The police department has been a subject of controversy for months. Complaints include aggressive ordinance enforcement, response times and officer availability. Several residents also had voiced concerns about an officer who seemed nervous or uncomfortable and always had a hand on his gun.
Those concerns were heightened with the shooting involving Shafer and that officer, Eric Kilpatrick.
Dickie Shafer had been married several times before, but he and his wife, Gloria, were together more than a dozen years. They have an 11-year-old son who was home when the couple got into an argument.
Gloria Shafer called 911.
She told The Observer newspaper of nearby La Grande that her husband met Kilpatrick at the door, unarmed, and spoke to him for several minutes. He then asked to take his gun to his pickup. Kilpatrick agreed, she said, and watched as her husband emptied the magazine of his AR-15, an assault-style rifle.
Gloria Shafer contends the officer then "snapped," ordering Shafer to drop the gun, tasering him and then shooting him in the chest.
Police Chief Kevin Lynch counters that the evidence indicates Shafer was pointing his weapon at the officer, and he's confident his office will be cleared of wrongdoing.
NOTE: Most small rural towns would do better without local police, many have huge, inflated budgets. The Sheriff's office is more than equipped to cover a few square blocks of low crime areas.
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