The city of Eugene has hired a new police chief after a two-year period without a permanent department head.
Robert M. Lehner — formerly the Assistant Chief of Police for the Tucson, Ariz., police department — began work Monday. Lehner replaces interim chief Thad Buchanan, who returned to his position as captain.
Lehner, who bases his work on a philosophy of community policing, said he looks forward to speaking with University groups about the priorities they want the Eugene Police Department to address.
“The University and the organizations that make up the University is, as far as I’m concerned, frankly, just another set of neighborhoods,” he said. “We’ll sit down together. We’ll talk about what the priorities are and what we need to do about them.”
Lehner said he has a strong desire to communicate not only with University groups but also to form partnerships with all neighborhood groups in Eugene.
The city announced Lehner’s appointment Dec. 19, three weeks after introducing him as its top choice in a lengthy selection process involving five other candidates. Lehner was part of a second recruitment process that resulted after the top candidate in the first process in September declined the position, citing family concerns about moving to the West Coast from Minnesota.
The city’s community relations director Jan Bohman said the city initially delayed recruiting a new police department head after former Chief Jim Hill retired in Dec. 2001 because management wanted to first fill the then-vacant city manager position.
Although a new city manager was hired in February 2003, the police chief hiring was further delayed when the first candidate pulled out.
City Manager Dennis Taylor said in a press release that Lehner is bright, articulate and excited about joining the city’s leadership team.
“He has financial management strengths, outstanding communication skills and is a proven problem-solver,” Taylor said. “Mr. Lehner is the right and best fit for our department and our city.”
Lehner, 48, joined the Tucson Police Department in 1978 as an officer and climbed through the ranks of detective, sergeant, lieutenant, captain and assistant chief. He has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Arizona.
Officials said Lehner’s experiences will serve him well in working on the big issues facing the Eugene police force such as staff vacancies.
“We’ve been significantly understaffed for a while,” EPD spokeswoman Pam Olshanski said. She added that the understaffing was due to a combination of factors including unanticipated call-ups to active military duty and retirements.
Olshanski said the staff shortages have resulted in multiple stints of overtime and an inability to take active steps to prevent crime before it happens, which has hurt staff morale.
Olshanski said Lehner also arrives at a time when the department’s image in the community has been affected by recent unrelated charges against two former officers for inappropriate sexual conduct while on the job.
Lehner will also use his experience in campus-police relations.
While he never directly oversaw policing at the University of Arizona, he said he was “fairly close” to members of the university community, sitting down with administrators and students to discuss issues of importance to them.
He said he does have direct experience tackling the problem of large parties and emphasized the need to keep parties small.
“It’s the bigger parties that frankly get out of control,” he said. “It doesn’t mean it’s OK to have underage drinking but what it does mean is there is a reasonable balance somewhere between what is the appropriate level of enforcement and what is the appropriate expenditure of police resources.”
This is just one of the issues Lehner said he hopes to discuss with students, administrators and neighborhood groups.
“I know that students want a safe environment,” Lehner said. “Certainly their parents who send them here want a safe environment, and it’s something that we will work on together to ensure that you’ll have a safe educational experience while you’re here.”