Gov. Kate Brown has appointed a retired career FBI agent to lead the state’s police safety certification and training agency.
Jerry Granderson, who retired in April after nearly 23 years with the FBI, will start as director of the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training on March 22.
The appointment comes at a time when police training and certification is under heightened scrutiny amid a social movement to reform law enforcement in the wake of the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.
The agency director oversees an agency budget of more than $55 million and works with a board to develop training and certification/licensing standards for more than 41,000 public and private safety professionals.
Granderson’s annual base salary will be $162,216, according to the governor’s office.
The state agency certifies and licenses police officers, corrections officers, parole and probation officers, liquor control regulatory specialists, emergency dispatchers, criminal justice instructors, private security providers, private investigators, and polygraph examiners in the state. It also runs a basic police academy.
Granderson, 57, served as a FBI field agent in Illinois, working on narcotics, domestic terrorism and organized crime investigations and as a program manager for the FBI’s international law enforcement training academies in Botswana, Hungary, El Salvador and the United Arab Emirates.
He also had been an FBI academy instructor focused on leadership, ethics and contemporary policing courses, according to the governor’s office. He was assigned to the FBI National Security Branch’s Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, where he supervised intelligence analysts in detecting and obstructing terrorists from entering the United States. He also has provided civil rights and leadership courses to local police departments that have been under federal consent decree for civil rights violations, according to his LinkedIn profile.
After retiring, he worked as a senior police advisor for SAIC Corp., a defense, aviation, information technology and biomedical research company.
“His background in law enforcement and public safety—with a blend of field, training, program management, and leadership experience—makes him uniquely suited for this position,” Brown said in a statement. “I look forward to his leadership, especially as we work collaboratively to improve the training and certification of Oregon law enforcement officers and as we answer the resounding calls from Oregonians for much-needed racial justice and police accountability reforms.”
Granderson, who most recently lived in Fredericksburg, Virginia, holds a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and a master’s degree in international relations from Western Illinois University. He is a veteran of the U.S. Army, having served in the 82nd Airborne Division and 12th Special Forces Group of the Army Reserves.
”It is with a humbled and gracious heart that I thank Governor Brown for providing me this opportunity to serve the people of Oregon,” Granderson said in a statement. “I look forward to applying my skills in leading the training and professional development of our current and next generation of public safety professionals.”
Granderson takes over for interim director Les Hallman, who will return to his position with Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue.
Hallman has been leading the agency since the retirement last November of Eriks Gabliks, who had served for 10 years as head of the state agency. Gabliks left to take a job as superintendent of the National Fire Academy in Maryland.
State Sen. Lew Frederick, D-Portland, who is spearheading police reforms in the Legislature, called the job “one of the most important positions in the state,” at this moment in time.
-- Maxine Bernstein
Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
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