COPS Logan opens doors near G-Prep after transition from GU site

The community welcomed the Logan Neighborhood COPSshop to its new location on North Perry Street next to Gonzaga Prep during a grand opening celebration earlier this month.

The Community Oriented Policing Services shop for Logan had been housed in a building owned by Gonzaga University at Sharp Avenue and Cincinnati Street on the edge of campus, but the university wanted to charge more for rent than the $1 a year the nonprofit had been paying, said COPS executive director Patrick Striker. “We just don’t have the budget for that,” he said.

Around that same time Striker received a call from Gonzaga Prep. “They said they really wanted a COPS shop and what were the odds of that happening,” he said.

The high school owns several houses near its campus and offered the COPS program the use of the house at 2927 N. Perry St., located behind the school’s football field. The neighborhood resource officer and two community corrections officers moved in last October, but the location did not open to the public until recently.

“A lot of the things that needed to be done, like painting and landscaping, had to wait until the weather turned,” Striker said.

There are flowers out front, the house has a fresh coat of paint and a new concrete ramp leads up to the front porch. Striker said he did a lot of the work himself, including pouring the concrete and dangling off the roof to paint the hard-to-reach spots on the second story.

“Everything way up there, that was all me,” he said, pointing upward. “I do all my own stunts.”

There’s a front counter in what used to be the living room, and the bedrooms are now offices. The upstairs is used for storage. There’s a garage out back that volunteers will be able to use to lift latent prints from cars that have been broken into.

Striker said he likes the new location, and the neighborhood seems to enjoy having them there.

“The feedback initially was a lot of excitement about having a COPS shop,” he said. “It seems to have some pretty good visibility.”

The location is just barely within the boundary of the Logan Neighborhood. “We’re near the northern boundary,” he said. “It’s definitely not central to the neighborhood itself.”

But Striker said anyone is welcome to come and report a car break-in, ask questions or talk about any concerns they have whether they live in the Logan Neighborhood or not. “It’s that personal touch we do that people like,” he said.

Striker said they are still working to sign up and train new volunteers to staff the front desk, which means the COPS shop doesn’t yet have set hours for being open to the public. Anyone interested in signing up can call the administrative office at (509) 625-3300.

Even if the front door is locked, there is often someone there. Neighborhood Resource Officer David Kaurin said he likes to do administrative tasks there.

“I try to spend as much time out in the community as possible,” he said. “In this position there’s a lot of paperwork.”

Chris Schilling has been a community corrections officer for 29 years. He monitors felons on probation, though he doesn’t see any serious violent offenders or sex offenders at the Logan office, he said. He said he likes the new location on Perry.

“This is more the neighborhood than the campus,” he said.