Ideas from ‘the people who do the work’ prized by new Springfield police chief

Good ideas aren’t limited to those in charge, said Springfield Police Chief Jami Resch.

“I’ve always thought that the people who do the work probably have the best idea of how to do the work,” said Resch, 51, who was sworn in Wednesday to officially replace former chief Andrew Shearer.

“So my job, how I view it, is to find opportunities for them to do that,” Resch said. “I want to provide them all of the resources and the abilities to go out and do the best job that they can.”

That’s not to say Resch doesn’t have ideas, like about the importance of community engagement. She joined the Springfield Police Department in 2023, after a long career in Portland that included about six months as police chief.

Resch stepped down as Portland chief in the weeks following the 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man whose death in Minneapolis while in police custody resulted in widespread street protests — including in Portland, where clashes between protesters and police became commonplace.

Resch stepped down so that Chuck Lovell, a Black man and at the time a Portland police lieutenant, could take charge.

“I have never second-guessed or regretted that decision. That was absolutely the best decision for that moment,” Resch said.

In her years with Portland, she worked with Shearer, Springfield’s police chief from 2021 until he stepped down this past March to take a job as an assistant chief in Gresham.

Shearer, in a statement, said that when an assistant chief position opened up in Springfield, “I made Chief Resch aware of the position opening and was pleased that she chose to pursue it.”

Resch’s “professionalism and authenticity will continue [to] strengthen public safety” in Springfield, he said.

After stepping down as Portland’s chief, Resch continued on at the police department, but said that as she approached 25 years with Portland police, she decided to keep her career going elsewhere.

“I knew that I wanted to continue to do police work, and so I made the decision to come down here,” Resch said.

Nancy Newton, Springfield’s city manager, said no other candidates were interviewed for the position after Shearer’s departure.

“She was just the natural choice in my mind, to continue all the changes that she and Chief Shearer put into place,” Newton said. 

Leading by example

In public remarks at the swearing-in ceremony, Newton said the department has a “stronger focus on deescalation training and accountability to the community.”

Resch told the crowd that her goal is “to lead by example, to listen, and to continue building strong relationships that help us grow together.”

In an interview, she spoke of Springfield being a place where “we still respond to all the calls for service, which the officers here take great pride in their ability to still do that.”

But she also spoke about working on community engagement despite staffing challenges. The department continues to have community service officers, but a recent cut eliminated the department’s dedicated public information officer and a staff member who served as a coordinator for community engagement.

“I’m looking at trying to get as fully staffed as we can get, so that the officers have the opportunity to do things outside of responding to calls for service,” Resch said. “I think the officers do enjoy the opportunity to do a lot of the extra [outreach] events.”

It’s also important to “kind of allow them to think of their own community engagement events that they want to do, or try and provide them the opportunities to do those as well,” she added.

Crystal Kroeller, program director of the nonprofit Camp Rosenbaum, first met Resch when both volunteered in 2008 at the organization’s summer overnight camp. The organization has a longstanding partnership with Portland police, Kroeller said.

“She’s just always a bright and positive role model for the youth,” Kroeller said. “I remember thinking that she was just so warm. When you think of people and you see them and they’re not in their uniform, you just see this other side of them.”

Resch is the first woman to lead Springfield’s police department, and she spoke of the importance of diversity in hiring.

“I tell people all the time, I want to hire really good people. I can teach police work, but I can’t teach you to be a good person,” Resch said. “So we’re looking for really good people from a vast diversity of experience, life, experience, everything. So obviously, it’s very important we need to represent the community that we serve.”

Asked what good police work means to her, Resch didn’t hesitate.

“If the world were perfect, good police work would mean we solve all crimes, right? But that’s not the case,” she said.

Instead, she described good police work in terms of how residents feel after making a call for help.

“I think good police work is when we have a community member who gives us a call for service, and they feel like they were listened to, their needs were addressed,” Resch said. It’s about “providing, no matter what the circumstances, a level of customer service where the person feels like we did everything that we could to assist them,” she said.

Resch will earn an annual salary of $230,048, according to information provided by a city spokeswoman.