Since becoming chief in 2006 I have sought and eagerly
accepted opportunities to meet with various community organizations to talk and
listen about policing. Since policing is one of the most important
functions of government, I believe it is more important than ever that
community members hear from me on a number of key topics that I will address
this month.
First, I want to reiterate my commitment to community
oriented policing (COP). Having studied,
practiced and taught COP since the early 1990’s I know it works. The premise of COP is about building
relationships with neighbors, businesses and partners with the goal of reducing
crime, the fear of crime and improving quality of life. The expectations of
police in today’s world extends far beyond simply enforcing laws. We are
focusing our efforts on relationships and getting away from looking at our
duties as tasks. A key element of community policing is collaboration; that is
we will not be successful by ourselves. Policing
a free and democratic society requires citizens to partner with police. We need your trust, involvement and
cooperation. We are only successful when we partner with community members and
other entities.
Having excellent police community relations is a priority
for our agency. While we enjoy strong
community support, we still have a lot of work to do. We are continuing to work
with communities of color to strengthen trust and work toward reducing
disparities. While I don’t have all of
the answers, I can assure you we are committed to collaborating and doing what
we can to ensure everyone is treated fairly, with dignity and respect. We are at a critical time in policing and the
only way we are going to successfully move forward is though continuous improvement
(there’s always room for improvement).
The second area I wanted express my commitment to is the
continued and expanding training on the importance of deescalating situations
with the expectation officers will use force as a last resort- and if force
must be used, using as little force as necessary. We have collaborated with many other
community partners to establish a crisis intervention training team to help
train officers to understand the dynamics of mental illness and gain stronger
communication skills to gain compliance versus jumping to the immediate use of
force.
It is interesting to note, some police agencies report
significant decreases in use of force and complaints after the implementation
of body cameras. In Duluth, we have not
seen a decrease in use of force incidents or citizen complaints since we fully
implemented cameras; which confirms my belief that our officers have been
treating people with respect and using force as a last resort - before body
cameras.
We also continue to focus on partnering with residents to
reduce crime. Citizen patrol groups have
evolved and are growing. They expanded earlier this year in Lincoln Park and
Lakeside/Lester Park to include marked car patrolling. This has generated a lot of excitement,
increased the police community partnership and is making a difference.
Serious crime continues to steadily decline, but we continue
to see increased demands for police services.
A drug culture has developed in this country and illegal drug use is higher
than it has been in decades. I’d be interested in a study to help determine
what percentage of the mental illness issues we are dealing with that are the
result of a drug induced psychosis. Some
blame police for the drug issues we are having today, but I would suggest to
them that police are one cog in a wheel and expecting police to single handily
solve our drug problems is short sighted.
As the old adage goes, “for every complex problem, there is a simple solution
and that solution is wrong.”
We receive regular
information about drug dealers and where they operate from. We are grateful for
those who provide us with tips and understand often the people reporting drug
dealers are neighbors who are fed up with bad behavior and drug trafficking. Keep in mind, cases take time to build and unlike
television shows arrests of drug dealers do not happen within 30 minutes of a
report.
We want to be the best we can be. If you have concerns, questions or comments
I’d like to hear from you. Chief Gordon
Ramsay can be reached at gramsay@duluthmn.gov
or 730-5020
