Gangs, drones and the border hot topics at police forum

Participants brought up topics like gang activity, drones, security cameras, the border, and the jail during Polson Police Chief George Simpson’s quarterly public safety forum, held last Wednesday morning at City Hall. 

Simpson started with some statistics. Calls requesting Polson Police officers went up 11% from 2021 to 2022 and grew again in 2023 by 19.4%. 

He also reported that the department is fully staffed with 15 full-time officers and one part-time officer. 

A question about gang activity kicked off the morning session. Simpson said gangs are involved in the movement and  distribution of drugs. The drugs he and his department see most are methamphetamine and fentanyl.

“A lot of that stuff comes from the West Coast and a lot comes up from Mexico,” Simpson said. 

He speculated that the West Coast has become a source of drugs because Oregon decriminalized many of their hard drugs, such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, in 2019. Consequences are a choice of $100 fine or talking to a drug counselor and promising to go to a rehab facility.   

As a result, Oregon’s statistics on opioid overdose deaths in 2019 was 280 people; by November 2023 the death total was 955. 

Stolen firearms from this area often end up in Oregon and Washington, he said. A lot of that is gang-related, since the drug dealers here send their guns to coastal states. 

Another of the 17 audience members asked about drone use by the police department. Simpson said his department has used drones for three years, and some officers are trained drone pilots. The fire department and Lake County Search and Rescue utilize drones, too. 

“We use drones for crime-scene photos,” Simpson said, explaining that drones are used for officer safety, such as during the execution of a high-risk search warrant.

“It’s safer to send a drone in to get shot rather than officers,” he said. 

To buy drones and other equipment costs money, and Simpson said the Polson City Commission is “super supportive” of those efforts and encourages the department to pursue alternative funding sources. 

Most of those sources are grants. Simpson does most of the grant writing for the department with the help of three or four officers who help research and write. It’s labor intensive; for every 20 grants he writes, Simpson said he’ll receive two or three, which is not great odds.

“But anything that’s not taxpayer money or budget money is fantastic,” he added. 

The $189,000 mental health grant Simpson and his crew recently received took about three months to complete and was 60 pages long. 

Another attendee asked about “the porous border situation,” and wondered if officers run into any undocumented foreign nationals. 

“Nope,” Simpson said, adding that officers do from time to time encounter visitors from other countries, and there might be a communication difficulty, but they have documentation and it can all be sorted out.

“Usually most of the people we see from another country are from Canada, and they’re on the way to a lake house,” Simpson said with a smile.

The Lake County Jail was brought up by another audience member who asked, “What about a jail? Is anybody talking about it?”

He also mentioned chronic recidivism, saying when he gets together with his “old geezer friends,”  they all complain about the same people who get a slap on the wrist and get sent down the road.

Simpson said police officers complain, too. One officer noted he had dropped a guy off at the jail who was out before the officer got off work that day. 

“When there’s a good strategy for a new jail, to produce it and fund it and keep it going, we’re all on board with that,” Simpson said. 

Switching gears to a question about security cameras, Simpson said there is a spot on the City of Polson’s website where people can let police officers know they have security cameras. Go to cityofpolson.com; click on departments, then Police, and on the lefthand side, click on share. 

Look for “security camera access” and enter your address, how many security cameras you have, then a phone number and email. Polson officers can then call and say, “This happened in your neighborhood on this day and time. Can you look at your security camera footage and see if you have anything?” 

If they do, that information can be helpful to the police.

After thanking everyone for coming, he said the next safety meeting will be April 3.

“Bring a friend. Bring someone who hates the police. I mean that. Just about everybody here is pro-police, and that’s great. But I really like talking to the folks who aren’t our fans,” he said. 

“We can have a conversation. I might not be able to change anybody’s mind, but I can sit here and talk about our work product and different ideas. Maybe they will say the PPD isn’t that bad of a place.”