After 24 years on the force, Patrol Officer Todd Pricolo, 50, retired from the Los Banos Police Department on July 31. He was the “go to” officer for many of those years for anything traffic-related.
Well over 200 stolen cars were returned to their owners by Pricolo in his service, earning 13 recognitions from California Highway Patrol and Triple-A Insurance.
Pricolo was born and raised in Los Banos. He was an agricultural student throughout his education. “My parents were very well established in Los Banos when Los Banos was very small,” he said in an interview with the Westside Express.
His grandparents on his mom’s side were a large Portuguese dairy family. His father was a longtime volunteer with the fire department and was “One of the first three original Firefighters” in Los Banos, according to Pricolo.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Pricolo became a volunteer firefighter. While volunteering, he serviced fire extinguishers, worked for his father-in-law at Dutra’s Towing and worked for a local office supply company.
During his 10 years volunteering, he got to know police officers, saying, “I liked that field better than the fire at the time, and the rest is history.”
He joined the Los Banos Police Department at age 26 in November 2000, two weeks before current chief Ray Reyna Jr.
“When I went to the Police Academy, I had the thought of getting into narcotics, but my career took me elsewhere once I started it,” he said.
Within a few years on the job, he grew into the role of traffic enforcement.
“Early on into my career, it was probably in my first year, we had a real bad fatality accident early in the morning, at the corner of Mercey Springs and Pacheco Blvd,” Pricolo said, “I assisted in that investigation. I was very green, and I just started noticing things that didn’t seem right that stood out. That veteran officers weren’t seeing, just kind of like tire patterns and stuff like that. From there, it just kind of piqued my interest.”
After discovering he was good at this aspect of law enforcement, he ran with it. “It worked for me. It worked for the department.”
Another traffic role he filled was traffic survey officer. When the city received requests for stop signs, speed bumps and other traffic control devices, Pricolo would survey the site and write a report about the request. He would present his findings to the traffic safety committee, who then decided if requests would move forward based on the data he gathered.
“I became the go-to guy for traffic safety surveys,” he said.
Pricolo, in addition to all his traffic work, did field training for a brief time. He would have a trainee ride in his car for about a month as they trained in the field.
“My favorite part was auto-theft recovery,” Pricolo said.
He earned 13 ‘10851’ awards from CHP and AAA insurance. The ‘10851’ awards are for at least 12 stolen cars recovered in one year, with at least three leading to an arrest. Five awards count as a ‘Master.’
“I received my Second Master and three additional recognitions after that,” Pricolo said. He estimates he has recovered more than 200 vehicles during his career.
When asked how he did it, he simply said, “I have an eye for it.”
Pricolo also investigated fatal accidents as well. “I was the officer they would call for [assistance of fatal accidents] right up to the end of my career,” he said. He attributes it to his skill at computer diagramming and measuring scenes.
Pricolo remained a patrol officer but rotated in and out of the Officer In Charge(OIC) position.
Now a few months into retirement, Pricolo enjoys his new free time.
“I don’t have to go to bed at a certain hour. I don’t have to get up at a certain hour. I actually get up earlier now than when I worked,” he said.
He tries to walk every day and stay active, “The nice thing about retirement is I can take it easy and not have to wear all the gear anymore. Now I just have to stay moving so I don’t get stiff.”
Being retired, Pricolo spends more time at home with his wife and two daughters. He has not set his plans in stone. Pricolo is weighing getting into the new drone photography industry, especially in real estate, using the drone certification he got in the service.
He also weighs some level of traffic consulting to agencies and businesses, “Maybe put some feelers out there and see where that takes me.”
“[I] Don’t miss the nastiness of being out on the road, but I miss my coworkers. Hanging out with them and talking to them. When you work with them for 25 years, and as much as the shifts that we would work, your coworkers are like family,” Pricolo said.
Pricolo listed those he considers family. Chief Ray Reyna, “Our whole career has been together at the department.” Commander Justin Melden, Sergeant Surina Gonzalez, Sergeant Ramon McDonald, and Sergeant Nathan Bowling all “have been best friends since junior high. So many people there [at the department]. That’s the biggest loss, not seeing them every day,” Pricolo said.
