JULY 3, 2020, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5
Opinion
America: A work in progress
days. Those who say the nation is more
By LYNDON ZAITZ
The American experiment is 244 divided than ever before are forgetting
years old this year. The nation, created their history. Some colonists were loy-
by uniting 13 very different colonies, alists to the British crown and opposed
independence. The divide
was developed our Found-
over slavery turned broth-
ing Fathers who borrowed
er against brother. Franklin
from other governing sys-
Roosevelt’s New Deal leg-
tems in history—the Mag-
zaitz
was not met with
na Carta, the Romans and
writes islation
universal acclaim. Americans
the Greeks, to cite a few.
have always had disagree-
After two and a half
ments, even elections don’t
centuries, America is still
a work in progress, and will likely be, settle them. One side wins this cycle,
forever. That’s the beauty of America: the other side will win an upcoming
we are not static, we are always chang- cycle.
In our republic, political order lies
ing.
The Founding Fathers believed in a body of citizens entitled to vote for
the U.S. Constitution should not be offi cers and representatives beholden
set in stone, thus the ability to amend to them. To many of the world’s people,
it through legislation and then ratifi - the American model of government is
cation by three quarters of the states. the ideal. Change at the ballot box fre-
Our Constitution is solid, it has been quently begins with the people taking
amended only 27 times; that’s once ev- their ideas into the streets around the
country. The Suffragettes, who fought
ery 10 years or so.
The debate over whether the Con- for women’s right to vote, are not that
stitution, as written in the 18th century, far removed from the Black Lives Mat-
is open to interpretation by contempo- ter and police reform protesters across
rary citizens, goes on. Interpretation of the country.
This amazing melting pot has room
the Constitution lays at the heart of ev-
ery confi rmation by the U.S. Senate for in its 3.7 million square miles to help
appointees to the federal court system, those yearning for a better life. How
including the Supreme Court. Debate we do that is in the details of legisla-
over the meaning of the Constitution tion and debate. America is as grand
fuels disagreements on the election and as messy as its people. We need to
campaign trail. It is also the source the ensure that all citizens are included in
passions recently incited regarding po- the opening phrase of the Constitu-
lice actions, race relations and even face tion, “We the people.” We aren’t there
masks are rooted in its the country’s yet, but we’re still a work in progress,
patriots to a one.
founding document.
(Lyndon Zaitz is publisher of the
As Americans, we don’t always
agree. That is particularly true these Keizertimes.)
KPD chief on policing in Keizer
By JOHN TEAGUE
In his opinion in the Keizertimes
(Current events call for look at policing,
June 19), Gene McIntyre rightly said,
“It appears timely and appropriate to
hear from Chief [John] Teague as to
what the people can count on from
him and our taxpayer-funded police
offi cers….”
Though it necessarily requires some
unpacking, which I’ll strive to do with-
in these 640 words, what you should
expect of us is succinctly expressed in
our mission statement: Our mission is
to help the community maintain order
while promoting safety and freedom
and building public confi dence.
Modern policing began 200 years
ago, and the fi rst principle of that fi rst
police department (the London Metro-
politan Police Force) was that the “ba-
sic mission for which the police exist is
to prevent crime and disorder.” We at
the Keizer Police Department actively
try to prevent crime and disorder. We
do not carelessly wait for crimes or
violations to happen and then numb-
ingly compare people’s behavior to a
set of laws and ordinances and send to
jail or to the courts those who are not
in compliance. Applying the law is not
among the fi rst things we do or want
to do, yet this disposition toward the
law is far from common.
Most police agencies do not fi rst
seek to prevent crime from occurring
or recurring. Most agencies measure
the performances of their offi cers by,
for example, the number of citations
they write, the number of arrests they
make, the number of calls they handle.
Keizer does not. The ninth principle of
modern policing is: “The test of police
effi ciency is the absence of crime and
disorder, not the visible evidence of
police action in dealing with it.”
Neither does Keizer fi rst police
people (except, of course, those per-
sons who chronically, repeatedly make
problems of themselves). Policing
problems, not people, has the supreme-
ly important benefi t of being race
neutral because offi cers are initially ag-
nostic toward the cause of a problem—
what is the problem? Not, who is the
problem?
Combined with Procedural Jus-
tice, problem-oriented policing puts
the police in a posture of assisting and
serving, not of imposing. This should
not be overlooked or dismissed as un-
important: a police agency is either
oriented toward the law and looking
for violators, or oriented toward prob-
lems and looking for solutions.
Note our obligations to the public
in these principles of policing—every
one is cooperative:
- The ability of the police to per-
form their duties is dependent upon
public approval.
- To secure public approval, the po-
lice must secure the public’s willing
cooperation and voluntary observance
of the law.
- Public cooperation diminishes
proportionately to the use of physical
force.
- Police preserve public approval,
not by catering to public opinion, but
by demonstrating absolute impartial
service to the law.
- Police should maintain a relation-
ship with the public that the police are
the public and the public are the po-
lice; the police being members of the
public who are paid to give full-time
attention to duties which are incum-
bent on every citizen.
These principles are 200 years old,
yet they’ve rarely been fully exercised.
There is an almost unavoidable history,
a necessary arc to the 200 years it took
for these principles to come to fruition.
That history is beyond the scope of this
piece, but it does beg two closely relat-
ed comments.
The fi rst is that the sins of our pre-
decessors should not fail to inform our
present and future decision-making;
subsequently, we should neither erase
nor dismiss them and the milieus in
which they lived. The second is that
there has never been a more appropri-
ate time to engage in original policing
than right now. Still; many agencies
will not because they are neither vested
in it nor structured for it.
It took medicine 450 years to make
the turn from an arguably harmful art
to an art informed by science, yet po-
licing has only just begun its earnest
move toward an evidence base. The
move was fi rst attempted 50 years ago,
but a misinterpreted experiment left
the academics telling themselves and
the police that what the police did in
response to crime was neither harmful
nor helpful, that neither crime preven-
tion nor mass arrests could affect the
crime rate. Twenty-fi ve years later, re-
searchers looked again at that experi-
ment and discovered they’d erred, that,
in fact, the police can have profound
impacts upon crime, people, and their
communities. Thus, after 200 years of
policing, it’s only been within my ca-
reer of 30 years that this nascent redi-
rection has begun.
Serendipitously, that redirection also
includes a prescription for how the
police should interact with the public.
When I returned to the Keizer Police
Department seven years ago, I told the
offi cers that I expect them to treat the
public the same way I treat them, the
offi cers—with Procedural Justice: Treat
people with dignity and respect; give
them a chance to be heard; convey
trustworthy motives; and make reason-
able, informed, and transparent deci-
sions. This is what you should expect
of every important relationship, and it’s
what you should expect of your police
offi cers.
If one relies upon state and national
comparisons (which many do), Keiz-
er Police Department is allegedly un-
derfunded, but we’ve not asked to be
staffed with another 19 police offi cers
(to meet the state average) or anoth-
er 46 (to meet the national). Frankly,
if policing is done reactively—that is,
if the police only respond to crimes
that have already occurred—then you
really can’t have enough cops to affect
the crime rate. If, however, policing is
done as originally designed—to come
alongside the community to prevent
crime and disorder from happening in
the fi rst place—then there is a point
of economic stability, a point at which
an agency has enough resources to
do more than merely react to crime,
where it has just enough resources to
prevent what crime can be prevented,
maintaining the order the community
wants but without over-policing it.
Keizer, I believe, has struck that bal-
ance, but we’ve only done it because
we value procedural justice and we’re
actively, thoughtfully, purposefully
problem-oriented.
(John Teague is Chief of the Keizer
Police Department)
police scanner
SUNDAY, JUNE 21
1:13 a.m. - Arrested for attempting to
elude police offi cer at the intersection of
River Road N. and Cummings Lane N.
4:13 p.m. - Traffi c accident at the inter-
section of River Road N. and Sam Or-
cutt Way NE.
5:19 p.m. - Traffi c accident in the 5000
block of River Road N.
7 p.m. - Theft from motor vehicle in the
5000 block of Benevan Court NE.
7:29 p.m. - Driving under the infl uence
on Homewood Court N.
7:55 p.m. - Restraining order violation in
the 1000 block of Dearborn Avenue NE.
8:54 p.m. - Restraining order violation in
the 1000 block of River Rock Drive NE.
MONDAY. JUNE 22
9:09 a.m. - Graffi ti in the 3000 block of
River Road N.
4:18 p.m. - Theft in the 7000 block of
Park Terrace Drive NE.
5:39 p.m. - Traffi c accident in the 600
block of Chemawa Road NE.
9:34 p.m. - Vandalism in the 5000 block
of River Road N.
11:47 p.m. - Restraining order violation
in the 3000 block of River Road N.
TUESDAY, JUNE 23
12:29 a.m. - Shoplifting in the 4000
block of River Road N.
5:02 a.m. - Burglary and criminal tres-
passing in the 2000 block of Allendale
Way NE.
6:14 p.m. - Unlawful possession of meth-
amphetamine on River Road N.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24
2:08 a.m. - Aggravated assault in the 4000
block of River Road N.
2:30 p.m. - Vandalism in the 1000 block
of Marigold Street NE.
6:19 p.m. - Telephonic harassment in the
4000 block of Rickman Road NE.
THURSDAY, JUNE 25
1 a.m. - Theft from motor vehicle and
unlawful entry to vehicle in the 1000
block of Meadowlark Drive NE.
8:38 a.m. - Theft from motor vehicle in
the 1000 block of Carilor Court NE.
10:58 a.m. - Residence burglary in the
1000 block of Marigold Street NE.
12:50 p.m. - Theft from motor vehicle in
the 1000 block of Zachris Court NE.
1:31 p.m. - Physical harassment in the
4000 block of River Road N.
6:47 p.m. - Failure to perform duties of
driver when property was damaged in the
1000 block of Candlewood Drive NE.
FRIDAY, JUNE 26
2 a.m. - Residence burglary in the 1000
block of Mistwood Drive NE.
7:13 a.m. - Unlawful entry to vehicle in
the 1000 block of Zachris Court NE.
12 p.m. - Theft from motor vehicle and
unlawful entry to vehicle in the 100
block of McNary Estates Drive N.
1:35 p.m. - Warrant served in the 4000
block of River Road N.
9:30 p.m. - Fraud use of credit card and
unlawful entry to vehicle in the 6000
block of Wheatland Road N.
9:45 p.m. - Vandalism at Apple Blossom
Avenue NE.
11:45 p.m. - Driving under the infl uence
at the intersection of Verda Lane NE. and
Alder Drive NE.
SATURDAY, JUNE 27
12:30 a.m. - Motor vehicle theft in the
1000 block of Fir Cone Drive NE.
2:04 p.m. - Theft from motor vehicle in
the 7000 block of Parkplace Drive NE.
3:02 p.m. - Theft from motor vehicle in
the 700 block of Lakefair Circle N.
10:25 p.m. - Vandalism in the 700 block
of Dearborn Avenue N.
SUNDAY, JUNE 28
12:25 a.m. - Failure to perform duties of
driver when property was damaged at the
intersection of Churchdale Avenue N.
and River Road N.
9:11 a.m. - Restraining order violation in
the 6000 block of 14th Avenue NE.
11:16 a.m. - Burglary in the 6000 block
of Wheatland Road N.
8:54 p.m. - Motor vehicle theft in the
5000 block of River Road N.
MONDAY, JUNE 29
1:22 a.m. - Arrested for assault in the 600
block of Rose Park Lane NE.
5:05 a.m. - Motor vehicle theft in the
1000 block of Clearview Avenue NE.
19-year-old arrested in DUII crash
A 19-year-old Salem man, ac-
cused of driving under the infl u-
ence of intoxicants, tried to elude
a Keizer police offi cer on River
Road North and ended up wrap-
ping his Jeep around a tree.
The incident began about 1:15
a.m. Sunday, June 21, a Keizer po-
lice offi cer saw the driver of a silver
Jeep Patriot drive through a stop
sign in the southeast Keizer and at-
tempted to initiate a traffi c stop.
Instead of stopping, the driver
hit the gas and sped away blowing
through a second stop sign.
The pursuing offi cer lost sight
of the vehicle as it traveled north
on Cherry Avenue Northeast. Not
long afterward, the vehicle was
discovered in the 4500 block of
River Road North having crashed
through a utility pole and into a
tree.
Salem Electric was called to the
Submitted
A driver attempting to elude police crashed into a utility pole and then a tree
near Arby’s on River Road North.
scene and ensured that the driver could
safely be removed from his vehicle. He
received non-life-threatening injuries
in the crash.
Christian Salinas-Tolento was taken
crossword
to Salem Hospital where he was cit-
ed for attempting to elude an offi cer,
reckless driving, driving under the
infl uence of intoxicants, and criminal
mischief. His bail was set at $30,000.