Hello Mayor and council members. As the summer is winding down, we are still feeling the heat out there. Our recent wind storm brought back some memories, not good ones, of the same type of wind event we had in 2020 that resulted in the major fires we will not soon forget. It was a bit strange that it happened again during the same week as before. Fortunately, we did not see the same fire events that we saw in 2020. Still, it put a strain on some of our resources as PGE performed a public safety power shutdown in much of the Mt. Hood corridor. This included a very small portion of homes that were in the city limits of Sandy. Some of the folks that live up the mountain had no power for days. To my knowledge, this was the first time that PGE has done this in our area. Most of my weekend during that incident was spent in meetings with PGE staff and other emergency managers throughout the area. There were some lessons learned, mostly with communications and public advisory issues.

Our three vehicles have finally arrived and have been delivered to the business we use to install all of the equipment. The problem now is were still waiting on some of the parts that are needed to complete the installation of all the lighting, radios, cages etc. They are hopeful they can begin installation by October 31st. If everything goes according to plan, we should see the vehicles in service by the end of November. This has put a strain on our current aging fleet as half of our patrol vehicles are 2014 models and have high miles and increasing mechanical issues. This delay in delivery of our vehicles was mostly COVID related as the manufactures struggled to keep up with demand while dealing with the shortage of certain critical electrical parts.

Our newest recruit, Scott Jones is now in the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training basic police academy. This academy is 16 weeks. Officer Jones completed a pre-academy in Multnomah County before going to DPSST basic police academy. It’s a long road with training. Officer Jones is scheduled to graduate from the academy on January 19th, 2023. After completing the academy, he will begin the field training with our staff that will last anywhere from 12 to 14 weeks. So far, he is doing very well.

School is back in session which means our School Resource Officers are back in the classrooms at the Oregon Trail School District. They are very excited and busy. The kids seem to be happy to back to a somewhat normal school year. Speaking of our SRO’s, we now have a revised/updated contract with the District which will be presented to council during a work session at the November 17th meeting. This process took a bit longer than previous contract negotiations as there were some significant financial changes made. I am excited to present the new contract for council review.

That is all for now. See all of you soon. Chief Roberts

Hello Mayor and Council Members. I hope all of you enjoyed the month of May and the Memorial Day holiday weekend. The weather did not cooperate but it is still nice to have a long weekend. I am happy to report that we are now fully staffed. With Officer Scott Jones starting on May 24th, we are at full staffing here at the police department. It took our office nearly two years to hire our new officers. I’m very excited that we were able to get such highly qualified personnel to come to Sandy and be part of our team and community. With the three officers that were hired along with two others that were hired as a result of the public safety fee, half of our patrol unit represent officers that have been hired within the last three years. Quite an accomplishment from our team as well as Human Resources Director Angie Welty. With so many police agencies struggling to hire good police officers, this says a great deal about what our agency and our community has to offer.

In other news, I wanted to give council an update on the body camera project. All of the equipment has finally arrived and installation of the equipment, software etc, has begun. We recently had one of our vehicles upfitted with the new camera system. This was done at the upfitters shop. The rest of the upfitting will be done by our installer here at the police department which will make things easier as we will not have to transport and pick up vehicles. The Watchguard/Motorola folks are working with our IT department to complete any software/equipment installations that need to happen here at the police department. Training for the body cameras has not been scheduled as of this time but I’m hoping this happens sometime within the next four to six weeks. We are still looking at about two months before the pilot program is in place.

We are already preparing for the Sandy Mountain Festival that will begin on July 7th with the parade. This is always a big undertaking for the police department with the traffic issues that this creates for a short period of time. I’m really looking forward to having folks be able to come and enjoy our festival. It feels like were officially getting back to some normal activities here.

We are about two months into our new patrol schedule that features twelve hour patrol shifts. This is set for a one year trial basis and was agreed upon by the city and the Clackamas County Peace Officer’s Association. The schedule allows for better coverage and more time off for our officers. So far, we are getting positive feedback from our patrol officers. I am hoping that after the trial period of one year, we can implement this schedule on a full time basis. I will periodically update council on this as we get further into the trial period.

That is all for now. Have a great month and I will see all of you soon. Chief Roberts

Hello Mayor and council members. I hope all of you have had a good month and enjoyed a bit of time off during the spring break week.

Only a few items to report. First, we have completed the hiring process as our last candidate, Scott Jones has signed the final offer letter and has a start date of May 24th, 2022. This means we will have three new officers that will be in training at the same time. It puts some strain on our current training officers. Making it worse, two of our officers that have left our agency were training officers, so we were short to begin with. To offset this shortage, we are sending several of our current officers to training to become certified training officers. The officers chosen had shown interest and have the experience necessary to take on that task.

I have finished placing a new vehicle order. Our last years order was cancelled by the manufacturer because of “supply chain issues.” The problem with this is the new order is with a different manufacturer so we will not see any new vehicles until September of this year at the earliest. We were supposed to have three new vehicles delivered by the end of March of this year but that obviously did not happen. We are doing our best to preserve several of our current older model vehicles to make it through the summer months. These vehicles are all approaching 100k miles and should have been rotated out by now. There was really nothing we could do about it as the problem lies with the manufacturer and product shortages.

Officer Garret Thornton has been promoted to Sergeant and will start his duties on April 24th. You will see him at the first council meeting in May. He will be sworn in at that time by council. Officer Thornton is filling the vacancy that was created as a result of Sgt. Bickle’ departure this last month.

That is all for now. I will see all of you soon. Chief Roberts

Hello Mayor and Council members. I hope you all had a good month. We continue with the hiring process but I’m happy to say we are near the end and will soon be fully staffed once again. Officer Ryan Anderson was recently sworn in at the last council meeting and is currently finishing up his onboarding process with the police department. He will begin his field training within the next week or two. The last two officers that have been hired, Officer Carter and Officer Anderson, do not have to attend the DPSST basic police academy. Both have already attended. This will greatly reduce the training time before they are solo and able to begin patrol on their own.

We will have one vacant position when Sergeant Ryan Bickle resigns from our agency. Sgt. Bickle is relocating his family to Florida some time in April of this year. We have a candidate to fill this position when he leaves. That candidate is Scott Jones. You may know Scott as he currently works for the City of Sandy in the IT department. Scott has finished and passed his background investigation and psychological exam and has been given an offer of employment from myself. He is yet to have a solid start date but will most likely start some time in the middle of April. As far as I know, Scott will be the first officer here that has transferred from another department within the City of Sandy.

I just got word last week that our vehicle order for the three patrol vehicles that council and the budget committee approved has been cancelled. We were given no reason from the Dodge corporation except that parts for the V-8 engine were not available. This prompted me to put together another order for three Ford vehicles. The cancellation did not allow me to reorder the Dodge vehicles and the new order for the Ford vehicles puts us in the back of the line for the builds. So, instead of having our vehicles delivered by the end of March, because our original order was placed last year, we will not see any new vehicles until September of 2022. This puts us in a challenging position with our aging fleet.

At the PD, we are excited about spring being just around the corner and the hope of some warmer and longer days ahead. I hope all of you have a great month and I will see you soon. Chief Roberts

Hello Mayor and Council members. I hope all of you have had a good month as we put away all of the all the holiday decorations and lights and pray for spring. This month, the police department held a holiday gathering for all department members and their spouses or significant others. This is something we have not been able to do for the last two years. We were able to use the space at the local airport and had plenty of room to social distance. Dinner was provided and we did our usual white elephant gift exchange. I was great to be able to connect with my staff and family members that I do not get to see often. It was a small slice of normalcy and my staff truly enjoyed it.

After hearing from Councilor Walker at a recent council meeting regarding awards and recognition for staff members, I wanted to let all of you know that I do have three life saving awards that I am working on now. After the work on my end is completed, I will get them on a council agenda to be presented to those three officers. I don’t anticipate this to happen until sometime in April as I had to order additional items such as the official medals and awards.

Officer Quentin Carter was recently sworn in as our newest Sandy Police Officer and is off and running with his training. Officer Ryan Anderson is set to be sworn in during the March 7th council meeting and he will start with us on February 28th. This is exciting news and it will put us at full staffing for the time being. I say that because we anticipate an officer, Sergeant Bickle, to leave our agency some time in the near future, possibly some time in April. We obviously don’t want to lose any of our personnel but Sgt. Bickle is moving his family to another state and pursuing another career path. This has nothing to do with his employment with the City of Sandy, in fact, Sgt. Bickle has always loved his job here and has been a dedicated employee for years. It’s simply somewhat of a lifelong dream for him and his family to relocate to a warmer climate. The good news is that we already have a candidate that is in the background phase of our process to fill the vacant position that will be created when Sgt. Bickle leaves. We will need to promote someone in our department to fill the Sergeants position and have candidates for that position already.

Lastly, the body worn camera program is still ongoing. Equipment has been arriving but not all is on site at this time. I am still hoping for a pilot program to be up and running sometime in the spring of this year.

That is all for now. See all of you soon. Chief Roberts

Hello Mayor and council members and happy new year. I hope all of you had a great holiday season. I am happy to report that the police department is a step closer to being fully staffed. We are currently down two positions but have two candidates that have successfully passed the background investigation phase. One of those candidates has fully completed the process and has a start date of January 24th, 2022. That candidate will be scheduled to be sworn in at the February 7th council meeting. The second candidate is scheduled to have a psychological evaluation in late January and then will proceed to the final step of the process if that evaluation is successful. Were hoping that the second candidate will move through these final steps and be able to start on February 28th, 2022.

The body camera project is moving forward. All of the equipment that is needed has been ordered and I’ve been told by the contractor that our devices should be here by the end of January. I am still working on the policy for this new program. Once the equipment arrives, we will work with the contractor and our own IT department to install all the necessary equipment. We will then move into a testing phase of the program before going fully online. I’m hoping to start the testing phase of this project in early spring. I will keep council posted on our progress of this very important project.

The winter storm we had recently created some challenging driving conditions and numerous crashes that we responded to. I’m happy to report that we had no major injury crashes during this storm. Most were minor without serious damage or injury. We are prepared for these situations.

Lastly, we have rescheduled our department wide officer wellness training for March of this year. We have had to move the date on this training several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This training is highly recommended. It focuses on stress and mental health and well being. I’m very excited to offer this to all of our members. I’m hoping the plans in March move forward this time around.

That is all for now. Have a great month and I will see all of you soon. Chief Roberts

Hello Mayor and council members. I hope all of you have had a good month. The start of the holiday season with Thanksgiving day and Christmas coming soon. I hope all of you got the opportunity to spend some time with family and loved ones.

I feel like a broken record sometimes here but the hiring process continues here at the police department. As of this writing, I have two candidates that have been given conditional offers. One has passed the background investigation phase and is scheduled for the next phase, psychological evaluation, later in December. The second candidate is just getting started with his background investigation. Last month was a bit different as one of the candidates failed the background investigation which prompted us to go to the next candidate in line. It’s a bit frustrating after putting a significant amount of time into a candidate, only to have them fail the background phase. But, we have and never will lower our standards at this agency. We have a duty to make sure we get the very best candidates available to us. The good news is that we are still getting very good and qualified applications. More interviews are happening this month as we still anticipate one more open position sometime at the beginning of 2022.

December will be a busy month as we prepare for our annual “Shop with a Cop” program. In the past, we have partnered with Clackamas County and other agencies for this event. Last year we did our own and it was much more local and successful. This year, we have more children and families signed up than ever before. We’ve also had overwhelming support from community members who have donated funding and time to this event. The event will be held on Saturday, December 11th. I will detail this event in next months council report. We are all looking forward to spending some time with these kids and their families.

Lastly, I wanted to let all of you know that the police department will be having it’s annual holiday and employee appreciation get together in early January. It’s a time for all of the staff to get together in a relaxed atmosphere and enjoy each others company. I also announce our employee of the year at this event.

That is all for now. Have a great month, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you and your families. Chief Roberts

Hello Mayor and Council members. I hope all of you had a good month. October brings Halloween and it was a good year for all the little ghosts and goblins this year. The weather was great and it was good to see the kids around the neighborhoods again this year. I spent the evening handing out candy from my home and was surprised to see how many folks were out this year really having a good time with their kids and loved ones. We got lucky with the weather this year as well.

We also had the fireworks show this month which went really well aside from some traffic congestion but this is normal for this event no matter what time of year it is held. It’s a long day and evening for my patrol folks but the community really enjoyed the event.

We continue the recruitment process at the police department as we are still down two positions with another one coming soon, making it necessary to hire three officers in the coming months. I have two candidates as of the time of this writing that are in the background investigation phase of the process. Both of the candidates are lateral recruits. This means they are already certified police officers from another agency and would not have to attend the DPSST basic police academy. This shortens the timeline for them to be solo officers for our city. I’m hoping each of them continue on in the process. By next months report, I will have that information for all of you. My goal is to get two officers hired by the end of the year.

The body camera project continues to develop. At this stage, the cameras and equipment have been chosen and we are ready to make the purchase. We should have the equipment by the end of the year. During this time, I continue to work on developing a policy for our department in order to implement the program itself. I have gathered sample policies from a number of different agencies around our state and have studied those. I’ve also had discussions with other chiefs from our county who have recently started a body camera program. I am hoping to be done with the policy soon and develop a testing phase of the program sometime in the beginning of 2022.

That is all for now. I hope all of you have a great week and I’ll see you soon. Chief Roberts.

Hello Mayor and council members. I hope you all have had a good month. End of summer is here and with that, some much needed rain.

The police department is still in the hiring process and nothing has changed since last months report.

In person school started this month and our two School Resource Officers were very excited to get back into the schools and interact with the many students they have developed relationships with over the last few years. The kids are also very happy to be back with their teachers and friends. The overall environment so far has been very positive.

Speaking of the school system, I have started a safety and security audit of all the schools in the Oregon Trail School District. This is an update and is done every few years. It usually takes me about a week to do the audit and then it is presented to the Superintendent and also the school board. My plan is to have this completed in the next week or two. The district has always been very responsive if their are any issues that are exposed as a result of this audit.

Sam Craven was recently sworn in as our new Sergeant. He is currently in a six week training program and will be on his own as one of our supervisors when that training is complete. He is doing very well.

That is all for now. Have a great month everyone…Chief Roberts

Hello Mayor and Council members. I sincerely hope you have had a great summer. The police department continues to recruit in our ongoing attempt to get back to full staffing. As of this writing, we have two open positions and two candidates that have tentative offers for those two vacancies. We are hopeful that both candidates will be successfully complete the remaining phases of the process and can start sometime in early fall.

We are also anticipating the departure of another officer within the next couple of months. This officer has decided to leave Oregon and move to another state on the east coast. In anticipation of his departure, we have continued the recruitment process in anticipation of the vacancy this will create. It is our intention to establish a hiring list to be prepared to fill this position quickly. Since I do not have a date of resignation, the hiring list will be active for one year. I should note that this officer is part of my administrative team. This will create a need to promote an officer into the vacant position. The positive aspect of this is that it will create an opportunity for promotion for our folks here at the police department. We have several capable officers that I believe would be able to step into that role with relatively little additional training.

I’m excited about the creation of the homeless task force and look forward to being involved as the process continues. I have appointed Officer Jeff Argrubright to act as a liaison for this task force and have began the process providing him with additional resources from other cities as well as training as needed. He is excited to be part of this. I wanted to provide this partnership early on in the process. As the members of the task force begin to role out a plan, we will be ready to assist with whatever the task force sees fit.

As summer is winding down, I hope all of you had a chance to get away from work and all that is going on in the world and just enjoy life a bit. I have not been able to get away from work this summer much but plan on taking some time off in September to spend with my family. Have a great week everyone and I’ll see you soon. Chief Roberts