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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (June 25, 2020)
COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL CGPD from A1 As of July 1, the Cot- tage Grove Police De- partment (CGPD) will employ a total of 18 sworn officers and the department is appropri- ated about $3 million next fiscal year for police operations. Comparatively, Eu- gene Police Department employs nearly 200 of- ficers and operates on a budget of about $68 mil- lion. Despite the vast per- sonnel and funding dif- ferences between them, Cottage Grove Police Chief Scott Shepherd sees The Grove as having the kind of advantage over bigger departments that comes naturally with small-town com- munities. “Their relationship with their citizens is much different from what I perceive ours is,” he said. “We have an ability to interact and communicate with cit- izens on a much more personal and intimate level.” Though the depart- ment has taken to han- dling more situations by phone if possible amid the public health crisis, Shepherd has main- tained his open-door policy and tries to keep the department en- gaged with the commu- nity. “Our tack has always been, if a citizen of Cot- tage Grove asks for a po- lice officer, they’re going to get one,” he said, add- ing that citizens of larger cities cannot always ex- pect such service. Predictably, Cottage Grove’s size also sets it apart from larger cities in numbers of police-in- volved incidents. In Shepherd’s 25 years with the department, he said there have been no confirmed reports of excessive force and only one case where weapons were discharged in the line of duty. The case in question took place Sept. 20, 2014, when a male individu- al in need of counsel- ing left his group home armed with a knife. With three officers on scene, the man was re- ported to be non-com- pliant and charged at the officers. Two officers stopped the subject by firing rounds into the man’s leg or foot, after which he was treated, charged and released back to the group home. No officers were hurt and the subject report- edly recovered. Though Shepherd himself said he has “tak- en [his gun] out more times than I can count,” he attributes the police department’s lack of in- cidents to the its adher- ence to policy. “I think that is gener- ally the theme of how we do business,” he said. Policy at Work Demands for policy shifts have had a lot of currency in the national debate on law enforce- ment reform. Proposed One campaign in par- ticular has achieved a fair amount of popular- ity. Prompted by the protests against police | JUNE 25, 2020 | 9A requiring a warning be- fore shooting, duty to in- tervene, banning shoot- ing at moving vehicles, requiring comprehen- sive reporting, requiring “I’m interested in getting at the truth because I want officers to conduct themselves as professionals.” —CGPD Captain Conrad Gagner solutions have included calls for demilitarization, requiring body cameras, improved training and establishing community oversight committees. Though rewriting pol- icy to achieve meaning- ful change may seem a daunting task for some departments, Cottage Grove seems to have been ahead of the curve. For the past 14 years, the CGPD has been us- ing a policy manual de- signed and drafted by Lexipol, a private com- pany which provides policy manuals, training bulletins and consult- ing services to law en- forcement agencies, fire departments and other public safety depart- ments. This has included the department’s use of force policy, a document which finds overlap with many of the requests coming from campaigns seeking to address police violence. shootings of civilians in Missouri, New York, Baltimore and else- where, an activist move- ment called Campaign Zero emerged in 2015 with proposals to end the deaths and excessive force resulting from po- lice encounters. The campaign’s solu- tions focus on limiting police interventions, im- proving community in- teractions and ensuring accountability. The hashtag for the campaign, #8CantWait, began trending on social media after the killing of George Floyd in May and, though the project has received widespread endorsement, others have criticized it for lacking evidence or not addressing root prob- lems in law enforcement. The project proposes eight policy changes po- lice departments could make to curtail police vi- olence: banning choke- holds and strangleholds, de-escalation, requiring, a use of force continuum and requiring exhaust- ing all alternatives be- fore shooting. The first six of these policies are either in- cluded under the CG- PD’s use-of-force policy or part of mandatory officer training. The last two, however, are not specifically addressed. This is partially, Shep- herd said, because they are not always feasible. While a use-of-force continuum used to be part of policy, “It’s mor- phed into force exam- ples,” he said, explaining that these days officer reactions depend more on threat levels. Shepherd worries that a codified continuum can get officers stuck on the steps rather than re- acting and adapting to each circumstance. “A verbal argument between a guy and his wife is different from two guys swinging pool cues at each other,” he said, adding that a re- quirement to exhaust all alternatives before shooting is unrealistic considering the nature of unpredictable cir- cumstances. “It’s assuming that sit- uations are static,” he said. Still, de-escalation is baked into officer inter- actions and is required training, both in acade- my and in achieving cer- tification. “So it’s already part of being an officer,” said Shepherd. “We don’t go in to ramp things up, we go in to calm things down.” In addition to devel- oping the department’s manual, Lexipol offers the CGPD daily training bulletins — 15-minute exercises quizzing offi- cers on policies as pro- cedures, which is con- sidered part of yearly training hours and helps officers stay keen on fol- lowing good instincts. “We hire people and give them guns because we trust them to make decisions in a logical manner, not necessarily a step-by-step manner,” Shepherd said. Cottage Grove’s low incident rate may be due in part to the effec- tive use of these policies and training. Shepherd recounted several cases which could have See POLICY 10A All of these pets are looking for their forever home... 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