Community leaders talk about crime

CBT’s Power Lunch: Forum on Crime

As crime rate rises, police department transforms

At the start of a forum addressing Columbia’s crime problems, Interim Police Chief Tom Dresner made a straightforward admission:  “Your police department hasn’t done a good job in talking to you.”

But widespread changes in handling communications, crime enforcement and administration are in the works.

This year, the department created a professional standards unit and a more transparent system for dealing with complaints; set up a street crimes unit focusing on “career criminals;” and began putting together a strategic plan that included public input gathered from questionnaires.

The police department’s new system for handling complaints is one of the most transparent in the country, Dresner said. “We hope that it will build trust. My only lament is that we didn’t do this a whole lot earlier.”

City Council representatives will choose a new police chief in a month or two, so it isn’t clear what will happen to some of the changes Dresner has made. But former bank executive Bob Roper, who is on the committee interviewing police chief candidates, said at the forum that candidates are being asked for their views on community policing and relations.

This past week, council began looking at how citizen oversight of the police department would work. Dresner said the police department supports the establishment of a citizen oversight board as long as the members are not given the power to dictate policy.

“We’re fearful that a group of people who have an agenda and are biased for whatever reason against us would be trying to create a situation where the police department can be overruled on decisions it makes about its people,” Dresner said.

In other cities, an oversight board or commission typically reports to city administrators who oversee the police chief and actually helps the police department communicate with the public and “advocate for us when necessary,” he said.

But Dresner also said the upcoming public debate over police department oversight might have been avoided.

“We haven’t historically done a good job at being transparent,” he said. “If we had done a better job all along of creating a dynamic in which the public trusts us, and we had a mutually beneficial relationship, then maybe that wouldn’t have been necessary.”

The transformation of the city police department might have been less urgent if not for a weekend night one year ago when a robber shot and killed the manager of the Comfort Inn on Clark Lane.

The killing sparked a community outcry heightened by police statistics that showed a spike in violent crime in the fall of 2007.

The Missourian analyzed the data and determined that violent crime was up 17 percent from the previous year. While violent crime dropped this year, property crimes increased-particularly burglary with forcible entry-and the department was stuck with a public perception that Columbia has a crime problem.

Brian Ash, a former city council representative and owner of Bambino’s restaurant, said during the forum that regardless of the statistics, “if people feel less safe in this town, then there is a problem and it needs to be addressed.”

Dresner said the “gut” feeling of people in Columbia is that there is a crime problem, and referred to the killing of a 28-year-old man in Douglass Park on Nov. 4.

“When someone gets shot and killed at noon on a weekday, you think, ‘What is going on here?’ That creates a situation where you feel like the city is going to hell in a hand basket, when, in fact homicide is not a crime that you can just point to and say, ‘We can just throw these resources against it.’ People who know each other are the ones who shoot each other and kill each other, historically.”

Racial issues arise during crime discussion

To help reduce crime committed by teenagers in Columbia, Fifth Ward Representative Laura Nauser wants the City Council to consider establishing a curfew, tougher truancy consequences and random school searches by drug-sniffing dogs. The tough-love tactics would be paired with improved social services and volunteer mentoring to keep children out of the juvenile justice system.

Bringing down “the hammer of the law” can be counterproductive because children who enter juvenile detention for minor offenses often end up being hardened criminals, Nauser said. That’s why it’s important to build a safety net for at-risk youth.

“I’m looking at finding out why kids are wandering around late at night and find out if there are problems in the household, with drugs, or with mental health issues,” she said. “Rather than make it just an enforcement and punitive issue, it would allow us to maybe have a window into that child’s circumstances … to find out the root problems.”

Chris Kelly, a former Boone County Circuit Court judge who is returning to the state House in January, said Columbia’s alternative sentencing programs, such as drug court, are working. He and several other participants in the forum agreed that a simplistic get-tough approach wouldn’t work.

“Kids do stupid things,” Kelly said. “Zero tolerance is a wonderful thing to say, but teenagers need tolerance.”

But they also need toughness-a tactic Kelly used during his years on the bench. “I would say to people, ‘Get a job, or you’re going to jail.’ I used to say that all the time-I was kind of famous for doing that. If you’re back here next week without a job, bring your toothbrush,” he said.

Gene Robertson, a retired educator and publisher of a newsletter for the local black community, said it’s not that easy for black people to find jobs in Columbia.

“To tell them to bring a toothbrush if they don’t get a job, the best a lot of them could do is go to the Salvation Army and say, ‘Can I volunteer or do some community service or do anything so that I can go back and tell him I have a job?'” Robertson said.

“Not true,” Kelly responded from across the table. “There is no 17-year-old kid in Columbia, Missouri, that if he cleans himself or herself up, uses reasonable language and goes out and looks for a job today, Wednesday, and not have a job by next Wednesday.”

“You’re saying,” Robertson asked, “any 17-year-old who cleans himself up…?”

“I’ll put 20 bucks on the table right now,” Kelly interjected. “You pick a kid, and I’ll have that kid get a job.”

“I’ll multiply that and I’ll pay you odds because it’s going to not only be 17-year-olds, I know of adults who if you told them that, they could not find a job,” Robertson said. The issue is complex, Robertson said, because teenagers who can’t find jobs and teenagers who commit crimes don’t fit into a mold.

Jeffrey Williams, director of Access and Urban Outreach at the University of Missouri, said he supported Robertson’s viewpoint. “Mr. Kelly, a lot of folks would take issue with you on the idea that if a person cleans himself up and presents himself well that he can always get reasonable employment. I have college-educated kids not able to find jobs on reasonable par with their expectations in Columbia. Most middle-class to upper-middle class black folks here would make that same argument. You create a situation in which youngsters who could contribute in meaningful ways, they don’t stay here because it’s difficult to obtain suitable employment,” Williams said.

City Manager Bill Watkins said that challenge “is not limited to the African-Americans” in Columbia. Williams agreed, but said forum participants needed to bring the issue of race relations out into the open. “I think it’s very difficult to talk about this because it’s fraught with pitfalls, and a lot of them are kind of racial landmines, as you can see from this dialogue that was just taking place.”

The racial implications of the crime issue should be no surprise to anyone, said Mike Martin, a writer and owner of rental properties in Columbia.  “The entire city was segregated by law until just a few decades ago and I don’t think it’s ever been sufficiently desegregated,” he said. “To this day, there are entire neighborhoods-most of the old segregated neighborhoods -that don’t receive taxpayer resources the rest of us take for granted. That’s the way it was historically, and still the way it is today.”

Williams said if Columbia “doesn’t address the issue of social and economic normalization, this issue is only going to get worse. That’s the discussion that needs to be taking place.”

Power Lunch Participants

PRESENTER:

• Tom Dresner, Columbia Police Department acting police chief

GUESTS:

• Brian Ash, Bambino’s Restaurant owner; former City Council member
• Chris Kelly, former circuit court judge; state representative-elect
• Richard King, Blue Note owner
• Laura Nauser, 5th Ward City Council representative John Ott, downtown property owner/developer
• Katherine Reed, Columbia Missourian public safety editor
• William “Gene” Robertson, The Trumpet publisher Bob Roper, columnist; local business leader
• Bill Watkins, City Manager
• Jeffrey Williams, MU Director of Access and Urban Outreach