Carnation chief’s first few months prove hectic

Published 2:00 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

CARNATION – The city’s new part-time police chief has been keeping busy his first two months, battling blazes caused by fireworks and trying to coax an armed man out of a Fall City house.

Scott Sterland, who has worked for the King County Sheriff’s Office for 13 years on patrol, the SWAT team, as a training officer, transit officer and burglary and automobile theft detective, said he is pleased to have landed in Carnation.

“I really like the feel of a small town. The people here in Carnation have been extremely warm in their welcome to me,” he said. “This is a great community.”

A resident of Monroe with a wife and two young boys, Sterland, 38, grew up in Edmonds and knows how smaller cities work.

Sterland replaced Bonnie Soule, who now works with the city of Sammamish, in Carnation’s contract with King County. The agreement is for 20 hours of police-chief service per week, with the remainder of Sterland’s time spent as a patrol officer for the northeast precinct area that includes the Valley.

During his first few weeks, the chief was swamped with creating a community protection plan for Carnation’s Great Fourth of July Celebration. Then on July 4, there were two house fires and a few injuries to deal with, along with crowd control and road blocks for the annual festival.

As if that wasn’t enough, on July 10, Sterland was the officer in charge during the standoff between police and Jonathon Blankenship, who hid for nearly six hours in the attic of a Fall City house.

Lastly, he has already put his two officers, Chris Kieland and Ted Boe, through a bicycle patrol certification program so they can cruise the streets on two wheels and have better access to people.

With all that accomplished, Sterland now has time to greet the community.

“He’s doing a great job for us. He’s just completed going around and talking with all the businesspeople in person. He’s very community oriented; he’s a good guy,” said Woody Edvalson, city manager.

But the new chief said his most important message to the community is that the police department should be “user-friendly.”

Sterland wants to start a volunteer program to staff the police station, located downtown. Volunteers would be trained to answer the public’s questions or direct people to the correct phone numbers and agencies needed. Currently, the office goes unstaffed when the officers are out on patrol, so there’s nobody to answer questions.

“I want all these people in Carnation to understand that we are here to assist the community, but in order to do that effectively, I would like to enlist the help of volunteers,” he said. “Volunteers are a godsend.”

One misconception Sterland would like to clear up to help foster the relationship between the police department and the community is that anyone who wants to report a crime to the police – whether an emergency or not – should call 911.

Many people, he said, believe that 911 is reserved only for emergencies, but this is not true. The 911 operators are trained to determine what is and is not an emergency, and transfer non-emergencies to another department.

The end result of calling 911 is an officer comes to write a crime report within a day. In the past, people have left notes at the police department to report a theft or other incidents. The problem with that, Sterland said, is since he and his officers have irregular schedules, they may not see the note for days, which is too long after the crime to take action.

“I want these people to be taken care of, to get the service that they deserve, and the way to do that is to call 911,” he said. “That’s how they’ll get the quickest response.”

Also, Sterland wants everyone in Carnation to know he’s there to lend an ear to community concerns.

“Something I’d like is more community involvement,” he said. “The community [is] our eyes and ears. Less than 5 percent of what goes on in a police officer’s day is what they see themselves. The rest is from people’s [reports].”

When not on shift, Sterland writes nonfiction and will soon teach a police course at a community college, as yet undetermined. This is right up his alley, as he received his bachelor’s degree in law and justice from Central Washington University, with a minor in psychology. He loves to train others, and believes the more training a person receives, the more they benefit in their professional and personal life.