Retirement of Detective Eric Hines

🚨Retirement of Detective Eric Hines🚨

Yesterday, we celebrated the retirement and career of Traffic Detective Eric Hines after 35 years of dedicated service to the Tukwila community and his fellow officers. Detective Hines began his career with us on February 4, 1991 where he served as a patrol officer until 2005 when he joined our Traffic Unit as a motor officer. He would serve in that capacity the rest of his career along with a brief temporary stint in the Major Crimes Unit (MCU) and Patrol Division to assist during 2021 due to staffing issues.

Throughout his career, Detective Hines received Distinguished Service Medals for 20 and 30 years of dedicated service and in 2018, he received the Officer of the Quarter and Employee of the year.

Detective Hines regularly participated in community events such as Touch a Truck, Special Olympics Torch Run, Community Academy and many other programs. He served for many years as a lead defensive tactics instructor, Taser instructor, RADAR/LIDAR instructor and several other collateral positions.

In a parallel life, Detective Hines would have made an excellent firefighter. In 2020, Detective Hines was off-duty in Auburn and was alerted to a residence that had smoke billowing from within it. Detective Hines quickly entered the residence, located the source of the fire in the kitchen and extinguished the flames which had already begun spreading to the cabinets and ceiling. He then located the gas shut off valve and disabled the gas to the residence. His actions in containing and extinguishing the fire directly led to the family that owned the home from having their home become fully engulfed and destroyed.

In a similar incident, Detective Hines noticed a large brush fire caused by a homeless encampment that was quickly spreading through the dried out grass towards a nearby property and structures. While waiting for the fire department to arrive, Detective Hines donned his gas mask, grabbed a hose from the property and began to extinguish the flames before they could reach the structure.

In 2017, Detective Hines was part of our Tukwila PD Athletic Team that represented Tukwila in the World Police & Fire Games (WPFG) .The WPFD is second the biggest international sporting competition in the world second only to the Olympics. Detective Hines participated in the Triathlon of a mile swim, 25.41 mile bike ride and 10k run which he completed in a time of 3 hours and 6 minutes. Detective Hines regularly competed in 5k, 10k, half-marathon and marathons as well as triathlons of varying distances.

Those who worked with Detective Hines knew him to be the hardest working officer in the department. He would regularly assist patrol officers by handling patrol calls when they were busy, transporting suspects to jail for them, backing them when other units weren’t available and being a true leader and mentor to them. He could always be counted on and was always there for any officer or detective that needed assistance no matter what that assistance needed was.

Yesterday on his last day of work, we had to force him to step away from his work to celebrate his retirement as he otherwise would have worked right up to the last minute. It is a testament to his work ethic, dedication to the Tukwila community and his unrelenting drive.

Thank you Detective Hines for your 35 years of service to our community, you unwavering commitment to your fellow officers and your incredible work ethic. You will be missed.