Hello Mayor and council members. I hope all of you had a good month and enjoyed some of the unseasonably good weather we have had.

Budget is in full swing right now and I’m looking forward to completing that process soon. I can finally say that the hiring process here at the police department is coming to an end for now. Officer Randall Santos has officially started here at the PD and Officer Kristan Sabella is set to start next week. Both Officer Santos and Officer Sabella will be before you for swearing in and oath of office at the May 17th council meeting. I’m looking forward to having you meet our new officers. The final position to be filled was offered this week and the candidate accepted that offer. This would be the final open position. The candidate will begin the background investigation in the coming weeks. I’m hoping all goes well with the rest of the process so we will be fully staffed once again and can concentrate on other matters.

Late last year, we set up some resiliency training for all staff here at the PD. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have had to cancel that training two separate times now. We finally have a solid date in May when we will be able to offer this crucial training for all of our staff. The Oregon Trail School District has graciously offered space at the Sandy High School for this six hour training session so we can adequately space all of our people. We have a very respected speaker in this field that will be putting on this training and I’m excited to give all our staff some extra tools during this very difficult time that all of us have endured.

Supervisory staff here at the PD and a few select patrol officers have completed training with other agencies this last week focusing on crowd management. This has been a county wide effort to make sure we are all on the same page when deploying officers and staff to events we’ve had here in Sandy and all over the county. This also enables us to pull resources from surrounding agencies if the need arises. We are also working on a new ordinance regarding demonstrations that is almost complete. Of course it would not be up to me whether or not to adopt this new ordinance but I do believe it is a very useful tool to ensure public safety during these demonstrations. When finished, a copy will be provided to City Manager Wheeler and we can discuss next steps if necessary.

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