More Barney Fifes Than Andy Griffiths Police Oregon Towns

In the tiny places that still rely on just one or two paid law enforcement officers to keep the peace, the search for the next wise and caring Andy Griffith is too often turning up bumbling Barney Fifes.

This gold rush town of 1,200, for example, fired its only paid cop after she was accused of offering to fix a ticket in return for a job as a highway flagger, trying to drive evil spirits out of a mentally ill man, and selling Mary Kay cosmetics on the side.

It wasn’t long before her replacement faced accusations that he threatened to burn a couple’s house down if they reported his reckless driving.

An isolated example? Not really.

In the Coast Range logging town of Powers, population 750, the police chief was convicted in 1995 of using a video camera to peep into a teenage girl’s bedroom. Since then the town has had 1629487106tough time finding a replacement.

And last fall, a reserve officer in the little Cascade Range logging town of Butte Falls had to admit that he shot himself in the leg. He had claimed that two men were trying to rob him after he’d pulled over to relieve himself behind a grocery store.

“Clearly, we’re not in a mode of being in Mayberry anymore,” said Randy Garner, a professor of criminal justice at Sam Houston State University and director of the Texas Regional Community Policing Institute.

Garner, a former police chief who now directs the agency that conducts the training required of all police officers in Texas, said small towns have a problem finding their Andy Griffith because they generally offer low pay, little training and no chance for advancement, demand little education or experience, and frequently fall into nasty political bickering.

Small Towns, Low Standards

Ask Norm Counts. A former Lincoln County sheriff, he has spent 26 years working for small towns in Oregon, including two as chief. He looked at the chief’s job in Gold Hill, but he went with the Confederated Tribes of the Silez instead.

“The small-town politics are the major crisis, because you get city council people or mayors who . . . they don’t have a clue,” he said.

The chiefs sometimes don’t have much of a clue, either.

Vic Sims, a professor of criminology at Southern Oregon University, said the eight weeks of police academy training required of full-time police officers in Oregon--one of the lowest standards in the nation-- is woefully deficient. It takes 1,350 hours of training, or more than 33 weeks, to cut hair professionally.

“For someone to shoot me or arrest me and take my freedom away, they only have to have one fraction of the training required to be a barber,” he said.

Officers with education and training often don’t last long. Higher pay and a chance for advancement lure them to the big cities, Garner said.

The Department of Public Safety Standards and Training--Oregon’s police academy--has a list of retired chiefs who fill in when small towns need someone. And many have their own police departments.

The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics 1996 police census shows 3,409 police departments across the country with one or fewer full-time sworn officers, accounting for 18.2% of the police departments in the country. An additional 3,663 departments have just two to four full-time officers, or 19.5%. A total of 10,696 departments--57%--have fewer than 10 full-time officers.

Bill Hall, a former police officer who directed the criminal justice program at Alfred University in New York before becoming dean of the college of liberal arts and sciences, said rural cops face the same problems as city cops.

“If you take a look at statistics, you find the proportion of women abused in rural areas is the same as in urban areas,” he said. “If we are going to deal with those types of activities, I think we need to start professionalizing rural departments.”

People pulling off Interstate 5 into Gold Hill drive over the picturesque Rogue River and are greeted by a sign saying, “Welcome to Gold Hill, a quiet city. All loud and unnecessary noises are prohibited.”

Gold Hill grew out of a 19th century gold strike and is now a sleepy blue-collar town. The old cement plant is gone, but a plant making mill machinery is still running. Also gone is the annual Drag Race, where guys would don high heels and women’s clothes for a footrace down Main Street.

At the hardware store, owner Don Morrow and sign painter Deitz Vilks turned off a vampire movie to consider the need for their own police force.

“Like we joked before, why would you bother to commit a crime in Gold Hill?” Vilks said. “There’s nothing to steal.”

Morrow laughed, adding, “But you still need a presence.”

A Big-City Cop Scales Back

For 12 years, that presence was Katie Holmboe, known as Katie the Cop.

A state investigation cleared her of the ticket-fixing allegation, and she’s working for a private investigator while the Teamsters Union works to get her job back. “It’s been a very difficult, trying experience,” she said.

In the wake of the upheaval over Holmboe, city residents voted to advise the City Council that they would rather contract with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement.

The city is looking into it, but that could cost more than having their own police, and money is tight, said Mayor Laura Liddel.

There was always a local cop here while Liddel was growing up. “It gave you a sense of security,” she said. “You knew them by name, and they knew who you were.”

But the same small-town closeness that made her want to raise her own family here can also be a problem, and Holmboe may be a victim of that.

“There are many third-generation families that live here,” Liddel said. “Prejudices are formed early. It just kind of continues through the generations.”

The historic city of Oakland, once a railhead for southern Oregon turkey farmers, may have found a solution by hiring someone with real big-city experience: a retired Alameda County Sheriff’s Department division commander from the big Oakland down in California.

Donna Green was on vacation in Roseburg when she read in the paper that Oakland was looking for a police chief. She’s looking forward to small-town life.

“This is the first time in my entire career where it’s feasible to know every person in town,” she told The News-Review newspaper. “I love that. Bigger cities are trying to adapt community-oriented policing. This is what community policing is all about.”