pa-police-car

PORT ANGELES – The city of Port Angeles now has three code enforcement officers working through a bevy of complaints.

The city re-started the program recently, adding budget money after code enforcement was cut from the budget in 2012.

There are now three, part-time officers working complaints such as parking, junk, abandoned vehicles, and environmental issues.

The officers work in the police department. Police Chief Brian Smith says, unlike many jurisdictions, the code enforcement officers have undergone some extra training…

“Our three part time officers, I couldn’t be more proud of them as people and how hard they work. Two of them completed the reserve police academy winter, spring and summer and we were the only reserve academy to complete the program, it’s about 280 hours, in the whole state. The operation sergeant supervises the three code officers and they all have different areas that they’re focusing their time on, but we’ve definitely had brought more capacity to what we’re doing.”

The officers have been outfitted with their own refurbished patrol car and other equipment.

Before having the officers, law enforcement officers had to handle code enforcement complaints, and those often got a low priority.

“Code enforcement calls can drop off the priority list pretty quickly, they can be time and labor intensive. And so given the number of officers we have, we have about 1.3 per 1000 residents the patrol officers, we simply lacked the capacity to do anything effective with code.”

Smith says city residents and businesses operators can submit possible code enforcement violations directly through the city’s police department website: https://www.cityofpa.us/1022/Code-Enforcement