New Salem-Keizer safety director Cliff Carpentier talks about keeping kids safe

Natalie Pate
Statesman Journal

For nearly 20 years, the Salem-Keizer Threat Response System has been a cornerstone for school safety programs across the U.S.

It's creator, John Van Dreal, recently retired as Salem-Keizer Public Schools' safety director and he's passing the baton to a soon-to-be-former sergeant of the Salem Police Department — Cliff Carpentier.

Carpentier comes to the school district with nearly 30 years of law enforcement experience. He's had a passion for working in education since he managed the district's school resource officers for Salem Police's Youth Services Unit.

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The Turner native also serves on the board of directors for the Boys and Girls Club of Salem, Marion and Polk Counties. He lives in Salem with his wife and two daughters. 

He ends his police department tenure Aug. 9, taking over as Salem-Keizer's Safety, Security and Risk Management Services director on Aug. 12.

Cliff Carpentier, the new director of Salem-Keizer Public Schools' Safety, Security and Risk Management Services, poses for a picture on July 31, 2019, in Salem.

Carpentier is coming in a year after district officials withdrew a resolution that would have designated the district's security department as a law enforcement agency. He said there is no intention to pursue that idea further.

Instead, he plans to build on the system the district already has, find ways they can improve, and focus on building strong relationships across the community. 

The Statesman Journal spoke with Carpentier about his experience, the goals he has for the position and what he wants people to understand about school safety.

His answers have been edited for length and clarity:

What experience do you bring to this job?

I've been with the Salem Police Department since 2002. I was with Marion County for six years before, the Army for five years before that, so it's been about 28 years in law enforcement.

Before serving as the manager of the Youth Services Unit, I hadn't realized how many parts of the community were all invested in student success and student achievement. Really, it's just a big community effort. It's about building those relationships, building up the kids and making sure they graduate.

It's fun work; it's challenging work. It was fun being part of that — doing what we can to make our community and kids safe.

The Youth Services Unit manager is a rotating position assigned by the command staff. You don't get to really pick where you go. In my 17 years here, people don't go back to the same position, it just doesn't happen very often.

A school bus for Salem-Keizer Public Schools in Salem on Monday, Aug. 27, 2018. Classes begin Sept. 4 and 5.

I knew if I was going to be in education, I'd either have to leave the state, or look at the civilian side of it. Looking at the positions out there I would like to do, I waited until they closed and got ahold of the HR directors.

I didn't have a lot of college. Of the candidates getting these jobs, everybody at least had a bachelors and 10-15% had masters. So, I recently finished my bachelor's degree and now I'm finishing my master's in emergency management and homeland security.

This way, I have the education to backup my experience.

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How does your background help you?

I don't have a lot of knowledge of how it would be for an education person. From my view in law enforcement, we end up being that jack of all trades.

I've been part of the threat assessment team with the district before. There's all different people with different experiences and resources at the table. Each of these agencies and partners have different responsibilities.

It's about that collaboration of knowing what's out there and having people present, so when a problem comes up, we can ask, "Has anyone seen this before? What resources do we have? Do we have a way to help them?"

We see more of the pie than someone in education alone. In law enforcement, I'm interfacing with the juvenile department, the courts, DHS, etc. We deal with more of our community partners a lot more frequently. As school officers, we did it on a daily basis.

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What will your day-to-day look like?

Initially, it'll be a whole lot of learning everybody's personalities, how everyone does things. I'll be learning a lot.

If you have a school lockdown, as the director over there, you'll get a call from the police agency. They'll end up calling and telling me about the lockdown, and I'll do the response. As a sergeant, I didn't worry about bus schedules, parent pick up. There will be different problems we have to find solutions for.

The Safety and Risk Management Services office for Salem-Keizer Public Schools in Salem on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018.

There's chaos management in the day-to-day that will happen too. For example, planning for emergencies like the water crisis last year, or there's always a concern about the Cascadia subduction zone. This also includes risk management, like if a bus gets into a crash. I'll see how employees all do their jobs, see how I fit in and what I can do to lead.

But the initial part is really just getting settled in. I need to establish those relationships. There's people I already have relationships with, but there are some people in the district I need to get to know as fast as I can because the success comes down to those relationships.

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Can you speak to last year's failed resolution? 

The district didn't hire me to be their school police officer. That hiccup last year, they ran into some communication issues, I don't even know the full story. It didn't work out for them. They have no plan to move ahead on any of that.

As far as the school-to-prison pipeline, when I was in schools, as well as seven-to-nine years ago, people were talking about it. I've pulled the arrest statistics between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. on school days within 1,000 feet of our middle and high schools. From that, we took the race data on those arrests and compared them to the district makeup.

Our arrests were the same, percentage-wise. They mirrored the district's makeup, so we didn't see any unintended bias in our arrests.

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In Salem specifically, we've always had a guideline — we're not going to criminalize juvenile behavior. So, if two students are pushing each other, we're not going to try to make it a crime, we'll let the school deal with it.

We aren't going to be involved in school discipline. That's part of the student contract that the school resource officer is not part of student conduct.

Our job as adults is to say when "juvenile behavior" crosses a line and why. Often the parents who contacted us were actually upset we didn't arrest someone and take them to jail.

We don't want to put any child in the juvenile justice system if we don't have to.

Any planned changes to the established system? 

It's definitely a tall order to step into.

I've been talking with John Van Dreal a lot, I've known him for years. For my master's thesis, I'm looking at ten years of threat assessment data for the district to see if there are any patterns of success, things that didn't work well, bias, and if there's any continued criminal behavior.

If we have a kid who had bad behavior, got support in the schools, then as an adult, did they continue criminality because they're out of that support system? Or did it make them more successful adults? I want to look at these things instead of just managing year by year.

Kennedy Elementary School students cheer as McNary High School seniors walk through the hallways for a Parade of Honor on Friday, June 1, 2018, in Keizer. The graduates returned to their elementary school for a parade in full cap and gown for current students.

What do you want people to know about safety?

Education and student safety really are everybody's responsibility.

We often hear stories about someone hearing this or that, but they didn't report it. If people see things or hear things, make sure they report it so people can take a look and see if it's completely benign.

The label is "security," but it's about being a resource. We're a resource internally, we're a resource to our students, and to others external to the district. We're gonna get you help so you know where you need to go.

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We want to make sure the community sees us as a resource. We want to be as inclusive as we can. We'll do our best to reach out to people, but we encourage people to reach out to us. There's always things we can do to work together.

The goal isn't to the be negative. We want to keep kids in school, keep them safe, get them graduated and prepared to be successful adults.

For more information, go to https://salkeiz.k12.or.us/ or call 503-399-3070.

Contact reporter Natalie Pate at npate@StatesmanJournal.com, 503-399-6745 or follow Natalie on Twitter @Nataliempate or Facebook at www.Facebook.com/nataliepatejournalist.