Tribal emergency services chief running for sheriff

By Danielle Harrison

Smoke Signals editor

Grand Ronde Tribal Emergency Services Chief Steve Warden is seeking a potential new adventure: Polk County Sheriff.

Warden, 62, decided to run because he thinks voters deserve an alternative to having only one candidate – current Polk County Sheriff Mark Garton – on the ballot.

“Oregon Revised Statutes says that the sheriff is the chief executive officer of the county and is responsible for preserving the peace,” Warden said. “That’s a big responsibility and duty to just get swept through without people having (a different option). It just doesn’t work.”

Warden has worked full-time for the Tribe since 2016, when he took the position of emergency manager. He was promoted to emergency services chief in 2020 and was charged with creating a fire department to serve the Grand Ronde community and later, the area served at the time by the Willamina-based West Valley Fire District.  

“At first I really struggled with the decision (to run for sheriff) because to be 100 percent transparent and honest, I have the best job that anybody could ever have right now,” he said. “I’ve been empowered by the Tribe and our leadership to build something from nothing and before that, when I was emergency manager, there was all kinds of support. We were able to do things I haven’t seen in regular government before. … I saw an opportunity to take some of the skills and experiences, things that I’ve learned building this place, that could transfer over into revamping, reshaping and redirecting the current sheriff’s office.”

Warden said that the experience of working collaboratively with different agencies will be useful if he is elected to a four-year term as Polk County Sheriff.

“Sheriff’s offices are traditional organization and I’m not one to tamper with tradition,” he said. “But at the same time, you must take a good, hard, introspective look at your organization. I’ve taken an outsider’s look and heard an awful lot of comments from the outside about how people would like to see the sheriff’s office go in a different direction, to be more engaged with the community and be more responsive to people’s problems.”

Warden grew up in the Eola Hills area west of Salem and attended West Salem Elementary School, then-Walker Junior High and South Salem High School. He attended Chemeketa Community College.

Warden developed an interest in law enforcement and firefighting when he was in high school, as a volunteer cadet with the Salem Police Department and through a firefighting program with Marion County.

He went to work full-time as a sheriff’s deputy in Yamhill County in 1984, an experience that would spark his desire to work for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. He retired from the county in 2011 but was rehired on a part-time basis overseeing the communications system. Warden will retire from that contract position in November.

If elected, one of Warden’s goals is to increase patrols on county highways to improve safety for drivers.

“Up until recently, you haven’t seen a lot of (law enforcement) visibility out on the highways,” he said. “And if you commute from Salem out here, it’s like being in a NASCAR race and you’re in the slow car that’s getting passed by the maniacs. … I’d like to develop a multi-agency traffic team to focus on gathering analysis through traffic crash investigations on the major crashes, and direct patrols and enforcement that would give us the opportunity to utilize the resources of other agencies and not have a severe impact on budgets or on the taxpayers. … There are so many things that impact people and traffic is number one. There are people killed it seems monthly in Polk County for no reason other than lack of responsibility on the road. …During COVID, traffic enforcement pretty much went away and it’s taken a long while for people to start reengaging on that.”

The other area Warden would like to focus on is what he said is a combination homeless and mental health crisis.

“Everybody looks to the sheriff and wonders what you’re going to do about this,” he said. “It’s not a strict law enforcement area though. There needs to be a focus on engaging the services that specialize in these areas and forming partnerships with your health and human services, mental health departments and service integration teams for people who really do want the help. …Then, there’s the drug-addicted people and the worst thing we did was legalize all the drugs and didn’t have an idea of what the impact would be. Again, it's not a sheriff thing but the sheriff gets stuck being responsible for the crimes that are committed due to the drug-addicted homelessness. … At some point and time, you need to deal with those things.

He continued, “And then the rest of the group you’ve got is folks with mental health issues and there are more people on the streets because of it then you could ever imagine. With the closing of mental health facilities came the jailing of people with mental health issues for minor crimes. Jail is not a place for somebody with those issues. It’s the last place they should be. Again, there needs to be that multi-disciplinary approach to deal with those issues.”

When asked why Polk County residents should consider voting for him, Warden said he’ll do things differently and better.

“Everything I’ve talked about just scratches the surface on how I think things should be done better,” he said. “I bring an outside perspective and multi-disciplinary approach to leadership.”