News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Local OSP game officer to retire

The year was 1972, and a young man named Greg Cazemier was pumping gas in a Roseburg Standard Oil station.

He didn't know it, but his life was about to change.

Cazemier heard the familiar ding-ding as a car drove over the bell cord into the station; but this encounter turned out to be different from his usual customer interactions.

At the wheel was an Oregon State Police trooper in his OSP vehicle. The officer had run into a swarm of bugs and was looking to get his windshield cleaned off. Cazemier obliged.

The two men struck up a conversation and before the officer left, Cazemier knew that he wanted to be an OSP officer, too.

He applied and, a few months later, he put on his first OSP blue. Now, almost three decades later, he's getting ready to retire.

"I've loved every day I've done this," Cazemier said of his job as an OSP fish and wildlife enforcement officer. "It just doesn't get any better than this."

After graduating from the State Police Academy, Cazemier was assigned to road patrol duty in Reedsport. Three years later he was moved to Gilchrist and switched to fish and wildlife.

He's been working the fish and game circuit in Central Oregon ever since.

In 1997, he was promoted to sergeant and is now in charge of an eight man team that works Jefferson, Deschutes and Crook Counties, along with the northern portions of Klamath and Lake Counties.

He's worked a lot of interesting cases over the years and recalls a Squaw Creek poaching case, in which a spotlighted deer was illegally shot at night off the Three Creek Lake Road.

The deer was left where it fell, the poacher only stopping to saw off the animal's antlers.

Starting with only a deer carcass, troopers not only tracked down the poacher, but solved two other cases in the process.

Solving cases and bringing criminals to justice is one of the most satisfying aspects of a difficult job.

Another memorable case snared some young vandals who shot out power line insulators down by Silver Lake, causing a quarter million dollars in damage.

An especially chilling incident involved poachers who shot up a house while the family was watching television inside. Three men were implicated in that case.

His most harrowing experience, however, involved a campground incident on the Metolius River, several miles downstream from Camp Sherman.

He was first drawn into the case because of a complaint about rowdy campers drinking and shooting firearms in a campground.

Before it was over, he was lucky to still be in one piece.

He arrested one young man on a DUI charge, but the man made a run for it when the trooper permitted him to remove his jacket.

"Actually," said Cazemier, "at the time, I was faced with trying to get a drunk across a log on Abbot Creek, and it seemed like a bit of a blessing when he took off on his own."

What he didn't anticipate, however, was that the man jumped into his vehicle and told his buddy to "drive."

Cazemier ended up facing down the two, standing in the middle of the road with his weapon drawn.

"At first," Cazemier said, "the guy hit his brakes and started sliding. I thought he was going to stop, but he slid right through me and I ended up on the hood."

Eventually, he got the situation under control and arrested both men, transporting them to Sisters.

A bloody roofing hammer was later found at their campsite, leading to a search warrant that also led to poaching and marijuana charges.

In an aside to the case, the vehicle driver was released prior to trial; and he fled.

The subject was later apprehended in Georgia and returned to Oregon in a lengthy 14-day jurisdictional relay of cop cars and jail lodgings across the country.

But, in a matter of days, Sergeant Cazemier will be retiring and leaving all that "fun" behind.

When asked what he'd be doing next, Cazemier said, "Now that I have the time, I think I'll spend it spoiling my wife, kids, and grandchildren, and do a little fishing and hunting, too."

 

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