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Keeping good cops Photo by Bob Pennell Talent police officer Dave Teresi stays in tune with local young people during visits to the city's skateboard park. On Thursday, Dustin Kuykendall, 17, soars through the air on his BMX bike. Small towns face struggle Chiefs defend hiring tactics despite arrests of several officers By CHRIS BRISTOL As a college student in 1970, Eric Mellgren had a more interesting job than most of his classmates: He was a cop. Not that it was anything like the shootouts on "Hawaii Five-O" or the high-speed pursuits on "Adam-12." The future police chief of Medford was a green but gung-ho sheriff's deputy in bucolic Randolph County, W.V. "I worked one fatal accident," Mellgren recalls. "That was my big thing. I still have the report around here somewhere." Mellgren's steady rise through the ranks, from patrolman in Colorado all the way to police chief in Oregon, reflects the wide-open possibilities for advancement and promotion in law enforcement that attract many ambitious young recruits. But the flip side is high turnover, a problem that especially plagues police departments in rural communities. "We cry and whine when people leave here," says Mellgren, who has 94 sworn officers, "but it can be a real blow when you only have three or four people to begin with." The result is a lingering perception that many small-town police departments are staffed by second-string cowboys -- a perception that was reinforced this week with the arrest of yet another Phoenix police officer. Jon Edward Bigman Jr., a Phoenix patrol officer since 1995, was taken into custody Wednesday by Oregon State Police detectives on sexual misconduct charges involving two teenage girls. Authorities say Bigman (pronounced Bigmun) plied the girls with alcohol, exposed himself in their presence and fondled one of them at least twice. The alleged incidents occurred while he was off duty, including one time at a fellow officer's wedding reception. Bigman was not the first Phoenix officer to find himself on the wrong side of the law this year. Officer Mike West resigned after he was accused of choking a belligerent but handcuffed shoplifter. A trial date is pending. Two other incidents this year involving local cops: Gold Hill police chief David Crawford resigned after he was convicted and sent to jail for threatening an elderly couple during an off-duty traffic dispute and assaulting a dirt-biker after a chase. And Jared Brown, the town marshal of Butte Falls, was booted from the police academy in Monmouth after he was caught drinking. Phoenix Police Chief Bob Kershaw says recruiting and retaining good officers is difficult, given that cities like Medford, Eugene and Portland pay better and offer more potential for promotion and specialization. Even so, he stands by his staff and says West and Bigman were "solid street cops" who suffered from "temporary loss of common sense." He noted that Bigman, 31, graduated from Western Oregon University with degrees in criminal justice and geology. "I wouldn't call him scraping the bottom of the barrel," he says. "We have good people here." Dave Towe, police chief of Jacksonville, says the problem has a lot to do with pay. The starting salary for a new Jacksonville officer is just $1,600 a month, compared with base pay in Medford that ranges from $2,700 a month to more than $3,600. "I'm not having trouble recruiting qualified people," he says. "I'm having trouble holding on to them." He now signs recruits to four-year contracts. Talent police chief and former Jackson County sheriff C.W. Smith says smaller agencies like his own are generally viewed as a training ground. Over the past year, he's lost reserves to Rogue River, Jacksonville and Shady Cove. "We lose them as quickly as we train them," Smith says. "And we train them well. That's why we lose them." Smith says he tries to hang on to his personnel by offering them amenities not available at bigger agencies. His officers get their own patrol car and their own desk, for example. Base pay for a new Talent officer is about $2,250 a month. Another tactic is to aggressively recruit officers who want to live in small communities -- not because they're not good enough to make it somewhere else. "We're targeting a specific type of person," Towe says. "In Jacksonville, we want somebody who likes the pace and wants to be part of a close-knit group." Towe and Smith say that even though they cannot afford the extensive background checks performed by big agencies like Medford, which recently sent investigators to Pennsylvania to screen a recruit, they insist their hiring procedures are thorough and include in-depth psychological profiling. Kershaw defends his hiring process as every bit as extensive. Every agency has its scandals. "I'm having a tough year," he says. "I'm certain some of my counterparts around here are scratching their heads like I am and saying, `Thank God, it's not me this time."' Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA