WHERE ARE WE GOING, AND WHY?
VISION: “To improve the lives and careers of our members through steadfast advocacy, intentional leadership development, and proactive employee engagement.”
There’s no denying that President Lopez has done well in terms of improving the financial position of our Association and its members. But, now that we’ve achieved financial stability, it’s time to expand our focus to include the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of our members, and not just their financial wellbeing.
My vision for OSPOA is to build upon the forward progress made under President Lopez’ leadership to ensure that our members successfully make it to retirement with their body and mind intact. In addition to fundraising and improving wages for our members, Article II of the OSPOA Constitution identifies a host of other objectives for the Association and its leadership. Included in these objectives are things like improving the hours and working conditions of our members, engaging in public relations to promote respect and understanding for law enforcement and the challenges they face, and fostering a high standard of professionalism and devotion to duty through camaraderie and esprit de corps. A 2024 survey of Oregon State Police employees conducted by Gallup, Inc. indicates that only 34% of respondents actually enjoy coming to work. The remaining 66% simply view their career as a means to provide for their families or are actively looking for jobs outside of the agency. I want to be clear: this data is not a reflection of our member’s devotion to the agency’s mission to serve Oregonians. On the contrary, many of our members stay choose to stay with the agency even though working conditions within the organization are unpleasant because of the commitment they feel to the agency’s mission. These statistics demonstrate the profound impact that working conditions have on our member’s physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. Despite enjoying a competitive compensation package, a majority of our members are still not happy with their careers. This simply highlights the fact that no amount of money can replace the importance of maintaining high organizational morale, and a healthy, productive organizational climate.
In 2025, I served as the elected Bargaining Representative for the Fish & Wildlife Division. This experience was an eye-opening one that gave me a profound level of respect and appreciation for the amount of work that goes into the collective bargaining process. Although I’m proud of all the work that the bargaining team did to improve the wages and benefits of our members, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I feel that we as an Association did not take full advantage of the opportunity to improve the day-to-day lives of our members by placing a heavier emphasis on our non-monetary proposals. This is not a dig against the bargaining team, they are a fantastic group of people who worked diligently to secure the most they could for our members. It’s also not a dig against President Lopez or former Vice President Hagen. Rather, it’s an example of why regular changes in leadership are important and how fresh perspectives or ideas can prevent negative impacts on the membership. Salaries, retirement, and fringe benefits are important, but in a profession as physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing as law enforcement, we cannot afford to overlook the impact that non-monetary considerations have on the health and wellbeing of our members and their loved ones.
*Gallup, Inc. Employee Engagement Report | Oregon State Police Employee Engagement Survey 2024. Gallup, Inc., 2025.
PRIORITIES
TRANSPARENCY & COMMUNICATION
Trust is built through transparency and honest, straightforward communication.
OSPOA members from across the state have voiced a desire for the Association to be more transparent with the membership and increase accessibility to SEC meetings. Research tells us that effective communication is vital to organizational success. Countless leaders including Joko Willink, a former Navy Seal commander and General (Ret.) George S. Patton credit much of their success as leaders to their ability to proactively and effectively communicate with those they lead.
As your President, my number one priority will be to establish an effective system of communication between Association leaders and the membership they serve. Members should never have to wonder what the Association is doing for them or where all of their dues money is going; nor should they have to drive all the way to Salem or physically attend an SEC meeting to find out.
OSPOA’s existing method of communication is outdated and frankly, ineffective. Blog post notifications often end up in spam folders, it’s difficult for members to take time off to physically attend SEC meetings, and at the end of the day, it’s the Association’s duty to make this information available to the membership rather than expecting the members to put in the leg work to track it down themselves. In 2026, there’s no reason for the Association not to have a secure mobile device application capable of sending our members push notifications each time there’s a new blog post, survey, vote, etc.
Ultimately, Association leaders work for the membership and it is to the membership that they are responsible. As your President, these distinctions will never be lost on me.
QUALITY OF LIFE & EMPLOYEE WELLBEING
The physical, mental, and emotional stress that our members experience in the course of their daily duties is undeniable.
Regardless of your position within the agency, a growing body of research has shown that those in public safety professions suffer significant and adverse impacts as a result of their service to the community. Law enforcement officers have a life expectancy that is 22 years shorter than that of the general population and they are 54% more likely to die by suicide. Emergency Communications Operators are 57% more likely than the general population to suffer from symptoms of depression. Research by Massachusetts General Hospital indicates that individuals who are sedentary (seated at a desk, console, or in a car) for 10.6 hours or more per day are at a 40% increased risk for heart failure and a 60% increased risk for cardiovascular-related death than are individuals whose duties are less sedentary. These concerns touch every facet of our membership from the troopers on the road to our telecommunicators, forensic scientists, and fleet and evidence technicians.
Yet, despite these statistics and all of the data that backs them up, financial wellbeing has remained the primary focus of our Association’s activities year after year. I agree that financial stability and retirement are integral to our member’s overall wellbeing, but at the end of the day, a fat pension and great retirement benefits are only useful if you live long enough to actually enjoy them. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the average lifespan for males and females in the United States is approximately 76 years old and approximately 81 years old, respectively. Taking into consideration the empirical data on life expectancy in law enforcement, that puts the average life expectancy for male and female law enforcement officers at approximately 54 and 59 years old, respectively. To qualify for full Police & Fire retirement under PERS you must be at least 53 years old with 25 years of service or age 55, once vested. That means, statistically speaking, you’re only likely to have anywhere from 1-6 years to enjoy those retirement benefits, unless we start making significant changes now. If not for yourself, do it for your loved ones. Although your surviving spouse and/or children would still receive a reduced portion of your retirement benefits following your death, I’m sure they would much rather trade in that pension for more time with you in their lives. We owe them at least that much for sacrificing so much of their own lives to support us throughout our careers.
The opportunities to improve in this area are numerous but, reducing the amount of time our members spend in a sedentary state, expanding access to nutritional resources and ancillary services, and offering free or reduced membership at fitness facilities are all ways that we can increase morale, boost self-confidence, and extend our members overall life expectancy so that they can enjoy more time with their loved ones.
Following transparency and communication, quality of life and employee wellbeing are my top priorities. We need to focus on improving working conditions and expanding benefits to better address our member’s physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.
Rani, D., Foley, G., Lynn, C., Johnson, D., William, T., & Cassiano, M. S. (2025). The weight of words: a scoping review of depression and suicidal ideation among 911 call takers and dispatchers. Health & justice, 13(1), 66. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40352-025-00376-y
Violanti, J. M., & Steege, A. (2021). Law enforcement worker suicide: an updated national assessment. Policing (Bradford, England), 44(1), 18–31. https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-09-2019-0157
Violanti, J. M., Fekedulegn, D., Hartley, T. A., Andrew, M. E., Gu, J. K., & Burchfiel, C. M. (2013). Life expectancy in police officers: a comparison with the U.S. general population. International journal of emergency mental health, 15(4), 217–228.
Ajufo, Ezimamaka, et al. “Accelerometer-Measured Sedentary Behavior and Risk of Future Cardiovascular Disease.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology, vol. 85, no. 5, 15 Nov. 2024, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109724099200?via=ihub#abs0010, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2024.10.065.
CAREER PLANNING, EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT, & JOB SATISFACTION
I’ve devoted my entire adult life to public service. From joining the military at 18 years old to serving the People of Oregon in my current role as a State Trooper. During that time, I’ve had the opportunity to experience a number of different organizational cultures and individual leadership styles. As one would expect, some organizations were more enjoyable to work for than others, and some leadership styles were more effective than others. With that being said, although I’m proud to work for the Oregon State Police, there is always room for improvement. By making a number of subtle changes in organizational practices and leadership culture, we can significantly improve morale while increasing employee engagement and job satisfaction.
Career Planning & Leadership Development
Perhaps one of the most glaring examples of how we can improve leadership culture and organizational practices within the agency is to integrate career planning into the employee evaluation process and to establish a formal leadership development program that follows employees throughout their careers, even after they promote out of the Association.
Although the Association has already created an Employee Development Form to be used when conducting annual performance evaluations, I’ve found that not all supervisors use the form and even for those who do, only a couple of questions on that form relate to career planning and progression. This is a disservice to our members. Regardless of whether or not an individual has aspirations to promote, effective career planning is critical to an employee’s personal and professional growth.
Organizational leadership practices have a significant impact on individual employee engagement and team dynamics. Poor or ineffective leadership practices tank morale, decrease performance, and significantly hinder the overall mission of the Oregon State Police. Therefore, it’s in the best interest of our members, the Oregon State Police, and the citizens we serve to ensure that those in leadership positions possess the knowledge and skills necessary to be an effective leader.
Effective leader development requires an ongoing cognitive effort to identify strengths and weaknesses in one’s own leadership style while proactively working to improve upon those weaknesses. I don’t believe that organizational leaders are intentionally exhibiting poor leadership behavior. However, that does not negate the adverse impact that poor leadership has on our members. Preventing or mitigating ineffective leadership practices from developing requires an effective feedback loop. Under our current employee evaluation system, supervisors evaluate their subordinate’s performance and offer feedback for improvement but there is no mechanism for employees to evaluate their supervisor’s performance as a leader and provide constructive feedback for similar improvement. This is highly problematic because bidirectional feedback is critical for effective leadership development to take place.
The goal is not for the evaluations and feedback to discredit anyone in a leadership position. Instead, it should serve as an opportunity for those in leadership positions to engage in meaningful, authentic conversations with those they lead with the intent being to grow professionally and expand self-awareness. That is what differentiates a manager from a leader.
Employee Engagement & Job Satisfaction
“Employee engagement” is a term that we’ve all heard floating around our offices over the last couple of years, but what does it mean and why is it suddenly so important?
Shortly after taking office in 2023, Governor Kotek established a new set of expectations for all State of Oregon Executive Branch agencies. Her goal was to improve customer service by examining organizational systems and data to identify where agencies are excelling, and where they could use focused improvement. As a result, all executive branch agencies were expected to contract with Gallup, Inc., a global leader in analytics and business performance, to administer an annual employee engagement and job satisfaction survey. The purpose of this survey is to gauge organizational performance by examining how effective organizational leaders are at meeting the needs of their employees. Similar to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Gallup Inc. separates employee needs into four distinct levels ranging from the most basic which includes things like ensuring that employees know what’s expected of them and giving them the right tools for the job, to more advanced levels of need that contribute to an employee’s personal and professional growth such as discussing career progression and providing opportunities for growth, learning, and advancement.
Not surprisingly, OSP’s results indicate that employee engagement and job satisfaction are lacking significantly throughout most of the workforce. According to the 2024 survey results, only 60% of the overall workforce even bothered to respond to the survey and of those who did respond, only 34% report that they’re actively engaged. In more simplified terms: of the more than 1,300 employees that work for the Oregon State Police, only about 266 of them report being happy to come to work. These statistics should be alarming to everyone, both inside and outside the organization. Research has shown that when employees are happy, they tend to perform better and take better care of their customers. In this case, those customers are the people of Oregon.
A career in public safety is often as challenging as it is rewarding. Shift work, irregular hours, occupational hazards, and repeated exposure to vicarious trauma are just some of the stressors that our members experience on a daily basis. Because of this, it’s fairly common to see a large number of law enforcement officers and other public safety professionals leave the profession between their 5th and 8th years of service. But that doesn’t explain why we’re seeing so many employees outside of that timeframe who are feeling disengaged and dissatisfied with their work.
If it’s not the stress of the job that’s affecting employee engagement and job satisfaction, then what is? Thanks to the data provided by Gallup, Inc., we know exactly why our members are feeling disengaged and dissatisfied. According to Gallup, Inc., the most significant factors affecting our membership are a lack of effective employee recognition, little to no camaraderie, and few opportunities for employees to provide input or feedback (or when they do provide feedback, it’s simply disregarded).
What do all of these things have in common? They’re all directly dependent upon the level of effectiveness of the leadership culture within an organization.
How many times have you heard someone say that the Oregon State Police needs more leaders and fewer managers? Those who have served in the military or in a public safety profession for any notable period of time understand that there is a significant distinction between these two terms. You lead people and you manage things. And remember, not all leaders are in management positions - how many of us know a Senior Trooper, Telecommunicator II, or other tenured member who carries more influence amongst their peers than does the Lieutenant, Director, etc?
Regardless of their current position within the agency, nearly every manager (with few exceptions) started their career as an OSPOA member. By establishing effective leadership principles as the foundation of our member’s careers, we can effectively improve member morale and ultimately organizational performance.
