Sean C. Morgan
It’s been called the murder capital of the United States, and was 19th on Forbes list of most miserable cities in the United Staets for 2013.
The difference between Gary, Ind., and Sweet Home is night and day, said new Sweet Home Police Officer Mark Birkett, an eight-year veteran of the Gary Police Department.
In 2011, Salem, with a population of 156,000, had three murders. Portland, with a population of 590,000, had 20 murders. Gary, with a population of 81,000, had 30 murders.
Birkett, 36, came to Sweet Home last month, the only place in the Pacific Northwest where he applied, looking for a small town where he could raise his children. City Manager Craig Martin swore him in on July 1.
“I grew up in northwest Indiana in a country setting,” Birkett said. He moved to the Demotte, Ind., area at age 13 with his four brothers and a sister after his father retired as a police officer from a suburb south of Chicago.
After high school, he worked as a carpenter remodeling homes, Birkett said, and then he drove a semi for a few years.
“I always wanted to be a police officer,” Birkett said. “I knew I wanted to be a city police officer. The nearest city was Gary (about an hour away).”
He applied and went to work there in 2005, Birkett said. Gary was actually the murder capital of the world four years in a row.
“It was crazy,” he said. “It really was.”
The small-town folks always thought he was nuts working there, he said. “But I loved it. It’s what I wanted to do. I took off right away. I hit the ground running.”
In 2007, he led his department in arrests, with 158.
Birkett worked four years on patrol, he said. Then the FBI pulled him out to work on a task force, the Gang Response Investigation team. During his time with GRIF, one of his primary objectives was to infiltrate street gangs. He worked on the team for about two years.
He returned to the department’s detectives bureau, working on violent crimes and burglaries for about eight months. Then he went back to patrol, where he was a senior officer.
The department had changed, he said. It was in decline and had had 10 or 11 police chiefs over eight years. With corruption and mismanagement overflowing into the department, and police officers and department officials indicted on various charges, Birkett knew his time there was up. He wanted to find something else, time to make a change.
Other departments in the area didn’t offer much, he said.
“We grew up in a small-town atmosphere, so we knew we wanted to keep a small-town atmosphere to raise our family.”
His wife, Bethany, has family just over the border, in Washington, Birkett said, and visiting the area, they discovered they loved the Pacific Northwest.
They love fishing, hiking and recreation, Birkett said. They love being out of the house and in the woods. Indiana has woods, but they’re nothing like Oregon’s.
The Birketts visited Sweet Home for about a week prior to applying for the job, Birkett said. “We thought this was the perfect place for us.”
It’s suitably located for their interests, and it’s still got the small-town atmosphere that the small-towns in Indiana are losing as older buildings are knocked down and replaced with mini-malls.
“One of the things I liked the most is the old-town atmosphere is maintained,” Birkett said. In Indiana, the old “mom-and-pops” are giving way to modern facades, he said.
Birkett noted that Lebanon is nearby and has a lot to offer too, while not being overpopulated.
“We saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time just a month ago,” Birkett said, and the family is looking forward to visiting California.
“Love it,” he said. “The call volume is a great deal less. There were times I would respond to 30 calls a night in Gary.”
The type of calls he gets in Sweet Home are quite different too, he said. Every other call in Gary is “shots fired,” and he might see one body a week.
Just after he left Gary, one of the victims in a triple homicide was the main suspect in an attempted murder against Birkett.
“We would get shot at pretty often,” he said.
“I think there are only certain people cut out for this type of work,” Birkett said. “Ever since I was a kid, I felt this is what I was cut out to do. I’m good with people. I can read people well. I’m patient enough to help people.”
It’s easy for a veteran officer to get to the point they’ve seen it all and lose interest in dealing with people, he said, but the chance of making a difference is what drives him to stay in it.
He recalled a Gary man who told Birkett how much he used to hate him, but the man had gotten a job and a woman, cleaning up his life. Even though that kind of success story is rare, it’s the thing that keeps Birkett in law enforcement.
Birkett said he’s most interested in patrol, helping members of the community one-on-one. He had many opportunities to go back to detectives in the past, but he just wanted to patrol and answer calls.
The Birketts have three daughters and two sons, ages 4 to 13. They have been homeschooled. They’re still deciding where and how to do school, but they probably will attend the high school. They also understand that Sweet Home has a network of homeschooled children, and they’re interested in getting involved. They’ve been active in 4-H and sports, and the family is excited about getting them involved here.
Instead of attending the Police Academy, Birkett will remain at work at Sweet Home Police Department while he takes a two-week criminal law course on-line for his Oregon certification.