PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has appointed a retired FBI agent to head the state’s police safety certification and training agency.
Jerry Granderson will start as director of the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training on March 22, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. He retired in April after nearly 23 years with the FBI.
Police training is currently under heightened scrutiny amid a social movement to reform law enforcement in the wake of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.
The agency director oversees an agency budget of over $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.
“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 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.
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