I have a little different take on this. Having been a cop and police chief for over 17 years and then working in SAFE at Minneapolis PD for 3 years.
We should not look so much at whether our calls for service are "low priority" or "high priority". All calls from the public should be treated as "high priority" whether or not they really are. We pay the bill for our services. We should have a say in how our services are completed. Now, some calls have an "emergency" nature and others are "non emergency" but I believe we should never tell our citizens that their complaint/concern is "low priority". If we feel that response times are too slow we have a number of things to consider/look at; How many officers are on at a given time, how are they deployed (ie, traffic detail, 911 response, investigative, administrative, supervisory, etc). We then look at how many calls for service we usually have during given times and make sure to have enough officers on duty to handle those calls in the correctly assigned areas of responsibility. If response times are too slow for the community than adjustments need to be made in how staffing/deployment is handled. We need to look at what each type of call for service costs. How many officers are needed at each type of call. How long each type of call takes. How much time is spent per officer on dispatched calls, self initiated activity, reports, administrative functions, patrol, down time, etc. Having spent 20 years in a squad I can tell you there are very few shifts where you don't have LOTS of downtime for self initiated or community policing type activities. Those busy shifts where you don't even get a dinner break are not very often. Most of the busy shifts occur because supervisors/training is not done to teach officers how to manage time and calls for service. Far too often I see all the officers in an area respond to the "interesting" "exciting" call. We don't need all those officers at that call, and in fact, that many officers can have a negative impact on the call by instigating the offenders or bystanders. I don't mean the officers do or say anything wrong, but the fact that so many are there leads to resentment by others and then other problems develop then or later. We need only have enough officers at each scene to safely handle the scene/suspects, the others can respond to "low priority" calls. This is a supervisory problem at almost every police department though, keeping officers focused on handling community issues, not just responding to "exciting" calls. Normally this is because most cops handling street duty are younger and less experienced so they want to get in on the "action". This also backs up calls from the public because resources are wasted where all the officers present are not needed. There should be a call center, well there really is, the 911 communication center. They should take the calls for service and send them to the dispatcher. The problem lies in the question, should a 911 operator or dispatcher be able to block calls from the public? I believe not. We call them for a problem, they take the complaint and then an officer should be dispatched. Don't wait until an officer is free. The officer/supervisor in that area should receive your call immediately. The officer/supervisor should be responsible for deciding which calls to handle in what order. They should know when they are backed up with calls in their sector and be handling them expeditiously. Supervisors should be assisting the backed up officers with other resources from slower, non-backed up areas. I have always had a problem with 911 operators/dispatchers not dispatching calls or making judgments on calls from the public. Their job is to take the call and dispatch it, not decide it's merits. No one should have to wait very long for police service. If a street officer isn't available to come to you because of more urgent emergency calls, then why is the Supervisor/Sgt/Lt not attending to your concerns and handling the call? What is the supervisors function in the police department? I can not believe that the St Paul PD is getting where you are told by an on duty officer, in uniform, that he won't take your complaint. That is completely unacceptable. They are public servants and need to have supervisors who remind them of that. A person with warrants trying to turn themself in and is basically turned away? There is starting to be some supervisory/training problems, or the officer was having a bad day, which is still unacceptable. Perhaps as citizens we need to let the Police Department know what we expect and how we expect services to be performed. With a new chief coming on board now is the perfect time to make systemic changes in how services are handled. Hopefully the new chief will be responsive to community input, and the community will make the input necessary to help changes be made. Tom Thompson Como Park Writing a book on police failures & successes looking at where we need to go in the future with limited resources being put into policing. _____________________________________________ To Join: St. Paul Issues Forum Rules Discussion Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
