career in law en- forcement that would begin more than a decade later.
“People always want to know if my time as a civil- ian before becoming an officer counted for any- thing,” Pritchett shares. “My response is always, ‘More than you would ever know.’”
By the time Pritchett
took the police exam in
1975 at the age of 30, she was already proficient in many aspects of the job including report writing, from the years she spent typing and handling the police reports that came through to the Department.
RITA PRITCHETT Star #5771
car on assignment with the DEA to buy drugs. The driv- er’s portrayal of a pimp was so believable that another set of CPD officers stopped the car and pulled a gun on Pritchett and the two other passengers.
Pritchett recognized one of the officers from her days working as a secretary and assured him that this was a DEA assignment.
“What in the world is this?” the officer asked Pritchett, who was dressed in urban clothing and wearing her hair in low pig- tails.
“Welcome to the narcot- ics division,” Pritchett re- sponded.
Pritchett had many rea- sons to take pride in her transition from a civilian into an officer whose career also brought her to serve in the 012, 003 and for the Mass Transit Unit. But to this day, nothing makes her
happier than following in the footsteps of her older brother, Richard Jones, and becoming a CPD officer.
Pritchett became a familiar and trusted face within the CPD as a civilian, but officers weren’t used to seeing her wear a badge when she first came on the job July 18, 1977. Some hardly even recog- nized her at first, asking: “Rita, is that you? What are you doing with a uniform on?”
But it didn’t take long for officers who knew Pritchett as a sec- retary to get used to the idea of her becoming a sister in blue. She was immediately placed in the Device Control Division (DCD) by officers in rank with whom Pritchett had worked as a civilian.
“You have to remember, I started as a civilian,” she explains. “The police officers that I knew as a young woman were making rank when I came on the job.”
Pritchett quickly went from sitting behind a desk to working the streets, where she would dress the part of a runaway girl and walk through the Greyhound Bus Station to catch pimps recruiting pros- titutes.
“Even on the north side, you had pimps who would try to put you on what they called ‘the stroll,’” Pritchett shares.
After catching pimps and gamblers while working in the DCD, Pritchett worked in the Narcotics Division, where she continued to take on alternate identities to catch drug dealers. On her first day in the new role, she found herself in the back seat of an unmarked
22 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ SEPTEMBER 2018
“He was so proud of me,” Pritchett says. “I really thought my brother was going to hire a skywriter to put in the sky ‘My
baby sister is a police officer.’”
Pritchett and Jones are now in their 70s and retired but age hasn’t
stopped Jones from referring to Pritchett as his “baby sister.” Pritch- ett didn’t feel ready to leave the job when she turned 63 and retired in 2008. The law enforcement family circle was all she had ever known.
“Everyone was my teacher,” she recalls. “It’s kind of like, I had never been with a different kind of culture. But in that dynamic of working with the police department, I found out that [the CPD] is really a unique kind of family with a unique bond.”
Throughout her career, Pritchett has held on to the words of wis- dom a CPD “old-timer” gave her when she was working as a civil- ian: The good that you do, only you and God know about it.
This phrase that Pritchett lives by has become even more mean- ingful as she continues to serve the CPD as an associate chaplain, where she now does good by guiding families who have lost loved ones in the line of duty.
“I’ve had a rich, rewarding life. From civilian to police officer to associate chaplain,” Pritchett says. “But the greatest thing aside from getting that badge and taking that oath was when they called me to be a chaplain.” d