Contact the Baker County Sheriff's Office
&
Sheriff Mitch Southwick

OREGON SHERIFF Magazine News

Sheriff Mitch Southwick was elected Baker County Sheriff to replace Troy Hale who did not run for another term.

Sheriff Southwick, 54, began his law enforcement career as a reserve police officer for the city of Pendleton in 1971. From 1972 until his retirement in 2000 Sheriff Southwick was with the Oregon State Police. His OSP career began in Coquille and ended 28 years later as the station commander in Baker where he supervised the troopers in Baker and Grant Counties.

Mitch is a graduate of the Wallowa High School. After graduation he worked as logger and put himself through Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton where he graduated with an Associate degree in Law Enforcement.

He attended the Northwestern University's School of Police Staff and Command, a ten-week program designed to be equivalent to the Federal Bureau of investigation training.

After retirement from Oregon Law Enforcement he volunteered to a two year tour of duty in Kosovo and worked as part of a United Nations international policing force. Southwick rose through the ranks in Kosovo until he was supervising investigations by 850 local officers and 250 international officers in the fledgling nation.

Sheriff Southwick's goal is to make sure that the Baker County Sheriff's Office can provide basic law enforcement presence when and where it's needed. Keeping up the work with the Drug Task Force is also a major priority, too, as are programs connecting sheriff's deputies with youth in the communities. Sheriff Southwick and his wife Paula live in Baker and have a grown daughter Jessica who attends Eastern Oregon University and works as a hotline volunteer.

Back to top

OREGON SHERIFF Magazine News

Spring, 2008 -- In the fall of 2007, the Baker County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue signed an agreement with the Halfway Snowmobile Club to provide training to the club on how to conduct a search and the importance of working together.

In January they got to practice what they had learned. Two snowmobilers from Wallowa County became separated and failed to return. The first day they were missing there was such an extreme blizzard that snowmobilers could not get to where they were last seen. The second day the storm broke and they located one of them at a cabin in the mountains. The first one took the searchers to where he had last seen the the second person who was then found within a short time. His snowmobile had become stuck and he had spent two nights under a tree. He was suffering from hypothermia and frostbite but survived.

Comments from the snowmobile club were all positive and everyone felt the agreement was worthwhile. There will be more training and working together in the future.

Back to top