By KENNETH LIPP/YachatsNews
With nine new deputies in training or at the state police academy, Lincoln County patrol deputies returned to their old shift schedule this week after a year-long experiment meant to account for a depleted workforce.
Since February, Lincoln County Sheriff’s patrol deputies have worked 12-hour shifts — three days on, two days off, two days on, three days off. The schedule was a trial agreement negotiated with the deputies’ union to account for personnel shortages. Shifts ran from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m., giving four hours of overlap during the agency’s busiest hours, from 3 to 7 p.m.
As of the new year, deputies are back to working four 10-hour shifts every seven days, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. As before and during the experimental schedule, there are no deputies on patrol from 3-7 a.m. This eliminates the double coverage during peak call time, but allows one more deputy per complete shift.
Sheriff Curtis Landers said the trial last year showed some promise after six months and commanders and the deputies union agreed to an extension. But by the time the Dec. 31 expiration was approaching, it was apparent that the agency did not have the manpower to sustain 12-hour shifts.
“We got together, and I think both sides realized that it just isn’t accomplishing everything we wanted, mainly because we just don’t have enough people to accomplish a 12-hour schedule,” Landers said. “I know on the patrol side they were seeing advantages to being able to have every other weekend off … but they were also seeing that they were working longer than 12-hour shifts on a lot of occasions, being held over for different reasons.”
From administration’s standpoint, Landers said, the overlapping shifts worked out well, “but it was at the ends on both sides that we were running short for the entire county.”
Re-staffing the agency
Five months after deputies began the trial schedule, Landers announced that his agency would no longer immediately respond to nuisance and low-level criminal complaints in unincorporated areas due to the staffing shortage. The announcement was essentially a description of the status quo with the added limitation that deputies on contracted patrols in incorporated areas would no longer be dispatched to calls outside those jurisdictions while on duty.
Patrol commander Lt. Karl Vertner said the office was maintaining that policy, although it hired enough to fill all but two patrol vacancies and filled its contract positions, including a new one in Depoe Bay. However, most of those deputies have months of training ahead before they can work solo on patrol.
In order to earn their law enforcement certification, deputy candidates must attend the Oregon State Police academy in Salem for four months. The sheriff’s office also requires four months of training on the street with an experienced deputy to learn local practices and procedures. With extended wait times for academy admittance, the whole process can take more than a year, al though candidates can complete some local training while waiting to go to Salem.
Vertner said they’ve hired nine patrol candidates since February, and one deputy hired in December 2021 was just released to solo status last week. There are two February hires in local training, one hired in March just finished with the academy and is back in agency training, one hired in June iis currently at the academy, and one candidate hired in October in agency training awaiting admittance to academy.
Another candidate from the Waldport area recently accepted a position and starts in January, Vertner said. The agency also got a boost from two already-certified re-hires — Jason Spano, who rejoined the department in April after leaving law enforcement last year, and David Boys, who retired in 2020 but returned to full-time duty in September.
The sheriff’s office also hired Detective Tony Bettencourt, filling a vacancy left when Abby Dorsey took a job with the district attorney’s office last year. There are still two vacant detective positions.
Vertner said while the sheriff’s office added nine, it also lost five deputies in 2022 who left to work for other law enforcement agencies.
Five deputies patrol in cities without police forces through paid contracts, two in Waldport, two in Siletz and one in Depoe Bay. Those positions are all filled, though the Depoe Bay deputy does not begin patrol until April. There are also two deputies who patrol waterways through a contract with the Oregon State Marine Board. Senior Deputy Bruce McGuire was recently assigned as the sheriff’s forest deputy, whose salary is paid by a landowners group and the county solid waste district.
Fully staffed?
Even when all deputies-in-training are on solo status, and if the department can hire two more to fill its 12-deputy patrol roster, Vertner says a return to responding to all calls is not guaranteed.
“We’ve been operating with the same number of general fund deputies since the late ‘80s, early ‘90s,” Vertner said. “In my 17 years, I’ve come to the belief that 12 deputies is not enough to safely patrol, and be proactive, in Lincoln County.
“So, I would say even when we do get fully staffed, what we call fully staffed, I still don’t know if we have enough with 12 general fund deputies to go out and do what I believe is the right level of service to the community.”
- Kenneth Lipp is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at KenLipp@YachatsNews.com
Good news, but Yachats is not included in any coverage? Worrisome.