April 9: Beth and Melanie, still in the Sheriff’s Office classroom, meet two more members of the force.

Sheriff Horch is a conqueror masquerading as a good ol’ boy. Rangy and bright-eyed and spring-loaded. He introduced himself as “a politician, not a cop.” Then casually mentioned that he’d worked on a bomb squad for a while. And that he was wearing a bullet proof vest. 

He drew our attention to the coffee and cookies in the back, and then showed us the body cam clipped to his uniform.

A big part of his job is wrangling various bureaucratic organizations. How does he do that without shooting them? I don’t know. He has a gun. It seems very straightforward. The Sheriff, however, also has a well of patience approximately as deep as the Mariana Trench. Here’s how patient he his: he told a room full of civilians they could ask any question they wanted. “There are no stupid questions,” he said.

Beth and I, being longtime library employees, snorted.

Some interesting things Sheriff Horch told us:

• They just hired someone who used to work at KGW to be their communications director. In part because news about big crimes travels at the speed of social media. Part of her job is to monitor controversial court cases and rulings, especially cases that go before the Supreme Court.
• Ideally, an area will have one officer for every 1,000 people. The Sheriff’s Office routinely operates at .65 for every 1,000 people. They are desperately in need of qualified, vetted, trained officers.
• The deputies work four days on, four days off, with one training day a month (which means, that week, they work five days on, three days off.) The shifts are twelve hours long. They often get called in on their days off. They’re exhausted. They also need office workers badly, hint-hint, if anybody wants to handle paperwork for the Sheriff’s Office, nudge-nudge. And they need 911 operators as well, hint-nudge.
• Because they aren’t fully staffed, they have to use a triage system. The rule of thumb is, “The risk of pursuit can’t outweigh the severity of the offense.”
• More crimes are committed in the summer than in the winter.
• The jail is under the county’s jurisdiction, but used to be the County Sheriff’s responsibility.
• La Center recently voted to get rid of their city police force and now has a contract with the County Sheriff. Deputies in the Sheriff’s Office apply for positions in La Center.
• There used to be a Drug Task Force made up of several law enforcement branches, but it disbanded. Sheriff Horch is trying to get one started again.

Next, we met an intense, fearless and introverted man who was there to impart information and didn’t actually want to talk to any of us, because he was exhausted and had way too many things on his plate. This was Chief Enforcement Deputy Brian Kessel. Deputy Kessel was sandy. Sandy hair, sandy-colored eyes, bags the smoky color of wet sand under his eyes. He had a sledgehammer stare. I really felt like, if we ever sat down to have lunch together, we would both be perfectly happy to not talk to each other the whole time. (Apologies to you extroverts out there, you have no idea that was I just said wasn’t actually a joke.)

He directed our attention to the coffee and cookies in the back.

Deputy Kessel has the unenviable role of telling his direct reports to hang in there, because the Sheriff’s Office will eventually be fully staffed at some point in one of a billion possible futures. He talked a lot about workflow. He showed us a spreadsheet listing the deputies’ names and shift times (either Day, Swing or Graveyard.) He also mentioned that the Sheriff’s Office has made self-care mandatory. The various crime units have to be evaluated once a month by a psychologist. There is somebody around most of the time if an officer needs to talk about something he just had to experience (this is especially important for cops who handle sex crimes against children. There were five or six cops in the room while he was talking. When he mentioned children and sex crimes, the atmosphere changed. Every cop there was broadcasting “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen” combined with “sex offenders must die.” I could never be a cop. Never.)

Deputy Kessel put a slide up that listed things like massages, therapy appointments, a decompression room, coping strategies and. . . “Tactical Yoga.”

Beth said, “Did you see -“

I said, “Tactical Yoga. Yes. I did.”

And then, Deputy Kessel opened it up for questions.

Person One: “Do you ever get transfers from other departments or states?”

[Melanie thinks: “What is Tactical Yoga? No, I won’t ask. It’s too frivolous.”]

Person Two: “What’s the attrition rate, and do you ever get people from the military to help out?”

[Melanie thinks: “Well, but we’re allowed to ask any question, and there are no stupid questions. But can I really ask about Tactical Yoga? Isn’t it inappropriate?”]

Person Three: “Is there any kind of program for the families of the officers going through trauma?”

[Melanie thinks: “No, but I need to know what Tactical Yoga is. Maybe I can just ask afterward?”]

Beth: “I’m curious to know what ‘Tactical Yoga’ is?”

Deputy Kessel: “It’s just yoga. Cops like anything that has ‘tactical’ in front of it.”

You know, for a guy with a stare like an angry eagle, Deputy Kessel has a smile full of trouble. All the same, not even Beth could bring herself to ask him to demonstrate some poses.

Coming in Part 3: statistics. . . and lingo. (What do cops mean when they say “choir practice”?)

*Please note: on Wednesday morning, Beth sent me the following email:

Subject: Wellness

I’m working on my tactical yoga. Downward Dog with Rocket Launcher is proving particularly challenging.