Chief says department changes will take time.

Byline: Rebecca Nolan The Register-Guard

Overall, the Eugene Police Department is a good agency, despite recent revelations about problems on the force, Chief Robert Lehner said Wednesday.

The issues that have emerged are being addressed and changes already have started, he told the 60 or so people who attended a meeting held by the Oregon chapter of the ACLU at the Eugene Public Library.

But the process will take time, he said.

"We don't have a magic light switch here," Lehner said. "We can't change darkness into light overnight. We have a lot of training to do, we have a lot of work to do.

"Overall, it's really a very good police department, and I'm glad to be here."

Lehner said he will wait until the end of the criminal trial of the second of two former officers accused of using their positions to coerce women into sex before performing a thorough overview of department policies and practices that could have led to the alleged abuses of power, he said.

"The real work is still coming," he said. "I fully anticipate we will find some things that can be improved and tightened. If we find anybody else who engaged in either unlawful behavior or covered it up or didn't report it, that will be dealt with accordingly - publicly."

In the meantime, some changes already have been made.

Patrol teams have shrunk and multiplied, so there are more teams with fewer officers on each. That improves the officer-supervisor ratio, he said, while also speeding up response times and widening coverage.

And early audits of police systems have revealed no obvious "smoking guns," he said.

Lehner said the alleged abuses by Juan Lara and Roger Magana "absolutely were aberrations" and not part of a systemic problem within the agency. Lara was convicted and sentenced in February to five years and eight months in prison. Magana is set for trial in June.

"Everybody is rejecting and condemning that behavior," the chief said. "Even those who knew them and liked them have said if they knew of their behavior, they would have reported them."

During the two-hour meeting, the chief fielded dozens of questions on topics including racial profiling, conflicting federal and state laws, police response to riots and protests and perceived police harassment of teenagers, motorcycle club members and the homeless.

He emphasized the importance of rebuilding trust between the public and police, first by increasing the public's access to information and second by using community policing techniques to build relationships between officers and neighborhoods. And he urged anyone with a grievance against the department to file a complaint with the agency's internal affairs unit.

David Fidanque, executive director of the Oregon ACLU, moderated the discussion and praised Lehner's "refreshing" openness and approach to policing.