We have a recommendation: Go on a ride-along with a Bend police officer. A few hours in a police car are not representative. Bend police officers would be terribly distracted if they had to deal with ride-alongs too frequently. But if you get the opportunity, it’s eye opening and revelatory.

We can’t get into detail of what we saw on a recent ride-along. That would invade privacy and might get us in a legal tangle. We did come away with some distinct impressions.

We hope all the officers in the department are as thoughtful and professional as the officer we rode with.

Put big, reflective address numbers on both sides of your mailbox. Speeding to an emergency in the dark is bad enough already. The nice red dot on the screen in an emergency vehicle helps, but you don’t want police officers or firefighters staring at the screen when they are trying to drive. If you go around town, lots of people have numbers on the mailbox that have been there awhile. They are faded, torn or gone altogether. They aren’t big. They aren’t reflective. They aren’t on both sides of the mailbox. Make sure yours are big, reflective and on both sides. It will help find your home in an emergency or someone else’s.

The city of Bend and Deschutes County have a new agreement to expand the work of the county’s mobile crisis team. That’s a “24/7, 365 days a year team….to assess individuals in the community who are experiencing a mental health crisis.” Sometimes what is needed to respond to a call is not armed police but trained mental health professionals or mental health professionals along with police. We can’t say we have enough data to suggest that the partnership needs to be expanded even more. The city and county need to continue to review it.

Similarly, we can’t say we have the evidence to conclude the Bend Police Department needs more officers. But if one incident requires several officers to respond, the department doesn’t necessarily have a lot of cover on duty.

Obviously, any additional investment would require a lot more evidence than one ride-along and would have to be weighed against the city’s other priorities and the additional cost to taxpayers.

If there’s anything you take away from this, we do hope you at least think about making it easy to find your mailbox in the dark.