MARCH 20, 2015, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A17
SHIFT,
continued from Page A2
under the radar. She would
have slipped through the
cracks. If not for us having the
POP mindset, she would be a
transient on the street being
victimized over and over. We’d
be spending time doing a lot
of reports on her. Now she’s
in a good place. It changed her
life and her family’s life. Doing
that reduces costs elsewhere.
She now writes me thank you
letters.”
Copeland feels the KPD
has bought into POP for a
simple reason.
“POP has been an easier
sell because cops want to solve
problems,” he said.
Teague said one of the
changes calls for offi cers to
spend less time on reports
and more time doing patrols
or talking with community
members.
“We’re still getting infor-
mation, but in a short synop-
sis,” Teague said. “It’s worth it
to free cops up for 1.5 to two
hours a day to stay on calls for
service and to identify prob-
lems.”
That change has suited An-
derson, a 20-year KPD vet-
eran, just fi ne.
“Things are refreshingly
different,” said the KPD’s lone
female offi cer. “Before Teague,
everything was a report, in-
cluding something minor that
took a couple of minutes to
respond to. There was a lot
of data entry. It was very time
consuming. I spent hours at
my desk writing reports. Then
you’d start the next day over
again. I never could get caught
up. I had to hurry through
calls to get back to reports, es-
pecially if I was making arrests.
I felt like I was working a desk
job. I felt like I could never get
caught up.”
Anderson said she now av-
erages about four or fi ve re-
ports per shift, instead of 15.
Reports are made for each
call, but can now be short
narratives with a few notes if
needed. She gave an example
of the difference.
“Before, there would be an
anonymous call of a barking
dog,” Anderson said. “I would
check it out and would sit and
wait, then write a report that
there was no dog. I would
include the time, address, if I
talked to anyone, when I re-
sponded and what I did the
whole time. It would take
twice as long to write about it
versus actually doing it.
“Now I put in the box I
was here, there was no dog and
I send it,” she added. “I don’t
have to go into the whole sys-
tem and fi ll all the little boxes.
That means a lot more time
on the road now.”
Having more time also
means Anderson can use that
time problem solving.
“The longer you’re an offi -
cer, the more you realize some-
times an arrest isn’t the answer
or it won’t fi x the problem,”
she said. “Sometimes it causes
a problem. Sometimes one
person just wants the other
person to go to jail. The an-
swer doesn’t always have to be
an arrest. At times (before) an
arrest was just an easy answer.
When I have the opportunity,
I try to involve myself more
and talk to both parties. I try
to take a different approach to
make sure there is justice for
everyone. An arrest might feel
better in the short-term, but
it’s not the long-term answer.
That person will get out and
do the same thing again. You
need to get to the root of the
problem.”
Teague said in the 1960s
there was a movement to get
away from offi cers using their
own discretion.
“We saw the consequenc-
es,” he said. “Now we very
much want offi cers to use
their discretion. That’s the big-
gest shift I’ve seen in my 25
years, is the move to more dis-
cretion. Everyone wants cops
to have discretion. You don’t
want to be cited for going 26
mph in a 25 zone.”
The way Anderson sees it,
POP lines up with her inter-
nal philosophy.
“I’ve always said this job
is all about problem-solving,”
she said. “I always had this ap-
proach. This is what I’ve been
doing. It’s a thinking game. It’s
a brain game. For me it’s a re-
freshing change. It’s what I’ve
been saying for years.”
Not only does POP de-
emphasize numbers in terms
of arrests and the like, Teague
said implementing it has noth-
ing to do with other numbers,
i.e. how many offi cers are on
the roster.
“None of it is driven by
a need to be more effi cient,”
Teague said. “All of it is driven
by the need to make the com-
munity safer. The nice thing
about that is that the change
in policing strategy is more ef-
fi cient and requires fewer re-
sources.
“ Things are
refreshingly
different.”
— Carrie Anderson,
KPD police offi cer
“Having 41 (offi cers) is a
magic number because we
were once there,” he added.
“If we were there, I would add
one more (offi cer) to both
night shifts. But if we had 10
more people, would we have
made the change? Absolute-
ly we would have made the
change. It isn’t just about ar-
resting people, it’s about pre-
venting crime in the fi rst place
and reducing the cost of crime
to victims, perps and families,
all of that. It’s the right thing
to do.”
That has included bring-
ing back CRU, which was
disbanded in June 2010 when
Trump was running it.
“We have a different mis-
sion now,” Trump said. “We’re
more broad. In the past we
focused on mostly drug in-
vestigations. That tended
to be what CRU did. How
CRU is put together, we are
capable of doing surveillance
for drugs. Now we also look
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at livability, like the squatters
on Verda Lane last year lead-
ing to neighbors complain-
ing. We are able to get in that
environment. We obtained a
search warrant and remedied
that problem months sooner
than we would have other-
wise. We can identify through
(Steele) problem locations and
see how to permanently solve
problems.”
Trump noted he has re-
sources within the KPD as
well as outside those walls,
such as nuisance abatement,
Department of Human Ser-
vices and Keizer Public Works.
“We try to be as creative as
we can for our stakeholders,”
Trump said. “It’s more of a
team concept. We can bring in
anyone who can help towards
a permanent solution.”
Trump said CRU’s goal is
to be familiar with the com-
munity.
“We do it in a number of
ways,” he said. “We have bi-
cycle patrols. We talk to a lot
of people. We aim to ride
through school zones and
neighborhoods. We hear about
stuff you wouldn’t normally
hear. If you just have a conver-
sation, people tell you about
things that are bothering them
but they wouldn’t really want
to call dispatch about.”
Trump gave an example of
an issue Bair Park neighbors
were having.
“Kids were going through
tall grass and smoking,” Trump
said. “We coordinated with
public works to mow it. Then
we got back ahold of the
neighbors and let them know
it was solved. It was solving a
livability issue.”
Despite all the changes,
not everything has changed.
For example, offi cers still have
training, as highlighted last
week in the Keizertimes.
“There will still be bad
people,” Teague said. “You still
have to have police offi cers in
uniform driving police cars. If
you had a cop for every door-
step, you would still need cops.
You always have to have cops
that do traditional police work
since there are bad people out
there. But where we can inter-
fere with that, we’re going to
do that. That is not traditional
policing. That is POP.”
Patrol offi cers still drive
KEIZERTIMES fi le/Craig Murphy
Keizer Police Department offi cers make an arrest on Verda
Lane last August. Community Response Unit offi cers worked
with neighbors to solve the case more quickly.
around Keizer, even with the
changed philosophy.
“Random patrol is still
valuable,” Teague said. “If you
live on a street where crime
never happens and you pay
taxes, you still expect to occa-
sionally see a cop.”
Those cops are being hired
now with different skill sets
being sought.
“We look for people now
who are more open minded,
have cultural empathy, emo-
tional stability, social initia-
tive and are fl exible,” Teague
said. “People tend to think in
terms that cops are infl exible,
just the facts. If you just have
the law and see if the law was
broken or not and make an ar-
rest, that doesn’t take a whole
lot of skill. When you are try-
ing to unravel another per-
son’s world, that requires an
incisiveness that goes beyond
just skill. There’s not a lot of
people who can do that job
who want to do the job.”
While changes are being
made now, Teague fi gures it
will only get better in the fu-
ture when people like Cope-
land, 16 years his junior, will
be primed to take over.
“I told Craig Prins it would
be a decade before POP makes
traction in Oregon,” Teague
said. “Well, we’re way ahead of
that. Some things have really
fallen into place for it to hap-
pen. It really takes a signifi -
cant philosophical shift from
outputs towards outcomes.
Copeland’s generation, going
through the leadership train-
ing now, is getting it in spades.
It will take his generation to
do it industrywide.”
The industry as a whole
has been having a rough time
nationally, highlighted by the
ongoing saga between police
and citizens in Ferguson, Mo.
Trump said what’s happening
in Ferguson isn’t indicative of
what’s happening in Keizer or
other places.
“When people see Keizer
practice law enforcement,
they see a difference,” Trump
said. “People come up to us
and thank us for what we do.
It’s been real positive.”
Teague said things aren’t
necessarily being looked at in
context.
“In Ferguson, a vast major-
ity of the people aren’t rabble
rousing protestors that shoot
cops,” he said. “You will always
have some of those people. We
could have some terrible ac-
cident that happens here that
looks like, on the surface, we
made bad decisions. We could
have that happen today. But I
think most people would give
us the benefi t of the doubt.
That’s just something you deal
with.
“We know there are some
communities that feel disen-
franchised, that don’t feel they
have access to justice,” Teague
added. “It’s incumbent upon
us to maintain dialogues with
all the people in Keizer. We
owe them that. If our notion
is really to increase communi-
ty safety, we have to have that
dialogue to do that, to identify
and solve problems. It is part
of our charge.”