Keeping tabs on offenders
Community corrections officers in some parts of Spokane work in the neighborhoods where felons live. Their presence re-assures law-abiding residents and makes monitoring more effective.

By Julie Sullivan
The Spokesman-Review

Todd Grendahl, on supervision for drug crimes, insists that the needle tracks on his arms are old, as officers Wiggs and Jost grill him about heroin use.

In a small house at 2308 E. Sixth, Mrs. Arlene Grendahl putters in her kitchen, complaining a bit about the weather and her health.

Todd Wiggs and Rick Jost, field officers with the state Department of Corrections, pay scant attention.

One peers into her bedroom. The other stands outside her slightly open bathroom door.

"I can't go, man," says her son, Todd Grendahl, who's been asked to provide urine for a drug test. He's under supervision for drug and burglary convictions. "I'm trying."

The officers leave, empty-handed.

Two days later, they're back.

They find Grendahl, 34, lying on a bed with black tar heroin and ammunition on the nightstand. They find his brother, Warren, who is under supervision, under the bed. Richard Willis, also under supervision, they pull from the closet.

The following Tuesday, Nov. 4, after a standoff with police, they arrest two more brothers: Byron and Ward Grendahl, both under supervision.

One week, five arrests, time to take care of the house.

The house is being paid for by taxpayers through the Spokane Housing Authority.

Wiggs, Jost and Bill Schaber, a Spokane Police neighborhood resource officer, call adult protective services to look after Mrs. Grendahl. Then they present evidence to the housing authority that Todd Grendahl was collecting his housing subsidy while he was in prison at Airway Heights Corrections Center.

The rent subsidy is pulled. The mother moves in with her daughter. Neighbors come forward to say they were scared to death.

Officially, Wiggs and Jost are community corrections officers stationed at the COPS East Central office.

Unofficially, they're block parents, beat cops and parole officers rolled into one.

"They get results," says Tom Bernard, president of the COPS East Central. "We get information on offenders faster and they seem to get to the offenders faster than the Spokane Police. They go into places police can't."

Neighborhood-based supervision is a concept so unique that it has drawn Alaska troopers and London detectives to Spokane and the top award of the national Council of State Governments.

Most Department of Corrections field officers work out of state offices on North Maple or West Broadway. They have face-to-face visits in the office or at the offender's home monthly or weekly.

But eight field officers are in offenders' neighborhoods every day. They work there, out of tiny offices in the back rooms of COPS shops rented for $1 a year.

In a job where presence is everything, this is a program that works.

Field Officers Pam Madill and Dick Isakson, based downtown, have the keys to almost every low-income apartment building for blocks.

When Spokane police can't find a sex offender who fails to register, they call Isakson -- who just saw the felon walking down the street. Tenants under supervision don't move across the hall without Madill's permission. Tavern owners follow them outside to quietly give the scoop.

"I used to say, call the DOC," Isakson says. "And people would say, 'Who the hell is the DOC?' Now, they know to call Isakson."

More than a cop

At 6-foot-9, there was probably always too much of Jack Brucick to keep behind a desk.

Brucick and his partner supervised the most dangerous ex-felons in Spokane. After 15 years, he felt increasingly trapped by his desk and computer.

Brucick knew his best work happened after office hours, in homes and neighborhoods where offenders lived. With the backing of supervisor Jack Kopp, he outlined a plan that neighbors in West Central eventually asked him to implement.

Four years ago, Brucick moved into the back room at COPS West in the neighborhood that even residents call Felony Flats. He walked a mile in either direction knocking on doors until he knew the neighbors and they knew him.

Today, because of neighbors' requests, eight officers are in COPS West, COPS Northeast, Top COPS downtown and COPS East Central. As for Brucick, he's on loan to the federal government, spreading the gospel of neighborhood supervision nationwide. His temporary office: COPS North Central.

"I'm shocked at the way it's taken off," he says.

The concept works like a small town does: by gossip, knowing your neighbors and the clear message that competent adults are in charge. The CCOs in neighborhoods work closely with police, neighbors and zoning code enforcers, tripling the number of eyes watching.

"A lot of these offenders get so uncomfortable they end up moving out," says Spokane Police Officer Schaber. "It keeps them on their toes a lot more than if the officers were in a central office behind a big desk."

"I'm not another cop," says field officer Jost, as he walks in looking like a schoolteacher. "I'm not a cop at all."

Indeed, he may be more powerful. A community corrections officer has the authority to routinely enter an offender's home, arrest, search and seize. He can peruse a phone bill on a sex offender's kitchen table to see $1,500 in calls to 1-900 sex numbers. He looks under the bed for pornography, inside the refrigerator for beer, and makes the offender walk to the sink to pour it out.

He can call the offender's boss, his mother, his minister. Get him into treatment and to counselors. And when that fails, call the hospital and the jail looking for him.

"The people we deal with have a lot of holes in their lives. They weren't brought up in Cleaver households," Jost says. "They're missing a lot of things they need for a good stable life."

This winter, Wiggs walked in on a conversation with God. The offender, on supervision for stalking, had taken apart a chair in a motel room and was sitting inside it, undressed. It was late on a Friday, and the man was clearly coming undone.

Wiggs arranged for the man to move into a group home where staff keeps him on his medication. Wiggs continues to visit, each time calling Spokane Mental Health to ensure the man's appointments are being kept.

"A lot of them don't have anyone else or know where to turn for help," says Wiggs. "That's part of our job."

Neighborhood officers find themselves being asked to speak to errant teenagers on the block, to crime victims or distraught offender's parents.

The contact makes for a peculiar intimacy with offenders. But for the first time, it puts officers in close contact with law-abiding citizens, too.

Wiggs and Jost attend neighborhood meetings in East Central. They explain the system to people who drop into the COPS shop, and even write an advice column for the community newspaper.

"It gets agencies out of their offices so they know what's going on on the street and what we're living with," neighbor Carolyn Granner says. "They can't be everywhere. But if we have rules and people to enforce the rules, the rules can be everywhere."

In May, two car lot owners came into COPS East Central to complain about prostitution near their businesses. Wiggs was the only one in the office. He gave them his card -- in case some of the prostitutes are under supervision -- and a way to record license plates.

"They're motivated and dedicated enough to do that," Schaber says. "They're awful busy. But they take the time to do it."

The relationships work on the officers, too. To a person, they report feeling better about a job that can have few positive results.

"You come home at the end of the day, and you feel like you've made a difference," says Brucick. "The neighbors make a difference in your life, too. When they bleed, you bleed. It's personal."

More than jail

Jimmy Arrowsmith says he is not guilty.

"I didn't do what I was accused of," Arrowsmith announces as Wiggs and Jost pull into his apartment building parking lot near east Sprague.

Wiggs and Jost spend hours in a state Ford Taurus, outfitted with encyclopedic memories of offenders' histories and very different styles. Wiggs is button-down, quiet and intense. Jost, a former teacher and retail manager, is professorial, patient and a little bemused.

They're up front about what they're doing in Arrowsmith's parking lot. Wiggs speaks to the apartment manager, who knows him. He spots a 6-year-old child and goes to speak to the mother about the sex offender downstairs.

Wiggs wants Arrowsmith to attend treatment for sex offenders and undergo a polygraph as the court requires. Arrowsmith says no. Besides, he says, he has a military waiver.

"They said it would be a waste of time and as part of my martial arts training you learn self-control."

Wiggs grows quieter and more deliberate, repeating that he needs to attend a victim awareness class.

"I am the victim," Arrowhead insists.

"Maybe by going to this class you'll learn you're not," Wiggs says.

The two officers enroll about 90 percent of their caseload in some sort of ongoing state behavior modification program or drug and alcohol treatment. They use the programs as a hammer, as a carrot, and occasionally, just to control time.

With the Spokane County Jail full, they must get permission from their supervisors to detain someone. So they are constantly looking for alternative sanctions.

They move quickly, handling 120 cases between them, a flurry of visits and paperwork that leaves no time for lunch.

A single afternoon takes them from a hearing-impaired drug user they send to treatment to a mentally ill man who set his grandparents' house on fire. A panhandler gestures on the corner.

Jost makes Wiggs stop the car to hand him a list of job placement services.

Community corrections suffers from what Professor Dale Lindekugel of Eastern Washington University identifies as "occupational schizophrenia" from being part social worker, part police officer. In neighborhoods, though, the duality seems easier.

"You have to keep asking what's the risk to the community," Wiggs says.

Neighbors are gradually learning of the officers' presence.

Some come out to talk, wave or glare.

In East Central, the Taurus slows down so Jost can give a man watering his grass a report. The man's tenant was sent back to jail, but he was an epileptic and the neighbor was worried he'd be OK. He's fine, Jost says.

"Well, I know he was a felon," the neighbor says, "but everybody needs somewhere to go."

In Spokane County, the number of ex-felons under supervision is rising in two ways: first in sheer numbers, says Supervisor Jack Kopp. And, in the number of violations each offender has committed.

Neighborhood-based supervision has helped handle the growth. The program has taken place entirely with existing money.

But as successful as it appears to be, there are almost no plans to expand it.

Fewer than one-fifth of the field officers in Spokane County are based in neighborhoods. The rest continue to work out of two state offices.

Kopp says that is in part because some caseloads are specialized, such as high-risk sex offenders. Other neighborhoods may not have enough offenders to justify expansion.

Kopp says officers have already gone into neighborhoods where the community requested their presence. He says current staffing covers "the hub." He's also concerned about the amount of time officers spend with neighbors because at COPS shops, they are often the only professionals around.

"It's a plus but it's also a negative. It's a challenge for staff to balance."

Schaber is convinced that every neighborhood community police station should have a field officer -- and an officer supervising juvenile offenders.

"We deal with a lot of the same people over and over. We're chasing them from one place to another continuously. All I know is a lot are habitual criminals and they need to know someone is there watching."

Since his arrest last November, Grendahl has violated his supervision again and has done two long stints in the county jail. He is now wanted again for failing to report.

"We're here, we'll be here tomorrow," Wiggs says. "We'll get him."

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