By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office has started a six-month experiment for scheduling patrol deputies because it has been too short-staffed to cover some shifts or duties.
Although it has just hired three more deputies and has others in state-required training, the department is putting just half of the 18 patrol deputies it is authorized on the road each week.
“We’ve had to cut back on services,” Sheriff Curtis Landers told county commissioners recently. “… we needed to do something.”
Now, instead of working four 10-hour shifts every seven days, the department’s patrol deputies started working rotating 12-hour shifts Feb. 1. Those shifts are two days on, two days off, three days on and two days off – allowing deputies to have weekends off every other weekend.
The 12-hour day shifts are now 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. with overnight shifts from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. The change gives deputies four hours of overlap from 3-7 p.m. “which doubles the number of patrols during our busiest hours,” said LCSO patrol commander Lt. Karl Vertner.
There are no patrol deputies on duty from 3-7 a.m. – which is the same as under the previous schedule.
Vertner said administrators started discussing ideas for changing the schedule with the union that covers patrol deputies last October because of the large number of personnel shortages. While the 12-hour rotating shifts “are a challenge,” he said the union agreed to give it a try for six months.
“They saw the benefit of having four hours of shift overlap and double coverage,” Vertner said. “But it’s an experiment, that’s why it’s a six-month trial period.”
Two communities – Waldport and Siletz – contract with the sheriff’s department for police coverage. That will not change.
In Waldport, Vertner said, Deputy Doug Honse has also moved to the 12-hour schedule with other deputies rotating into the area at night.
One casualty of the personnel shortage has been pulling Deputy Nick Vaille from his work as the agency’s “forest deputy.” Two outside organizations help pay that deputy’s salary and operating costs in return for him patrolling public and private forestlands investigating criminal activity, including the illegal dump sites.
“…our forest program is on hold until more folks come out of training,” Vertner said.
Months at academy and in training
Getting a deputy on the road is not as easy as swearing them in, giving them a badge and keys to a car.
Hiring and training is often a months-long process that includes an extensive background check. Once that’s cleared, a prospective officer has to attend the Oregon State Police-run academy for four months. But the academy’s capacity and classes have been hampered by the coronavirus pandemic.
Then there is four months of local field training. Prospective deputies can still do part of that in Lincoln County while waiting for a slot in the state’s academy to open, then finish once they finish the academy.
The sheriff’s office currently has two prospective deputies at the academy who are scheduled to graduate in March. They still will have to do their four months of local field training where they accompany another LCSO deputy “to learn how we do things here,” Vertner said.
Vertner said there are two more deputies scheduled to start their field training with another deputy in March while they wait for openings in the state training academy.
“We’re optimistic that we’re going to hire the right people in the next few months, get people back out on the road and put all this behind us,” he said.
Vertner said another change in procedure designed to be more efficient is to allow deputies – who can take their vehicles home – to attend daily briefings remotely instead of reporting to sheriff’s headquarters in Newport.
The patrol division’s three vacancies is not an isolated phenomenon to Lincoln County. Other agencies in Oregon – especially in metropolitan areas – are struggling as officers depart – and oftentimes leave the profession.
Previous departures from the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, Vertner said, were usually to go to other agencies. But four departures last year were deputies getting out of law enforcement to become a firefighter, a teacher, a commercial fisherman, and to open a restaurant in another state.
“They might swap agencies for a change of pace or scenery,” Vertner said, “but never to just leave. I’ve never seen this before, but it’s happening all over the country.”
The sheriff’s office will also be looking to hire a detective to replace Abbey Dorsey, who is leaving to become an investigator for the district attorney’s office. Her departure will leave the agency with one detective, Vertner said, when it would like to have three.