After over a month of operating its police department with just one officer following the city’s controversial termination of its police chief, the City of Toledo entered into a four-month agreement with the Winlock Police Department last week for policing services.
“I’m one guy. I can’t do an entire police department by myself. Even with the two that we previously had, it’s not a good service for the city to maintain that,” Toledo Police Officer Tarryn Carter said at a Toledo City Council meeting on Sept. 3 where the city council voted to approve a temporary contract with the Winlock Police Department.
Carter, who joined the department in January, has been the Toledo Police Department’s sole officer since the City of Toledo terminated its contract with former police chief Duane Garvais Lawrence without cause on July 2.
In an email to a Chronicle reporter sent on July 11, Garvais Lawrence detailed recent conflicts between himself and Toledo Mayor Cherie DeVore, some of which included Carter and Toledo City Clerk Rachel Beaver-Campbell, that he believes led to the City of Toledo terminating his contract.
Garvais Lawrence began as chief of the Toledo Police Department in October 2022. When he started in the role, the Toledo Police Department had been inoperable since Aug. 1, 2022, following the departure of former Police Chief Sam Patrick and the Toledo City Council’s decision to deny a proposed contract with the Napavine Police Department.
The City of Toledo ultimately contracted the Winlock Police Department to provide temporary law enforcement in the Toledo area before Garvais-Lawrence began as chief in October 2022.
Regular patrols were the primary difference between the proposed Napavine Police Department contract and the contract with the Winlock Police Department, Toledo City Council Member Eric Hayes said Sept. 3.
“Basically, you’re telling us that you’re covering us like you cover yourselves,” Hayes said of the Winlock Police Department.
Though the current contract is only for four months, the annual rate for police services through Winlock is $216,000 per year. The City of Toledo estimates it will spend a rough total of $235,000 for the Toledo Police Department this year, according to Beaver-Campbell.
“We currently are staffed at four. We were covering Toledo before, about two years ago, it was just three of us,” Winlock Police Chief Stephen Valentine said at the Sept. 3 Toledo City Council meeting.
When asked if the department had enough staff to adequately serve Toledo in addition to its existing coverage area, Valentine said he felt the department was stretched thin covering both areas with three officers in 2022, but said, “Now that we’re at four, I think that’s a healthy number where we can patrol both areas now.”
The City of Toledo and the Winlock Police Department will revisit their contract once it expires in four months and decide then if they want a longer contract.
“At the end of the four months, if you guys are like ‘get out of here,’ there won’t be any hard feelings from us,” Valentine told the Toledo City Council on Sept. 3.
While the general consensus between Toledo city staff, council members and community members present at the Sept. 3 meeting was that the Winlock contact was the city’s best option right now, there was some frustration over the city’s inability to maintain its own police department.
“We had meetings, and the citizens were clear that they want an in-city police force,” Toledo City Council Member Jaime Scalaise said.
“I don’t know how we do it, because we have two decades worth of the city as a whole not keeping up with inflation, and … one of the key reasons we lost our staff is they all went for increasing pay,” Hayes replied.
Attempts to recruit more officers have been unsuccessful, with the most-recent hiring push only garnering two applicants, Carter said.
In response to public comment from a community member who asserted that the city didn’t adequately pay its police officers, Scalaise said, “No we don’t pay our police officers enough, but we also don’t raise our taxes because everybody complains about paying taxes … We’re doing the best we can with what we have.”
“The entire staff was paid very low,” Hayes said. “And that’s what happens when you spend a couple decades not trying to (increase revenue), and we right now are stuck in that position. We can’t go back two decades and say ‘let’s do this right.’”
The city is considering possible options for increasing revenue, but no definite plans are in place.
A recording of the Sept. 3 can be viewed via the City of Toledo’s YouTube page at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL6_AzJxskQ.
