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Straight from the chief them why we stopped them,“ he said, giving an example of a type of minor conduct violation that generates complaints. The big decrease may also be part of his pivot to cover the changing role of the police. “We’ve trained almost 85 percent of our officers to be what we call crisis intervention teams. We’re teaching de-escalation,” he said, referring to the increasing role police play in responding to people with mental health issues, juveniles in school systems, and even just someone having a bad day.
DAVID STREEVER RVA MAG - Between an epidemic of shooting deaths and fears of a Charlottesville-like riot, 2017 was a tough year for the city, and posed a unique challenge for Police Chief Alfred Durham. As of Dec. 1, 57 Richmonders have lost their lives to gun violence, and the city spent $570,000 to respond to the tiny rally organized by a ragtag group of promonument activists from Georgia and Florida. Other challenges included controversy around both a parking policy aimed at curbing crime in city housing projects, and a statement linking marijuana to the homicide rate. Our political director, Landon Shroder, and I sat down with Durham to hear his take, in a candid, far-ranging discussion in his office at police headquarters. In person, Durham was as blunt and straightforward as he is at the podium. “I’m just a straight shooter. I’ve always been,” he said, describing it as part of the job. “You have to be direct, and you have to tell the truth. My integrity is all I have. If people don’t have trust in the chief, the department is going to fail.” Durham seeks to build integrity and trust through a dual approach of increasing community policing initiatives, and systemic reform targeting misconduct. The latter was a top concern before he agreed to take the position back in 2015. Policing reforms “I was adamant about [addressing misconduct] coming in,” Durham said. He describes the shooting of Michael Brown as a catalyst for necessary reforms. “August 9th changed the way policing is done in the United States. That was the incident that woke the sleeping dragon.” I made it clear we’re going to treat people with fairness and respect. We work for them. His approach started with a focus on transparency and outlining a clear vision for the department. “I made it clear, we’re going to treat people with fairness and respect. We work for them, they don’t work for us,” he said. One of the first policy changes he implemented was a requirement that employees report any policy violations they are aware of before clocking out. Requiring everyone from dispatchers to officers to file reports helped, but he had to convince citizens to complain, too. “When I go to meetings, I ask folks, ‘you say this happened, why didn’t you file a complaint?’” The response he kept getting was cynical. “[They say] ‘well, you’re not going to do anything anyway.’” When he asked people why they wouldn’t
RVA PD Chief Alfred Durham give him, a new chief, a chance to address the complaints, it came down to the difficult filing process that required the complainant to drive to a precinct and sit around waiting to give a statement. He enacted a new policy immediately. “If you feel that you’ve been mistreated by a police officer or did not receive the service you deserved, you call a supervisor to the scene right there.” He credits the new policy with a reduction in citizen complaints, from 99 incidents under investigation in 2014, to only 37 as of Nov. 15 in 2017. It was data that first suggested the issue. When Durham reviewed the 2014 numbers from internal affairs, he said he “saw a disparity in the number of citizen complaints versus the internal [reports]. Internal [reports are] recognizing that there has been some type of violation or misconduct.” When internal reports are low and citizen complaints are high, it can be an indicator that misconduct isn’t being addressed, he said. “Today, our numbers have flipped,” he said, pointing to metrics that suggest the policy changes worked. “Almost 75-80 percent of the time, the situation was resolved [on the scene],” he said, referring back to the policy of calling a supervisor at the scene when a citizen has a complaint. In a city with 200,000 or more calls for service per year, 37 seems like a low number, but Durham said there was still work to do. “We don’t always get it right because even when we stop somebody in a contact or even on a traffic stop we have to tell
Community policing and youth outreach For some crime, he thinks an arrest may cause more problems. “For a minor offense, you have somebody who has a job, not making a lot of money, and then they can’t go to work, they’re going to be fired. It impacts society because if they’re not working, people still have to survive. They’re going to do whatever they have to do to survive.” He’s already tackled the arrest problem with students, motivated by a Center for Public Integrity report released shortly after he took this job, in April 2015. The report documented the school to prison pipeline, when students end up in chronic imprisonment after minor infractions in classrooms. “When I got that report I called my school staff and I said, how many kids have we locked up since Sept. 2014 to the day of that report? It was over 150-something kids,” he said. “They weren’t violent offenders, either. We were locking kids up for not sitting down in class, using profanity, and being disruptive. We were doing administrative duties for the school. That’s not our job, but we were put right in the middle.” He acted quickly and came up with 14 categories of minor crimes that students can’t be arrested for. He says he might not be where he is today if police arrested students for the categories he’s identified. “I wasn’t sitting down in class. I was a knucklehead, but I didn’t get arrested.” They try to help teenagers who routinely get referred to them with a nine-week program. “We teach everything from social skills, the use of social media, conflict resolution,” he said, listing components of the latest iteration of the program. It wasn’t always successful; they found that for many, the schedule conflicted with school and family needs, and transportation was an issue. Now they pick kids up and bring them in on Saturday morning to prevent conflicts with school
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