Story by Spencer Gordon
Photos by Thao Bui

After making his rounds by Autzen Stadium at two in the morning, Sergeant Adam Lillengreen received a call on his radio that there had been a gang altercation near the University of Oregon. One of the individuals had run onto campus to hide and needed to be found ASAP. Lillengreen kicked the car into high gear as I braced myself against the door handle. Riding along for the night, I asked Lillengreen if he got calls like this regularly. “Usually there are a few every weekend,” he answered while weaving back to campus. As exciting and thrilling as the night was for me, it was just another shift for Lillengreen and the rest of the UO’s Department of Public Safety (DPS).
The majority of DPS officers work weekend night shifts because it is the busiest time for the department. Sergeant Scott Cameron is one of the few who helps lead a number of trained officers like Lillengreen. “Thursday through Saturday is definitely our busiest time. You never know what you are going to be called to,” Cameron says.
Although the late hours can be difficult to manage, Lillengreen enjoys being a DPS officer. Oregon’s DPS was the first agency to hire him, and he says that he is there to ensure the safety of the students. DPS isn’t worried about the random, intoxicated college students whom they sometimes have to deal with, he says, but more about the safety of others when a situation can turn dangerous. Lillengreen explains that despite the risks, everyone on DPS knows how important his or her job is for this community consisting of mostly young adults.
“We are here for their safety. That’s our number one priority,” Lillengreen says. Working from 10:00 p.m. until 7:00 a.m., Lillengreen sleeps during the day and enjoys the few hours before his shift spending time with his family. Despite the little time he spends at home, Lillengreen says that he enjoys his job because he cares for the students. “I want to help,” he says. “I want to do the things that other people often don’t want to do: try to stop someone from hurting someone else.”
Cameron went into detail about what DPS stands for. “We don’t want to deal with [students] who are just too drunk, or who have less than an ounce of weed,” he says. “We want to be spending our time getting bad guys.” DPS often deals with small-time possession offenders; however, they want to spend their time going after the real threats to campus, which depending on the situation, as Cameron explains, “can get pretty dangerous in a big hurry.”
With safety as the number one priority for both students and officers, Lillengreen says that he would appreciate the changes that would come if DPS became an actual police force. Recently, this issue came up during the ASUO election when the majority of UO students voted in favor of ballot measure number five to keep “the Department of Public Safety a department without sworn police officers or access to weapons including guns and tasers.” Explaining his personal vote, UO freshman Tanner Heffner says: “Eugene already has a police force. DPS doesn’t need to be running around with guns and tasers.”
Lillengreen thinks that the entire issue is ironic. “The students always say, ‘Oh we don’t want guns’ when there are guns all across campus every night,” he says. Often, Lillengreen explains, outside officers like the Eugene Police Department (EPD) get called to campus. Each of those officers carries a firearm.
“I just know that a lot of the situations we get in are so dangerous,” Lillengreen says about his support of arming DPS. “I want to come home to my family every day. I don’t want my daughter to grow up without a dad, and I don’t want my wife to live without a husband.”
The shift I accompanied Lillengreen on in early May was, he said, a typical party night in Eugene. There were a couple of intoxicated students and a student in the dorms found with marijuana and alcohol. Even the fast-paced search for the gang member wasn’t too unusual; Lillengreen has found himself in such unexpected situations before. “I came upon an individual one night and thought I saw a bottle in his pocket, he recalls. “I asked him if he could show me what it was, and it turned out to be a gun.
“Luckily, I got to the gun before he could get to it… it turned out he was suicidal. It’s [situations] like that that make me wish I had a better way to protect myself,” he adds.
Despite such danger, Lillengreen says that helping students get through the important life experience of college is rewarding. “Every once in a while I get a thank you from the person I’m helping,” he says. “It’s those types of things that really make the job worthwhile.”

Gallery • 2 Photos

Along for the Ride: A Night with DPS