D.A. urges Baker City Council to preserve detective division amid patrol cuts
By Joe Hathaway on Tuesday, November 28th, 2023 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
BAKER CITY – In light of the controversy surrounding the Baker Police Department’s plan to scale back patrol hours, Baker County’s District Attorney is weighing in.
Greg Baxter has written a letter to the City Council, asking them to throw their support behind the department’s detectives. His letter follows calls for detectives to be used for street patrols, after Chief Ty Duby announced he will be ending 24-hour patrols. Chief Duby says due to staffing issues, there’ll be no patrols during early morning hours.
Recently, former Baker Police Chief Wyn Lohner wrote a letter to Elkhorn Media Group, stating that detectives should be used for street patrol.
Below is a copy of the full letter Baxter sent to the council:
Baker City Council
1655 1st St.
Baker City, OR 97814
Members of the City Council,
Several weeks ago, when the City Council only consisted of four councilors, I spoke at a city council meeting about the importance of maintaining our Detective Division at the Baker City Police Department. I am writing now to reiterate that point and add a few things to my previous thoughts.
The detectives handle homicides, sex crimes, domestic violence, child abuse, and follow-up on most felony cases. I saw that a former Baker City chief of police recently stated that patrolling the streets “is far more important in my opinion than having a detective sitting at a desk on day shift.” I strongly disagree with that sentiment and the characterization of detectives’ work. I am concerned that if all the city’s law enforcement resources are put only into the patrol division, as was suggested, then the investigation of major crimes will get neglected. That is something that cannot happen in our community.
In the last few years, the laws have been changed and the appellate courts have made it increasingly more difficult to fight crime.
- In 2020, the Supreme Court said that all criminal convictions need to be unanimous. Experienced detectives are needed to conduct thorough interviews that will shut down defenses that could be raised. Knowledgeable and skilled detectives are needed to write search warrants in an area of the law that is continually expanded and changing.
- Patrol officers are often busy throughout a shift responding to an assortment of calls from citizens or assuring that traffic and other public safety laws are observed. Liken it to a person drinking from a hose that is turned on full blast. There is little time to dig deep into a crime. Without detectives, when a patrol officer comes upon a serious crime, the officer will have to come off the streets to do investigation work that they may not have the expertise to do.
- The courts have also limited law enforcement’s ability to conduct pretext traffic stops. That has hindered their ability to cultivate informants and fight crime. As a result, creative police-work with detectives who can investigate crimes more fully is needed.
The job of law enforcement is more difficult than in the past. Law enforcement needs the tools and skills to thoroughly investigate cases, so they can either build a prosecutable case or determine that a suspect did not commit a crime. While the patrol officers are good, hard- working officers, they do not have the time and, often, the training and knowledge of a detective. For example, it takes expertise to be able to know how to interview a murder suspect. It takes expertise to be able to build a case where there is an uncooperative domestic violence victim. It takes expertise for an officer to sit down with a young child and get that child to open up about how his dad repeatedly burned him with a cattle prod. Patrol officers respond to these crimes, but it is the detectives who take these major crimes and investigate them properly so our community can be safe.
It is my duty to sound this warning and to be crystal clear: the Baker City Police Department needs both patrol officers and detectives to achieve public safety.
Sincerely,
Greg M. Baxter
