Back to the Beat

The message

Some nights, Kevin Macho and his father were the only two cops on duty for 30 miles, with his mother running the radio. As the Oregon State Police's Reedsport Area Resident Trooper, Kevin policed his own hometown in Western Douglas County, Oregon. He knew the people he served by name, and they knew him. That's community policing the way it used to work, and Kevin believes it can work that way again.

It wasn't just good relationships. It produced results. Kevin went after crashes in his area with all three pillars of highway safety: engineering, education, and enforcement. Community partners donated equipment and pushed for safer highway engineering, neighboring agencies stepped in to help, and targeted enforcement, concentrated patrols during high-risk hours on the most dangerous stretches of highway, and even the Oregon State Police airplane did the rest. Collisions in his patrol area dropped by more than 75%.

Kevin comes from three generations of police officers. Since starting at 18 serving civil papers for a sheriff's office, he has served city, county, and state agencies in four states as a deputy sheriff, Resident Trooper and Trooper of the Year, Portland Police Bureau officer and investigator, police chief, and today a detective. He holds the Police Medal for courage in the line of duty. He has seen the profession from nearly every seat, and he believes the way forward is the way back: to officers who know the names of the people on their beat, departments that earn trust before they need it, and leaders who take care of the cops who take care of the community.

"Our job is to be good partners with the community and to build good relationships in the community." Kevin said it as a new chief, and he brings that conviction to every room of officers he speaks to.

Your officers will walk away with

• Renewed pride in why they put on the badge, and the energy to carry it through a hard shift.
• Practical community-policing habits that build trust on every call.
• A proven problem-solving model (engineering, education, enforcement, and community partnerships) they can apply to any stubborn problem on their beat.
• Tools to handle criticism, pressure, and burnout without losing their edge or their heart.
• For supervisors and command staff: how to lead, protect, and retain good officers.