ENTERPRISE — The Enterprise Police Department is back up to full strength now that Shannon Stillman has pinned on the star of a police officer and brought the department back up to four officers.

The young wife and mother sees serving at Enterprise School as an area where she hopes to make the best use of her law enforcement training.

“What really drew me was I wanted to be up to the school with the kids and work with some high schoolers,” she said. “I really like getting to know them and seeing what’s going on in their lives and stuff happening in the schools … and what’s inside their heads and help them go the right direction.”

Police Chief Kevin McQuead said that desire of Stillman’s was just what he was looking for.

“When Shannon told me that she wanted to be in the school, that was perfect,” he said. “Obviously I don’t have an SRO (school resource officer) position within the department.”

Stillman, whose 11-year-old son, Wyatt, goes to Enterprise School, said seeing now-Sheriff Joel Fish at the school when he was Enterprise police chief inspired her to want to do likewise.

“I really enjoyed the fact that, before I ever applied for the job, that Sheriff Fish now was always there at the school greeting kids,” she said. “I appreciated him being there.”

Stillman replaces Cody Billman, who had commuted from his home in La Grande four days a week for four years and finally got a job with the La Grande Police Department. She joins Officers George Kohlepp and Jacob Curtis.

“They’re great,” Stillman said. “They’re my type of people. I’m having a great time working with all these guys,” she said. “Not just my department, but the sheriff’s office and OSP (Oregon State Police) have been really helpful, putting in their two-cents worth giving me insight on how to do things.”

Background

In addition to her son, Wyatt, she’s married to Tom Stillman, who works as a wrangler at a local ranch.

One thing that brought her to Enterprise was that her mother lived here at the time. Her mother died in December.

She graduated from high school at Culdesac, Idaho, east of Lewiston, in 1996. She then joined the U.S. Army and became a firefighter.

That Army training that helped get her a job in Wallowa County. In 2001, the U.S. Forest Service was hiring firefighters and Stillman signed on.

But she’d long considered law enforcement as a potential career.

“I’ve always kind of thought about it since I was in the Army, but never knew how to get my foot in the door,” she said. “Then this came available and I saw the job description in the paper and I thought, ‘Well, it’s now or never.’”

Training

Stillman was hired in July and worked conditionally, McQuead said, on her successfully completing her training and probationary period. She entered the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training Academy, which trains public safety officers and firefighters, on Nov. 7 and recently completed the academy.

Prior to and since her stint at the academy, she has worked with the other officers of the department learning the ropes of police work in Enterprise. In mid-May, McQuead said, she’ll complete her probationary period and receive her basic law enforcement certificate qualifying her to work as an independent patrol officer.

“I learned different scenarios and what ORSs (Oregon Revised Statutes) go with what crimes,” Stillman said of her time in the academy. Learning about those laws, she said, was among the more difficult aspects of her training.

“For those early months, she was in training riding around and learning the area and the job here,” McQuead said. “At the academy, she learned the basic policing skills, all the laws, how to do traffic stops, searches, arrests, defensive tactics, driving skills and all that.”

He compared it to military boot camp.

“They’ll teach you all the basics and then you go home and apply all those basics to the environment in which you work,” he said. “We’re still in the training phase with Shannon. She trained from the day she was hired.”

McQuead noted that the job of serving as a police officer also involves a public-relations portion, and he said Stillman is well-suited for that role.

“Shannon’s got a good personality in that she’s able to communicate well with a broad spectrum of people, from somebody who might need special attention to somebody who’s just a jokester and a clown,” he said. “She can communicate with all those and that’s an asset to this department.”

The chief said it’s an advantage to have a variety of personalities in the department, citing instances in which one officer might come into conflict with an individual and ask another officer to deal with that person.

“It happens to us all the time so we get that push-and-pull with the general public to some extent,” he said. “But if I’m the only cop, that’s what you’re going to get.”

Overall, police officers attempt to make their dealings with the public as amenable as possible, McQuead said.

“If we can make it more comfortable and get a better understanding with a person, we’ll do that,” he said.

Stillman said she hasn’t yet encountered any difficult people in her police work, but she knows it could be on the horizon.

“Everybody’s got their own personalities and … you just deal with it,” she said.

Not the first woman

Stillman isn’t the first female police officer on the Enterprise Police Department. In the 2010s, Michelle Bloker served as a sergeant — and the senior officer after the then-chief resigned.

But Stillman doesn’t see being a woman as an issue in her work in law enforcement.

“I really don’t look at genders any issue whatsoever,” she said. “I’m just a police officer.”

McQuead, too, said her being a woman didn’t influence his hiring decision.

“I hired the best candidate,” he said.

But Stillman’s desire to be a presence at Enterprise School is a definite asset, the chief said.

“I can have her in the school and respond to calls from there as much as she wants of that rotation,” he said.