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Eureka’s new police chief, 25-year EPD veteran Brian Stephens, sees himself as a traditional cop. He values uniformity and a clean, professional appearance. When fellow officers requested permission to wear external tactical vests as a means of reducing the lower back pain that comes from carrying up to 30 pounds of gear around on their duty belts all day, he was initially opposed. The vests looked more military-tactical than traditional, he thought, though he later changed his mind and now concedes that they’ve been helpful.

“I see the good they have done for the backs” of officers, he said in an interview with the Outpost on Wednesday. “I support it … and will continue to support it. It’s not going away.”

Still, expect him to run a tight ship. An Army veteran born and raised in rural Kentucky, Stephens revered law enforcement as a kid and believes police departments should operate efficiently. Officers should look sharp — clean shaven or mustaches neatly trimmed, uniforms tidy, preferably no visible tattoos, though that’s another thing he’s relaxed about, to some extent; they’re allowed in the department these days. 

Stephens, who was sworn in as chief at a ceremony Thursday afternoon, takes over a woefully short-staffed department that’s still trying to move past the controversy and upheaval that followed a 2021 Sacramento Bee story detailing a series of vulgar, sexist and dehumanizing text messages among a squad of EPD officers led by former Sgt. Rodrigo Reyna-Sanchez. 

Former chief Steve Watson retired before the completion of an independent investigation into the texting scandal. When it was concluded, three of the five officers being investigated — Sanchez, Capt. Patrick O’Neill and Mark Meftah — resigned or retired rather than submitting to disciplinary action. Then-Chief Todd Jarvis said “appropriate corrective action” was taken for the other officers involved.

Stephens has long been friends with Sanchez, who’s called “Rigo” by officers. The two of them came up through the academy together, and to this day Stephens keeps a framed picture on his office shelf of Sanchez standing with other officers. 

Stephens’ tenure with the department stretches back to a time when EPD had a reputation for being aggressive and quick to use force, when the prevailing approach to law enforcement was “just hook and book, and if they’re resisting, overwhelm them with force,” as one current EPD officer described that era. 

Former chief Garr Nielsen characterized the department’s longtime reputation as “callous, cruel and dehumanizing,” as quoted in a 2021 Sac Bee story.

Nielsen was sworn in as chief in 2007 on the heels of four fatal officer-involved shootings in a nine-month span. This included the killing of Cheri Lyn Moore, a 49-year-old woman suffering a mental health crisis who was shot to death in her apartment by members of an EPD SWAT team. A grand jury later indicted the police chief and lieutenant who authorized the operation, though a judge ultimately dismissed the charges.

Nielsen’s efforts to reform the department — which included disbanding the SWAT team, partnering with the county’s domestic violence services department and establishing a problem-oriented policing (POP) unit to deal with nuisance properties and persistent drug problems — inspired push-back and resentment among a core group of officers within the department. In 2011 Nielsen was fired without cause, with then-City Manager David Tyson reportedly giving him just minutes to clear out his desk, change out of his uniform and leave the building.

Andy Mills, who came to the department from San Diego and served as Eureka’s police chief from 2013-2017, arguably had more success in reforming the department and its reputation in the community. He initiated regular “Coffee with the Captains” events, inviting community members to engage directly with commanding officers. He also implemented implicit bias training for officers and promoted community policing and de-escalation techniques. However, in an exit interview with the Times-Standard he said some cops in the department embraced their intimidating reputation.

“Officers literally tell me that they want people to fear us when they drive into this community,” he told reporter Will Houston. “I said, ‘Who do you want to fear you exactly, my mother who’s 84?’”

If the reform efforts of Nielsen, Mills and Watson were aimed at dismantling the department’s culture of toxic masculinity, the texting scandal undercut the community’s faith that any progress had been made, at least among this one squad, whose texts to each other included endorsements of violence, explicit remarks about women’s bodies and obscene jokes targeting people experiencing homelessness and mental illness.

Last year, an outside auditor reviewed the official response to EPD’s texting scandal and concluded that the city handled it appropriately, holding “most involved in the misconduct accountable” while making progress toward improving department culture. The audit praised Jarvis for improving officer oversight, implementing a misconduct policy and prohibiting the use of personal phones to conduct on-duty business, except in emergencies. Jarvis also took steps to improve employee wellness by requiring annual counseling sessions and offering fully covered follow-ups.

Jarvis, who retired as Stephens took over on Thursday, has encouraged both the department and the community to look forward rather than backwards. Speaking to the city’s Community Oversight on Police Practices Board last year he said, “We have really worked hard to change the culture to one of accountability, one of higher expectations, one where we don’t ever want to see this again,” as quoted by Thadeus Greenson in the North Coast Journal.

‘Every day policing changes’

On Thursday, Stephens sat down for an interview in his office. On the wall above him hung a wood carving in the shape of Kentucky, a thin blue line running through it horizontally and various badge patches affixed to the bottom with thumbtacks. Next to that was a plaque inscribed with a prayer asking the Lord to grant him various virtues, including “concern for those who trust me and compassion for those who need me.” A wooden thin blue line flag dangled from a hook at the bottom.

Stephens was hired in February of 1999 by then-chief Arnie Millsap, and he recounted some words of guidance he’d imparted.

“Arnie had three things he wanted me to accomplish in my career, and that was to lessen the anger, anxiety and fear of our community,” Stephens said. “Those were the three things he wanted me to strive for.”

That directive proved to be less straightforward than it may sound.

“I realized over the last 25 years that that goal line is always moving, because society is always changing,” he said. “So it’s been something to strive for.”

Stephens has worked for quite a few chiefs during his quarter-century tenure, and he said he’s learned something from each of them. Asked how he feels he and the department have done in making progress toward Millsap’s objectives, Stephens said it “ebbs and flows” with changes in the culture and in criminal justice. In particular, he referred to reduced criminal penalties for certain drug and property crimes.

“You know, it’s hard to hold people accountable when legislation changes and there’s not the accountable piece … when they change crimes and what the outcomes of those are, so then you have the frustration and the anger from the community that their cars are being broken into, that we have retail theft and, ‘Why isn’t anything be done about that?’” Stephens said. “Well, that’s really hard to try to get on top of when you don’t control what the foundation was that caused that change.”

He also spoke about social changes, referring obliquely to “national events” that have impacted policing and cultural attitudes toward law enforcement.

“Every day policing changes as a profession, and you have to be willing and flexible enough to change with it … ,” he said. “You know, all it takes is one event to start making changes in policy and changes in tools that can be used.”

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Asked if he was referring specifically to the Black Lives Matter protests that exploded across the country in response to a series of police killings of Black men and women, Stephens said that movement was just the latest episode to impact policing. He later said the movement has likely impacted officer recruitment and retention, both at EPD and across the country.

“People question, ‘Is this really what I want to do? Do I want to stand out here and get yelled at for something that I personally didn’t do but because of the uniform I wear I’m the target now?’” he said. 

In what may have been a reference to the murder of George Floyd, Stephens said, “It may take, you know, nine minutes for that event to evolve [but it] has repercussions that last for years in the profession. So, I think now we’re just seeing the pendulum start to swing back to where people are seeing [policing] as a viable career again, or at least a job.”

Staffing woes

The Eureka Police Department is budgeted for 48 positions, including sworn officers and support staff, such as community service officers, dispatch, records specialists and administrative technicians. The department is currently down 13 sworn officers, including two sergeant vacancies.

In a recent open letter to the community, the Eureka Police Officers Association (EPOA), which represents the department’s rank-and-file officers, decried the “rapid loss of numerous and experienced Police Officers,” saying EPD is operating with just 60 percent of the normal sworn officer positions filled.

While agencies across the state are struggling to fill vacancies, EPD in particular has had a difficult time retaining officers.

“We are a training ground for other agencies,” Redding Police Department in particular, Stephens said. 

EPD officers often see the grass as greener in other areas, largely because the workload in Eureka “has alway been higher than any other agency in the region,” Stephens said. “We handle somewhere between 200 and 250 calls for service a day.”

Police departments in the Central Valley are offering signing bonuses of up to $80,000, he added, and while Eureka is now offering new officers a $50,000 signing bonus, it can still be hard to hire and keep sworn officers.

On Jan. 1 the department re-initiated its “emergency staffing matrix,” last seen almost two years ago. This entails the elimination of the department’s swing shift in favor of mandatory 12-and-a-half-hour shifts for all sworn officers, with some working the day shift and others the night shift.

Stephens said this will stabilize the schedule, and while he allowed that some officers may dislike working such long hours at a stretch, many of them were already clocking 50 to 60 hours of overtime each month, which interfered with the department’s ability to send officers away for training opportunities. And the new schedule allows each officer to get four successive days off each month during which they can either relax and reset or come in to work on special projects, earning overtime while not being tied to the dispatch radio.

Meanwhile, Eureka’s higher rate of calls for service don’t necessarily mean that the city’s crime stats are “crazy,” Stephens said; it’s just that there are a lot of situations in which residents call the police, including public disturbances and incidents involving people who are homeless.

Officers will look at Arcata, where “you can do a third of the work and you can make a couple dollars, probably, more an hour … it’s hard to take a young cop who feels stressed because of the amount of calls we’re handling and our staffing issues and try to get them to stay,” Stephens said.

Others say Stephens himself is at least partly to blame. One current EPD officer, who spoke to the Outpost on condition of anonymity due to fear of professional repercussions, said he’s not excited about Stephens’ ascendancy to the position of chief, nor are many of his fellow officers.

“He’s just been opposed to so many forward-looking, progressive ideas,” said the officer, who we’ll call Smith (not their real name). “He’s very much a traditionalist [with a] 20th century cop mentality.”

Stephens was tight with the clique of “bad boy” officers of yesteryear, according to Smith, who described the chief’s outlook as “regressive.”

“I started formulating [a plan] to leave when I heard last spring that Stephens was gonna be chief,” Smith said, adding that they’re not the only one. “We’ve lost so many people these last six or seven years. Now myself and two others are looking for an exit. … We’re literally at a breaking point, staffing-wise. … This is a failure of leadership: poor planning, poor working conditions and poor treatment.”

‘Pillar of leadership’

Other officers disagree and say Stephens is definitely an asset to the department.

EPOA President Detective Joseph Couch, for example, told the Outpost that Stephens is widely perceived as a dedicated EPD employee.

“He has kind of been a pillar of the leadership since I began seven years ago, and he continues to push forward [and] to help patrol in whatever way he can through his capabilities,” Couch said. “He has been assistant chief for the last year or so under the leadership of Jarvis, and I think some of [Jarvis’s] leadership qualities have rubbed off on Stephens. … The hope for the guys and gals on patrol is that he kind of continues where Jarvis left off and continues to make the Eureka Police Department a better place to work.”

Asked whether some officers still see Stephens as one of the hard-hitting good ol’ boys, Couch said anyone who’s been with the department for so long is bound to carry some of that stigma, but he doesn’t believe it’s warranted in this case.

“All of the experiences I’ve had with Stephens have been positive,” Couch said. “He’s willing to pass on knowledge to those who’ll listen. Any time leadership changes and a new chief takes over there will always be portions of staff who will be concerned. With law enforcement that’s just something that will happen. Personally, I hope for the best. I think deep down Stephens has the betterment of [officers] in his mind. I think the majority of staff feel the same way.”

Patrol Sgt. Jonathan Eckert agreed, saying Stephens has grown as a leader and frequently displays patience.

“Chief Stephens is often in the unenviable position of having to say ‘no’ or ‘We need to change our approach,’” Eckert said in an email. “During these times he does an excellent job of walking his staff through why the change is needed.”

And Eckert credits Stephens with working hard to get the department through a difficult time. 

“He has aggressively worked to increase our recruitment efforts and I know he is heavily invested in the department producing and retaining the highest-quality officers in the area,” he said.

On Thursday, just a few hours before Stephens was sworn in, former chief Mills offered his endorsement on Facebook, writing, “Brian is the definition of kindness, loyalty and fidelity to the Constitution. Brian earned this spot and ALL of Eureka please support him and EPD. It’s in your best interest.”

‘I think you have to be a progressive police agency these days’

Stephens spoke with pride about the various progressive reforms that the department has made in recent years, including the creation of the Community Safety Engagement Team (CSET), whose mission is to proactively address quality of life, crime and disorder, and the Crisis Alternative Response of Eureka (CARE), which offers mental health and substance use services.

Echoing the likes of Nielsen and Mills, Stephens said the department now takes “more of a social approach” to many problems, trying to connect people with resources and services while attempting to balance accountability with compassion.

“We’ve got to have the right people to do that, and I think that’s where we’re really thriving right now as an agency,” he said.

A 2019 report from the Civil Grand Jury criticized Eureka’s law-enforcement-heavy approach to the ongoing homelessness crisis, saying the city “has taken a kind of carrot and stick approach but with an emphasis on the stick.”

The grand jury concluded that EPD’s forced evictions of homeless encampments on South Jetty in 1997 and the Palco Marsh in 2016 just served to disperse the unhoused population without solving the underlying issues facing them and the rest of the community.

Stephens said that things have since changed for the better.

“We looked at using enforcement to try to change behavior … . It didn’t work, right?” he said. “Somebody said — it may have been Chief Watson — ‘We can’t arrest our way out of the societal issues that we’re facing with homelessness and mental health issues and drug addiction.’ So we had to find a different approach.”

EPD has done that largely through collaborations with other departments and agencies, hiring a mental health officer and using Measure Z funds to create new, more progressive programs.

“Do we really get anything out of writing a person suffering from homelessness a ticket for camping or for littering if they don’t have the means to pay it and the courts aren’t going to hold them in jail for any type of consequence either? It’s a waste of paper, right?” he said.

Even with the staffing problems, the department’s CARE team has been expanded, and soon they’ll likely be able to provide 24/7 coverage, Stephens said.

There’s an ongoing effort to “bifurcate” law enforcement’s responsibilities from those better handled by social services,”because that’s what society wants right now, right?” he said. “Do you need a cop to go deal with somebody’s having a mental health issue?”

Thanks in large part to the CARE program, EPD is now diverting 80-85 percent of mental health holds, meaning people who previously might have been detained at Sempervirens are instead being connected with clinicians who’ve already been assigned to them through the county, according to Stephens.

“That’s the great thing: There’s follow up care now,” he said. “It’s not just us going out and putting a Band-Aid on it.”

The culture of the department

Stephens was reluctant to discuss the texting scandal, his friendship with Sanchez and the culture of the old EPD. But when pressed he said that it may simply be impossible to root out all problem officers because there’s not some special supply of flawless candidates for law enforcement.

“We hire from the communities we serve and from the human race, and there are things that happen,” he said. “Are we going to be able to prevent an issue from happening again? I don’t know that we can. I don’t know that any organization can.”

He cited the Catholic Church as an example. “Are they able to say that they’ll never have another issue with some type of abuse from a priest? I don’t think you can, because people are human and things happen.”

We pointed out that the Catholic Church has a history of brushing abuse under the rug rather than dealing with it.

“And this got dealt with,” he said, referring to the texting scandal. 

Going forward, he said he plans to focus on training and mentoring young officers while placing an emphasis on “immediate corrective action” and mandatory reporting of wrongdoing. It’s a policy now.

“You’re not being a snitch,” Stephens said. “If you see something wrong, you need to bring it forward so we can try to correct it immediately.”

Which is not to say that there’s no room left in the department for rooting out and apprehending the bad guys. Later in the conversation, Stephens complimented his group of police investigators, saying that in the last six months they’ve been shorthanded but nevertheless “have been just knocking out crime after crime after crime.”

“And that’s just an accolade to them and the commitment they have: ‘You’re not going to do these things in our city and get away with it. We’re gonna hunt you down, we’re gonna find you, and we’re gonna hold you accountable for it,” Stephens said.

Addressing the staffing crisis

Stephens is optimistic about addressing the department’s short-staffing woes. One cadet graduated from the academy’s training program last Friday, he said, and an officer has been hired from Virginia. Two more recruits will start at the academy on Monday, and Stephens plans to advertise for more recruits this month with a goal of enlisting five into the academy in July.

He’s also hopeful that Eureka’s $50,000 signing bonus will attract some established officers. He convinced people at City Hall that it’s a good value.

“If we pay them $50,000 and a bonus, then that’s still cheaper than the roughly $65,000 we spend in six months to pay for their academy,” he said.

As for retaining officers, he said his top priority as chief will be looking after the welfare of the department and its staff. He emphasized the importance of EPD’s now-extensive wellness program, saying it’s working incredibly well to provide services to workers.

In addition to a “robust” peer support team, the county signed a three-year contract with Restoration Family Services to provide a mental health clinician for sworn officers and support staff alike. 

“We do mandatory debriefing every year, so every employee has to sit down for a half hour with the clinician. And they don’t have to talk; they just have to be there,” he said. The department provides up to 12 meetings per year for any officer who’s been involved in a critical incident they’re struggling with. The service is also available to officers’ spouses, fully covered.

“The stigma is gone in this agency about mental health,” Stephens said, adding that officers no longer fear that discussing their feelings will result in getting their gun taken away. 

“Person after person after person tells me — just today I was on the phone with one of my employees who just said, ‘If it wasn’t for that, I don’t know where I would be right now,’” Stephens said. “And they talk about it openly in the hallway. And they talk about who they see and make recommendations to one another. … It’s probably the best program for our officers and our employees that we put in place, that in the long run is going to have the most beneficial effects.”

‘A lot of positive change’

Stephens is also feeling good about the state of Eureka. He said he takes his cues not from crime statistics or even officer feedback, but rather from the people he talks to out in the community. It bothers him when people say they don’t feel safe coming to Old Town to attend Friday Night Markets or other events.

“But what I’m hearing on the street — from both community members that have lived here for years [and] some that have left and come back, because they all love to talk to you and tell you how things changed — [is that] Eureka is in a good place,” Stephens said.

“There’s been a lot of positive change and they see that. You look at the people that come out for our public events and stuff, and they want to be in downtown. They want to be in Eureka.”

He added that while he won’t rest on those laurels, he feels good about the safety of the community and the current attitudes of community members.

Before parting ways with a firm handshake, Stephens said he wanted to say something to the people of Eureka.

“I’ve given 25 years half of my adult — half of my life on this Earth [to the EPD]. And I promise and commit to the community to continue, in whatever time I have left in this position, to work tirelessly to protect them and provide a safe environment for them.”

Asked if he has a timeline for when he might like to retire he said no but then amended that answer: “At the end of my career.”