Officer Dave Chaput has been a police officer for 30 years. Now he's going to teach young officers how to do the job.

Chaput, 51, started as an officer in Sweet Home in 1976. He moved to the Lebanon department in 1989.

Officially, he retired Aug. 30, 2005. Since that time he has worked back on a part-time basis. Two days a week he's transported prisoners back and forth between Lebanon and the Linn County jail, mostly for arraignments in Lebanon Municipal Court. When not doing that, he helped out as a patrol officer.

The department budgeted his part-time position, he said. Without it, an officer on the shift would have to travel to Albany.

Chaput's last day was Dec. 20. He's going to a new part-time job as an instructor at the Oregon Police Academy.

The people in the department stand out in Chaput's memory.

&#8220The employees are a real close-knit group and very supportive," he said. &#8220The administration has always been supportive. It's a good department, a nice place to work."

For about five years, Chaput was the Lebanon canine officer. He worked with a couple of different dogs. When the second dog could no longer work and the budget got tight in 1999, the canine program was shut down.

He remembers one incident in the mid to late 1990s, when he, the dog and a couple of state troopers tracked a man right up to a farm house on Berlin Road.

&#8220The guy turned out to be armed," Chaput said. &#8220He fired at the dog first. That gave me a chance to duck."

The officers were pinned down for a number of hours before a SWAT team came in under cover of darkness and the guy was subdued.

The man went to prison for multiple counts of attempted murder of a police officer, Chaput said.

Originally, he had been running from the Oregon State Police because he had a meth lab in his vehicle. OSP chased him down I-5 and toward Lebanon. When they saw the vehicle on Berlin Road, they called for the dog.

When the man ran in the back door of the farmhouse, the occupant ran out the front door and confirmed to officers that the man they sought was inside.

They soon found out that the man was sitting right behind the door waiting for them. When they turned the dog loose, he fired on it, then started firing rounds through the door and walls.