Bend police chief candidates discuss recent events, earning community’s trust

Five men seeking job talk about bias training, diverse officer recruitment

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The city of Bend hosted a virtual community stakeholder town hall Thursday to introduce and pose questions to the five candidates vying to be the next police chief following Chief Jim Porter’s retirement, at a time of intense scrutiny on policing nationwide. 

The three internal candidates include Bend police Lt. Brian Beekman, Deputy Chief Paul Kansky and Capt. Nick Parker.

The two external candidates vying for the police chief position are Mike Krantz, the assistant chief of the services branch of the Portland Police Bureau, and Jason Lando, the commander of the narcotics and vice unit of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police.

Find brief biographies of each candidate and a link to a community survey in this earlier announcement.

Hiring a new police chief comes high tension across the nation between law enforcement and the public.

At the town hall meeting, the five candidates were asked how they plan to build trust with members of the community and promote equitable policing.

“Granted, Bend is not the most diverse community, but we’re becoming more diverse,” Kansky said. “It doesn’t matter. We need to experience and learn from our communities of color and marginalized communities, and experience what they go through.”

Krantz said communicating and listening to members of marginalized communities is not expected to be an easy task.

“You have to seek people to come and join you,” Krantz said. “You can’t expect people to come to you as a law enforcement agency.”

The candidates also talked about recruiting and hiring more officers of color, and how to increase active participation from marginalized communities.

Lando brought up the video involving George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis police custody last month. The incident led to widespread protests against police brutality around the nation.

“It was very, very tough to watch as a police officer, so I can’t imagine as a person of color, who might already have mistrust of the police, how difficult that was to watch,” Lando said.

Beekman added it may be difficult to recruit more law enforcement officers as tensions continue to rise.

“If you can put yourself in the shoes of someone in their early 20s, trying to find a career, and watching everything going on across the country, would they lean towards law enforcement?” Beekman said.

They were also asked their thoughts on the movement calling to "defund" the police.

“What would be defunded would be our programs that add to our legitimacy, such as our mental health programs, school resource officers, our community service officers,” Parker said.

The five candidates all agreed ending all police funding would do much more harm than good.

“I have no problem at all with us exploring ways for us to not have to send officers to calls that really shouldn’t be police primary responses anyway,” Lando said. “So if that’s what defunding means, I don’t necessarily have an issue with it.”

The community is asked to submit a feedback survey on the candidates on the city of Bend website. Surveys are due by 5 p.m. on Monday.