Bishop Police Chief Standridge hosts public town hall
The chief discusses equipment, crime and programs
Bishop Police Chief Richard Standridge on Thursday hosted a town hall meeting at Bishop City Hall that more than 40 people attended with questions, comments and suggestions.
Standridge, who has been with the Bishop Police Department for 19 months, said that under a state law, Assembly Bill 481, law enforcement agencies are required to compile an inventory list of what would be considered “military equipment,” submit it to their applicable governing body, in this case, the Bishop City Council, and hold a public hearing.
Standridge said because his department only has a small amount of military equipment, the public hearing would have been “two and a half minutes” so he thought it would be good to provide a department update and provide a chance for residents to ask questions.
“We don’t have what LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) or even what Inyo County (Sheriff’s Office) has,” he said.
Standridge said he sees public meetings like Thursday’s event happening perhaps every six months to update citizens.
Military equipment
Standridge briefly reviewed the department’s inventory of what the state considers military equipment, which includes 12 Colt M4 rifles, which are basically AR-15s.
“Why we have them is because if we have to respond to an active shooter anywhere within this city or county, we need to be prepared to have the equipment to take care of business, to save lives, and to do it as effectively as possible,” Standridge said. “And those right now are the most effective rifles on the market.”
The department also has two Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, which would be used in potential SWAT situations. Standridge said the department actually wanted to trade the submachine guns in for more AR-15s “and they won’t take them anymore.”
“We are equipped, we are armed but we don’t run around like we’re special forces,” he said.
The department also has an armored personnel carrier, currently housed with the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office, as well as “flash-bang devices and some gas canisters.
He said some of the department’s military equipment, such as three Colt AR-15 rifles and a Ruger Mini-14 rifle were traded in for more lesslethal shotguns.
“I’m a firm believer in less lethal,” the chief said.
Standridge said when he first arrived in Bishop
not all of the department’s officers had Tasers, an electroshock weapon used to incapacitate people, due to a lack of equipment and up-to-date training.
“All of our officers are currently trained in the Taser and they all carry Tasers as well,” he said.
Standridge said he didn’t see the need for the city to acquire any more military equipment in the near future due to multiagency responses with the sheriff’s office, which has more of those resources.
Sector Program
Standridge said one of the projects he is working on for the coming year is called the “Sector Program.”
The chief explained that the department will divide Bishop into three sectors that already have been identified and each of the department’s sergeant will be assigned to a sector.
“Not every citizen in the city likes the police to come to their house or they don’t want to see police coming into their neighborhood,” he said. “But they do have questions that they want to ask and they need confidentiality or they want to provide information that we don’t necessarily need to have a call for service and go to their home.”
He said it won’t be used for calls for service rather for an information resource. The resource could be used by citizens who physically can’t make it to the police department or perhaps to avoid confrontations between neighbors if such already exists.
Standridge said the department is in the process of updating its website and within the next few months citizens should be able to find their sectors, the sergeant assigned to the sector and contact information.
Crime in the city
Standridge reported that the main issue regarding crime in the city of Bishop is petty theft “and be thankful for that.”
“We do have drugs,” he said. “Every community has drugs. I don’t think this community is any worse than any other. A lot of your petty thefts are centered around drugs, people who are on drugs, they steal, they sell, they trade.”
Standridge said, as far as what his department is seeing, “the drugs of choice” in the Bishop area are methamphetamine, cocaine, cannabis and “heroin is making a come back.”
He said before coming to Bishop, he had encountered heroin perhaps three times in his 20+-year career.
“I know for a fact that we’ve seen more than that in the 19 months I’ve been here than I saw in 25 years,” Standridge said.
The chief said while Bishop saw 12 stolen cars last year, which is not that high, six of those vehicles were stolen because people went inside their homes after starting the vehicle and left the keys in the vehicle.
Police Sgt. Brian Hohenstein, who also was at Thursday’s meeting, said between the local agencies, all 12 vehicles were eventually recovered though “not in the shape they were in before they were stolen.”
Department stats
During Thursday’s meeting, Standridge also provided some department statistics from 2022.
These included writing 304 moving violation citations, which might have been a little low due to staffing and other challenges the department faced last year; 469 nonmoving violation citations; officers took 1,173 reports, there were 262 misdemeanor arrests; 89 felony arrests; officers responded to 9,488 calls for service; and the department’s dispatchers took 14,936 phone calls, which include fire and EMS as well as police.
Citizen police academy
Standridge said he also wants to gauge the public’s interest in a citizen police academy.
While specifics are still being worked out, he said he envisioned a five-week program in which participants would come in one night a week and department staff would teach them about different topics related to the community and the department. The program also could include ride-alongs and a range night.
He said down the road there might be an opportunity to create a similar program for youth, which could assist in recruitment later on, but those details have yet to be developed.