Bend OR April 18 2021 A new independent review of the police force at Central Oregon Community College, where a student was raped and murdered by a campus officer in 2016, was prompted by complaints that a “cop-like” attitude persists on campus, according to COCC President Laurie Chesley.

While the review revealed some positives, much work remains in shifting the public safety culture at the Bend college, Chesley said Friday after announcing the review findings.

“I want to be very clear that I never want anyone, internally or externally, to believe that our campus safety staff have any law enforcement function,” she said. “I leave the role of the police to the police.”

Moving forward, the college will contract with Bend Patrol Services to perform four random patrols per day, each lasting up to an hour.

Chesley also announced she had installed Andrew Davis, longtime COCC director of student life, as interim campus safety director. He will report directly to her, Chesley said.

Safety has been the subject of scrutiny at COCC since July 2016, when 23-year-old student Kaylee Sawyer was raped and murdered by an on-duty campus security officer, Edwin Lara.

The judge at Lara’s sentencing said the case was aggravated by the fact Lara used the tools of his profession to commit his crimes. He used his police-like uniform to lure Sawyer into the back seat of his police vehicle, which had no interior door handles and was separated from the front seat by a divider.

In July 2018, the school hired as its head of campus security Peter Ostrovsky, a veteran law enforcement leader with heavy experience in drug interdiction at the U.S-Canada border.

In 2019, a law was passed in Oregon in Sawyer’s honor intended to “de-police” campus security forces, specifically, COCC’s.

Later that year, the school and former Bend Police Chief Jim Porter announced COCC’s campus department was “fully compliant” with the new law. This included repainting the department’s vehicles with the school’s bobcat mascot and new “highlighter yellow” vests for officers.

But on March 9 of this year, the school announced it had placed its four-person campus police staff on administrative leave while it conducted a third-party review of campus police activities.

Chesley said Friday the school’s human resources department had received complaints of “cop-like” behavior and also about the climate of the department and how staff communicated.

She declined to provide more details about the complaints.

“It was attitudinal,” she said. “And some of the trainings that were being done, in my view, were more appropriate for law enforcement rather than campus safety officers.”

She said the review turned up training materials for officers inconsistent with her vision of campus safety.

Chesley, who took over as president in July 2019, said she was heartened that the completed review turned up no violations of Kaylee’s Law, nor evidence of a hostile work environment. But she said it did reveal areas where the school needs to improve, specifically, in crafting clear policy for security staff and providing more and better training.

As to the fate of the four current campus police officers, Chesley said she cannot comment on specific staffing decisions.

The school is now working with another external consultant to help address concerns raised in the review, including developing new policies and training materials for security personnel.

“I believe we have some work to do to continue our culture shift to make campus safety even more student-focused, even more customer-service focused and rooted in education,” she said.

Under its new contract with COCC, Bend Patrol Services will provide four patrols by a uniformed security officer in a vehicle. At least one of those patrols must be performed between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m. The patrol will cost $489.65 per day.

The contract also stipulates Bend Patrol Services must comply with Kaylee’s Law.

For the company, this has meant removing front push bumpers from its vehicle fleet and applying a “campus safety” patch to uniforms, according to CEO Nick Thompson, who added his 15-year-old company already complied with most provisions of the law, including record-keeping requirements and dashboard cameras mounted in all vehicles.

Bend Patrol Services is not a stranger to COCC. It held the contract for campus safety at the college for seven years. Then the school contracted with a low-bidder, Security Pros, though that arrangement was short-lived.

After Security Pros canceled its contract in 2015, the school opted to start its own campus police force, a rare expenditure for a community college in Oregon. The new force hired on Edwin Lara, a Security Pros officer already working on campus.

Thompson said the key difference between his officers and certified police officers is his staff is focused on crime prevention, not investigation or enforcement.

“When we had the contract, things ran smoothly,” he said.

bendbulletin.com

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