Bend residents say their trust in the city’s police department improved in 2022, with many pointing to the speedy response by officers to a shooting at Safeway as having improved their opinion, according to a survey conducted by Portland State University.

But some Bend residents and workers interviewed in the downtown area Thursday said the department and its response on Aug. 28 has hardly made them feel safer during their daily lives in Bend, citing ongoing concerns around drug use, homelessness, traffic crimes and other public safety problems that they say have long plagued the city.

“I’ve seen it shift,” Josi Slaton, a tattoo artist, said of Bend. In year’s past, she said, “You felt safer being outside.”

The biannual survey, published Wednesday, was conducted by Portland State University researchers and involved respondents from approximately 10,000 randomly selected households. About 14% responded.

Nearly 60% of respondents recorded their age as over 55. More than 92% were white and more than 55% have lived in Bend for longer than 10 years.

The survey said the response to the shooting was “the most frequently cited reason for individuals who expressed an increase in trust” in Bend Police in 2022. Crime was the second most commonly cited concern among respondents reporting that their sense of safety in Bend had worsened, and the Safeway shooting and other recent homicides were mentioned frequently, the survey said.

The shooting, which claimed the lives of two men, ended roughly four minutes after emergency dispatchers were called at 7:04 p.m., leaving a lasting mark on residents.

Many had never thought such a tragedy could happen in the relatively small city.

“It disrupts your idea of small town, safe life,” said Mike Thompson, a Bend IT analyst.

Officers arrived at Safeway within minutes of the first call, charging in with weapons drawn just as the gunman took his own life. At least two officers also tried to save one of the shooting victims, Glenn Bennett, as he lay dying from at least five gunshot wounds, according to police reports previously reported by The Bulletin.

Their efforts quickly drew praise from residents, local public safety officials, politicians and Gov. Kate Brown.

“Their response was heroic,” Bend Police Capt. Brian Kindel said Thursday. He said this type of response is precisely what the department had trained the officers for, adding: “I’m just very proud of the officers. There was no hesitation.”

Their immediate response stood in stark contrast to law enforcement responses to shootings at other schools in Uvalde, Texas, and Parkland, Florida, where police failed to follow well-established steps to quickly stop the bloodshed, according to local law enforcement officials and residents.

Redmond Police Chief Devin Lewis said the Bend officers’ response in August reinforced the importance of Active Threat training among his officers. “It’s one of those events that we train for quite often, but we hope it never happens,” he said Thursday.

“I think it’s had this impact because we’ve never had something like this in Central Oregon,” said Lewis. He said police response is “hopefully giving people confidence in local law enforcement that, heaven forbid, if something happens here, we can and will respond.”

As the nation sees an uptick in shootings, some residents said they were reassured to know that police now have a known track record of running in without hesitation.

“It’s good that the training is ongoing and we’re learning from the mistakes that have been made,” said Drew Smith, a Bend real estate attorney.

Some residents interviewed Thursday said this is the response they would expect from police in a live shooter situation no matter what. “Anything other than that would be a hostage situation,” said Rod Kuehnast, a jeweler in downtown Bend.

But Courtney Iverson, a Bend tattoo artist, said that one heroic act does little to quell her regular concerns around the addiction crisis enveloping the region, saying: “It’s literally killing our children.”

She pointed to what she calls a lack of enforcement around homeless encampments and drug crimes and frequent speeding on the parkway as her main concerns and is calling on the police to do more.

“They just don’t take it as seriously as they should,” she said.