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
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