Sean C. Morgan
Sgt. Jeff Lynn has been named Sweet Home’s new police chief.
Sweet Home City Manager Craig Martin announced the appointment on May 8.
Lynn is a Sweet Home native and 14-year veteran of the Police Department. He started his law enforcement career here in 1999. He was assigned to detectives in 2003 and promoted to the position of patrol services sergeant in 2007.
Lynn succeeds Police Chief Bob Burford, who is retiring after 27 years with the Sweet Home Police Department, the last 18 as chief. Lynn will step into the position on June 1.
Martin announced Lynn’s selection after completion of a recruitment and hiring process concluded on April 26. The process included 25 applicants from Oregon and several other states.
Lynn was one of two finalists who participated in various rounds of selection activities, including a community selection panel, personal interview, public interaction and an extensive background investigation and evaluation, Martin said. The other finalist, selected after a series of background checks, written assessments and panel interviews, was Steven Annetts, chief of police in Douglas, Wyo.
Martin said he is confident in Lynn’s ability to successfully lead the Sweet Home Police Department for the foreseeable future.
“Sergeant and soon-to-be Chief Lynn has demonstrated his leadership abilities, dedication to the community of Sweet Home and its Police Department very well in his 14-year tenure with the department,” Martin said. “I am confident his skills and abilities coupled with his working knowledge of the Police Department and community of Sweet Home will serve the department, city and citizens of Sweet Home very well.
“These were critical factors in his selection given the ongoing challenges the department faces regarding stable funding and retention of well-qualified staff.”
Burford said he has confidence in Lynn’s abilities.
“I’ve learned to count on Jeff’s good decision making during times when I was absent,” he said. “I’m fully confident that Jeff will live up to the department’s mission statement of ‘Integrity 24/7.’ Beyond that, they had some quality candidates, including three very qualified internal candidates. I would have been happy to work for any of the three internal candidates.”
Lynn said the employees at the department have been “extremely supportive” as the transition is beginning, and “we have a fantastic group of core officers.”
“I feel extremely fortunate to be able to serve as the chief of police of the city of Sweet Home,” Lynn said. “I look forward to continuing to serve the community where I was born and raised. I’m excited for the opportunity and look forward to the challenges that lay ahead. I know so much of the inner workings of the Police Department, it’s going to help me moving forward.”
The challenges facing the department hinge on its revenue.
The department lives and dies on its local option levy, which must be renewed every few years, he said. To deal with it, “you really have to be as proactive as you can. We’ve been in a fiscal crisis mode. There is no excess of spending, few capital outlaws. The bulk of our budget is comprised of personal services.”
Lynn graduated from Sweet Home High School, where he played football for the Huskies’ state championship-winning team, in 1988 and then attended Oregon State University, earning a bachelor of science degree in economics.
“I really enjoyed the course work,” Lynn said. “I originally started in business, and it took me to economics, probably my favorite subject in school.”
He found macroeconomics, including fiscal and monetary policy, fascinating, he said, although he hasn’t used his education in economics much since graduating in 1992.
“I didn’t have a career plan,” Lynn said. “I drifted back to Sweet Home.”
He went to work with friends of his, the Melcher family and worked for 4M Fiber for four years, driving a forwarder. Afterward, he went into financial services, including mortgages, for a period of time.
At the time, Lynn had family in law enforcement, and he learned Sweet Home had an open position, he said. He applied and went to work as a police officer.
“I found the career I’d really been looking for,” Lynn said. Initially, what hooked him was that every day was different unlike logging or an office job.
That still keeps him going, and he enjoys the adrenaline rush and the camaraderie among officers and the profession as a whole.
As a detective, he worked with the now-disbanded Valley Interagency Narcotics Team and worked undercover.
“It was an eye-opener,” Lynn said. “I learned a lot,” especially how to develop an investigation.
Lynn is married to Tiffany Lynn, a trooper with the Oregon State Police. They have six children between them. His parents, Bill and Betty, continue to live in Sweet Home. His sister, Capi, works at the Statesman Journal in Salem, and his brother Scott is a millwright with Greenbury and lives in Sweet Home.
Lynn served on the District 55 School Board for four years and spent another three years on the Budget Committee. He also has been involved with the Boys and Girls Club, his children and their sports activities.
“This is really our home community,” Lynn said, adding that he wanted to serve as chief, and doing it at home is the best he could have hoped for.
“What better chance than to do it in your home community?” Lynn said.