Council Report-April 2020

Hello all. I hope you and your families are doing well during this ongoing pandemic. It’s certainly been challenging and trying times to say the least. Your police department continues to operate as normal, except for the closure of the business office. All police department employees, including records personnel are essential to the overall function and mission of our police department. We’ve been very fortunate and have not had any members of our department display COVID-19 type symptoms thus far.

Our two new members continue to become acclimated to our agency and the profession of law enforcement as a whole. Officer’s Boyes and Ling continue their field training program until the basic police academy classes resume as normal. Both are enrolled. I am hoping they will be able to complete the basic police course sometime this summer but at the time of this writing, I have no set date for when those classes will resume at the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training.

An official employment offer was made by me to another candidate to fill the position left when Officer Way retired. The background investigation has now been started. This process will take at least six weeks to complete at which time a decision will be made whether to proceed with hiring. If this candidate successfully completes each phase of the process and is hired by the City of Sandy, we will be fully staffed once again. I’m looking forward to this as we have been short handed for some time now.

I have been spending a large portion of my time on COVID related items, meetings etc. One of our concerns as we try to fully understand the governors plans for reopening the economy is local business. It’s confusing to say the least regarding which businesses are allowed to open on May 15 and which ones are required to wait for phase 1 of the plan. I am educating our officers and staff so they understand what is allowed in the governors plan and what is not allowed. As I’ve said before, it is our intention to educate those that are found to not be in compliance before any other action is taken.

That is all for now. Stay safe everyone. Chief Roberts