Oregon Trail School/Sandy PD Cooperative Program  –

We had a busy month in October.  A lot of our time was spent in finishing up our projects with the Oregon Trail School District.  We completed a Table Top exercise with administrative staff of the OTSD.  We finalized plans that will aid both first respondents and the district in the event that a school needs to be evacuated and students reunited with their parents.  We also finished up the last of the Active Shooter Training; now each school and every employee has been trained.  Lastly, we also conducted Active Shooter training with the OTSD Board.  The board members were given an over view of the program.  Their training included an opportunity to get physical and try some of the techniques.  The program is very well received and we have branched out to include other agencies and private business.

Out last project to complete for the OTSD was another vulnerability assessment of the facilities.  As council may remember, shortly after I arrived in Sandy I completed an initial assessment of all the schools in the OTSD.  Since that assessment, the OTSD has made sweeping changes to school security.  With those changes and the training completed, it was time to complete another assessment of the OTSD.  That was completed at the end of October, the final report is pending.  I can tell you that the work done by OTSD has been wonderful and has greatly improved the safety of our students.

Safe Guarding Our History – The Sandy Police Department had maintained paper reports as far back as the 1970’s.  Those reports were in paper form and stored in our storage garage at the Public Works center.  This was concerning.  In the event of a flood or other disaster, those records would be lost, or worse, blown around the neighborhood for others to access.  To eliminate this liability we hired back retired SPD employee Sandy Lopez for a few months each year for the last couple of years.  She has been busy scanning all of those paper files into Laser-phish and shredding the original paper copies.  I am happy to report she finished that  task this month.  She scanned and shredded four decades of police reports into a searchable, usable, backed up electronic system.  Once that huge task was complete she moved on to other documents I felt important to have in this format.  Old law suits, agreements and other documents it is important that we maintain in a safe, reliable way.

Building issues – Julie Smith and Shawn Burns have been working on a few issues related to the building.  The electronic back door was not locking when it should, the sewer was backing up and we have a problem with the generator.  I guess we are still working on the bugs in the “new” building.  The door was corrected with some new hardware, the sewer issue was corrected by a great plumber and the generator issue is pending.

Training – 

All of the staff have been taking free on-line training.  The sworn staff as taken training provided by Department of Justice on dealing with aggressive dogs.  You  can Google, “dog shot by police” and find several stories that lead to police liability.  Trying to mitigate that issue, we thought the training would be helpful.  We learned how to approach aggressive dogs using body language and other tools to keep the dog calm.  The training also provided alternative uses of force, such as a fire extinguisher, bite stick and others.  We have also continued to use the free On-line training provided by CIS and Lexipol.  Using these free sources of training have made it possible to meet our training needs without a negative impact to the budget.