Lieutenant in charge of Newport’s state police office got waiver from superintendent to qualify for job

By MAXINE BERNSTEIN/The Oregonian/OregonLive

Oregon State Police Superintendent Casey Codding offered a rare eligibility waiver to promote a former agency colleague to a high-ranking position leading the agency’s Newport office despite the trooper’s checkered record.

Codding’s decision paved the way for his former SWAT colleague Joey Pollard to get the job in charge of the state police office in Newport.

Pollard, 56, had retired from state police as a lieutenant in 2023 but rejoined last spring as a trooper. Five months later, Codding promoted him several ranks back to lieutenant and selected him to run the Newport operation. Pollard got a nearly $60,000 pay bump, now earning $165,564 a year on top of his annual state pension of $94,382.

Codding and Pollard’s history on the state police force goes back decades.

Both were sergeants on the state police SWAT unit in 2013 when Pollard swigged vodka from a flask while driving a police truck on a ski trip with Codding sitting in the back seat, a state police criminal investigation found. Pollard also fired a gunshot behind the head of a colleague as a joke while on duty in a so-called “SWAT pop.”

Prosecutors pursued no charges against Pollard. After a subsequent internal investigation, Pollard was demoted to trooper in 2013 but later worked his way up. In his retirement farewell email to the agency, Pollard called Codding an “Amazing SWAT member! Great leader! True friend.”

State police rehired Pollard last May to work as a trooper in its Ontario office in eastern Oregon. But he quickly applied to lead the Newport office, where he now supervises two sergeants and 15 troopers. The office serves the central coast, handling calls for Lincoln County and surrounding areas.

He qualified for the Oct. 1 promotion with an unusual superintendent’s waiver on the job posting. It opened the candidate pool not only to current sergeants or lieutenants but also to “anyone who has previously held the rank of sergeant or lieutenant at Oregon State Police.”

Four others were eligible under the waiver but Pollard was the only person who applied for the job, said OSP spokesman Capt. Kyle Kennedy.

Codding, who also chairs the Oregon Board on Public Safety Standards & Training, declined comment through Kennedy. Pollard didn’t respond to email and phone messages seeking comment.

Kennedy said Pollard retired “in good standing and has been nothing but exemplary since he returned.”

“Nothing in his employment history precluded him from applying” for the promotion, Kennedy said by email.

But a half dozen current and retired state police officers, who asked not to be named out of fear of reprisal, said the job appeared custom-made for Pollard. They said they know of no one else able to leapfrog so quickly over the ranks of senior trooper and sergeant to a lieutenant’s position. That’s especially true in Pollard’s case because — as the agency confirmed — he was still technically on probation as a low-ranking trooper after his rehiring.

A few said they thought the wording of the job posting might have dissuaded sergeants from applying for the promotion, assuming the fix was in.

“When that posting came out, we knew who it was written for,” one current trooper said.

Kennedy called the suggestion that Codding hand-picked Pollard for the Newport job an “inaccurate assertion.”

Job posting

The internal job listing for the Newport position included a note at the top: “The Superintendent has granted an exception for recruiting this position. This announcement is the waiver – no additional steps to request a waiver with your application is required.”

Kennedy said state police have offered “these exceptions” in the past for promotions to lieutenant in the Newport, Coos Bay and Klamath Falls offices because those jobs have been “historically hard to fill.”

Yet in response to a subsequent public records request for all job postings for a lieutenant’s position that included such a waiver from 2020 through 2025, the state police released only two. One was the job posting for the Newport lieutenant’s job that Pollard filled.

State police issued the other one a day after The Oregonian/OregonLive asked about the practice, for an open lieutenant’s job at state police headquarters in Salem.

Kennedy said a legislative change “has brought in a new era” for hiring flexibility. The change allows state agencies to rehire employees who retire under the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System to work unlimited hours while continuing to receive pension benefits but without accruing new benefits. He said state police can now rehire retired supervisors who “have the required experience” to fill jobs in higher ranks under similar waivers going forward.

The change went into effect in January 2020. It was to last through 2024, but a subsequent bill extended it through 2034.

Pollard is one of five state police retirees who was rehired as a trooper since 2020, but he’s the only one who jumped multiple ranks to lieutenant, Kennedy acknowledged.

Kennedy said Pollard completed all steps in the hiring process alongside new applicants, including a verbal interview, background check and psychological evaluation. Since Pollard’s rehiring, he’s completed additional refresher training on defensive tactics, high-risk vehicle stops, CPR and first aid, firearms and rifle training and survival skills.

A day after he was promoted to lieutenant, Pollard attended a leadership summit, state training records show. He also has completed additional training on defense tactics and “People in Crisis.” He’s required to complete another training on supervision by October, according to the records.

State police history

Pollard had been demoted as a SWAT sergeant in 2013 for driving a state police truck while drinking salted caramel vodka out of his personal flask and sharing it with other troopers in the truck on an after-hours trip to Mount Hood during a training session, according to the state police criminal investigation and a summary of his discipline from personnel records.

Codding, who was a fellow SWAT sergeant at the time, was in the truck and remained silent in the back seat while Pollard and other SWAT members drank on the ride, the state police criminal investigation found. Codding, who didn’t participate in the drinking, said he received a verbal reprimand as discipline.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reported the details of the trip in 2024 — the first time they had become public — as part of an investigation into state police misconduct. Gov. Tina Kotek has said she was not aware of Codding’s reprimand as a SWAT sergeant when she promoted him to superintendent in 2023.

State police conducted a criminal investigation of the mountain trip and turned it over to the Clackamas County district attorney’s office, which found insufficient evidence to file official misconduct and theft charges for Pollard’s drinking while driving and for his and Codding’s unauthorized use of a state police truck for the ski trip.

Paige Clarkson, then a Marion County deputy district attorney who now heads the DA’s office, declined to pursue any violations of the state’s open container law against Pollard or the troopers who drank in the police truck, according to the investigative report.

In a subsequent internal investigation, Pollard admitted drinking.

“Casey and I both should’ve, you know, not allowed it,” Pollard told investigators, records show. “We both felt kinda this peer pressure, I guess, if you will, to not say anything. Do I regret that? Absolutely.”

The criminal investigation also revealed that Pollard had fired his gun behind the head of a new SWAT trooper to startle him in a so-called “SWAT pop” when he was a rank-and-file SWAT member in 2010. That trooper, Will Brindza, told investigators that Pollard’s actions were “negligent and unprofessional.”

Pollard at the time also was accused of bragging about firing at animals from the road or state police vehicles and encouraging others to do it, including firing at a coyote with an AR-15 rifle from the side of a rural road in Baker County in summer 2010.

Pollard was demoted from sergeant to senior trooper in May 2013. Four years later, he was promoted to sergeant, then to lieutenant in September 2018 under former state police Superintendent Travis Hampton. He retired at the end of June 2023 as lieutenant of the state police SWAT team.

Kennedy, the state police spokesman, said Pollard met the eligibility requirements for the Newport supervisory job with his “extensive prior experience.”

He called Pollard’s demotion “the exception to an otherwise exceptional career,” noting he was awarded the state police SWAT Courageous Act Award in 2020 for an arrest of an armed suspect, a state police Outstanding Service Award in 2021 and a Medal of Valor in 2023 for a rescue of a child and grandmother while under fire. He also led all state police SWAT and crowd control operations during the Portland protests and riots in 2020.

“We are excited to bring his professional experience to the Newport office,” he said.

•  Maxine Bernstein covers federal courts and criminal justice for The Oregonian. Reach her at 503-221-8212 or [email protected]