PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The Columbia County sheriff’s office in northwest Oregon is reviewing an incident where a deputy called the fire department “dodos” and an assault victim lying in the street a “speed bump.”
A meeting is planned to discuss the matter, Columbia County Sheriff Jeffrey M. Dickerson tells The Oregonian/OregonLive (https://bit.ly/2lcwXIz) in a story on Saturday. “We are determined to work this out for the good of all concerned,” he said in an email to the newspaper.
The city of Clatskanie began contracting its police services with Columbia County last year. There isn’t always a deputy on duty, and instead a deputy is on call.
“We have tremendous trust in our deputies to triage these calls, as dispatchers often call them at night, waking them up to ask if they will be taking the call or not,” Dickerson wrote. “We cannot afford to have these deputies take every call for service when they are off-duty.”
Dickerson said the deputy correctly determined the victim would be best served if the fire department responded immediately.
Authorities say the recorded 911 calls made to the on-call deputy’s home occurred about 2:15 a.m. Jan. 15.
The deputy asked to have the Clatskanie Fire Department respond as it would be faster than the 40 minutes it would take the deputy to get to the person in the street. But the deputy referred to person as “a speed bump.”
That was “a sarcastic, unfeeling comment that we have addressed internally with the deputy in question,” Dickerson wrote.
The dispatcher called back to say the fire department requested law enforcement, prompting the “dodos” remark from the deputy. Authorities say it wasn’t until the second call that the person in the street was identified as an assault victim.
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Information from: The Oregonian/OregonLive, https://www.oregonlive.com
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