As far as sensational comments about the future of crime fighting in Sammamish goes, Nate Elledge isn’t much of an interview subject.

He is, though, a well-rounded and experienced officer with a cautious view of his new role as the City of Sammamish Police Chief.

Predictably, The Reporter’s conversation with Elledge about the issues facing his force in the coming years centered around the two issues most troubling to residents at present — property crimes and traffic enforcement.

“I think that’s pretty typical for a community that has a lot of residences,” he said. “Property crimes being burgulary, theft, vandalism — and then the speeding issues, especially around schools. This is a low crime area. My previous assignments were dealing with things like gangs, which aren’t really an issue here, or aren’t an issue at all.”

Elledge certainly has experience on the mean streets of Seattle, having cut his teeth on patrol in White Center and Burien, where he later worked in a street crimes unit, an undercover unit fighting the neighborhood drug trade.

Elledge said it was too early to make a judgement on whether the Sammamish Police force had the right number of officers to provide the best possible service, a debate that his predecessor, Brad Thompson, weighed into in the weeks before he left the city.

“I want to take a bit of time before I make that decision,” he said. “The decision’s been made on what our staffing is going to be for 2010. I’m not going to look back and argue that point. That gives me a little bit of time here to see if we have an adequate police force to police the city. This is a time when you need to make do with the resources that you have.”

It was Thomson’s feeling that the geography of the Plateau made it impossible to adequately respond to mulitiple incidents.

Talking traffic, Elledge said he would be open to the idea of installing speed cameras in the city, one idea likely to raise at least a few eyebrows.

“I’ve seen other cities that seem to have been successful with that,” he said. “I’m saying I’d like to look into, not necessarily commit to, but look into photo enforcement as a traffic safety measure. But not as an income generator. I think a lot of people automatically assume you’re trying to make money off of it — and I wouldn’t support it to make money. But I would support it, if I find it’s effective, as a way to slow traffic down in certain areas.”

Elledge also said it was too early to make any predictions as to what impact the increased commercial density of the new Town Center would have on crime rates.

“Maybe you see a bump, but it’s a little to early to tell,” he said.

He also said that community watch and neighborhood programs were one of the most effective ways to combat property crimes.

“The police can’t be everywhere at one time, and you rely on the eyes and ears of the public that if they see something in their neighborhood that looks out of place to report that,” Elledge said. “I think that’s one of our biggest assets right there. And that’s not a fancy policing tool or anything like that — that’s just a concerned citizen making a phone call.”

He said that he was in favor of continuing the popular School Resource Officer (SRO) program — which sees police liaison officers placed with area high schools.

Elledge said that he hoped SRO’s would be an effective way to combat the growing problem of prescription drugs making their way into the hands of school children.

On the whole, though, he feels that the people of Sammamish have little to fear from criminal activity.

“I’ve looked at some of the reports from the last year or so, and there’s nothing that stands out that’s really concerning,” he said. “It looks like typical stuff. I don’t see anything that makes me very concerned at this point.”