Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
With the recent retirement of Cmdr. Steve Young, Sweet Home Police Department is reorganizing, a move that will include the creation of a traffic team.
As part of the reorganization, Detective Jeff Lynn has been promoted to sergeant. He and Sgt. Jason Van Eck will be patrol supervisors. Sgt. George Dominy will supervise support services, picking up most of Young’s duties, including evidence, the jail and fleet. He also will supervise the school resource officer.
Young also was responsible for much of the department’s computer work, Police Chief Bob Burford said. The department will contract out for help with its computers.
The department has two openings to fill vacancies left by Trahan’s movement to school resource officer and Lynn’s promotion to sergeant.
“When we get up to full staff and the people trained, we’ll assign two officers to work traffic, and they’ll fall under George’s supervision also,” Burford said. One of them will be Ryan Cummings, who is a trained drug recognition expert. He will focus on driving under the influence.
Burford hopes to use the second traffic officer to focus on areas with identified traffic problems, he said.
The new school resource officer, John Trahan, will continue to coordinate the Explorer Program, Burford said.
Lynn and Van Eck will each supervise two four-man teams, which will include two day-shift and two night-shift officers, each working 12-hour shifts.
Two detectives will continue to report to Chief Burford.
“In all our feedback from the community, whether through the council or Budget Committee, the common theme is traffic-related problems were not being addressed,” Burford said. “They were the pebble in the community’s shoe.
“This reorganization should allow us to take those problems head-on.”
The department won’t actually field a traffic team until it fills its two open positions and those officers are trained, Burford said.
One officer is in the police academy right now. The training process includes four months at the academy and then four months of training on the road locally.