by Dennis Sexton, Editor

All of this continued debate about a police auditor gave me an idea. Let’s invite the television show COPS to Omaha. And not just for a couple of weeks so they can get some sweet footage of us terminating pursuits…I’m talking indefinitely. Let’s have John Langley and his roving band of thrill-seeking cameramen stick as many cameras in as many cruisers as humanly possible so that every single move we make can be recorded, reviewed, dissected, and analyzed. That sounds like "auditing" to me.

Let’s just make it a running live feed like Channel 6 News on 1 or HomeView…only it would be, well…live and not the same thing over and over. Just think! Your check the well-being call of a drunken citizen at the Gene Leahy Mall…on camera! And when you’re called to the same person doing the same thing at the same place for the 4^th time in six days…that can be televised, too! Dogs-at-large, traffic hazards, property damage accidents where both drivers say they had green lights, questionable stolen vehicle calls where the owner is confused that there car has not yet been returned when loaned to someone using it to purchase narcotics, and domestic violence calls between family members upset over the fact that they didn’t get to smoke their fair share of cigarettes from the carton just bought last night…all in high-definition digital video for all the city to see!

There’s a small faction of people who feel the police need to be overseen at all times (not that 24/7 insight into the job we do and how we do it would change the minds of those folks) and what better way than a pull-out-all-the-stops, camera-always-running-in-every-cruiser open window into real-life policing. That would be a heckuva way to foster the oh-so elusive trust between the community and the Omaha Police Department, don’tcha think?

Uh, yikes. [BREAKING NEWS: The overwhelming majority of our community understands what we do, stands by what we do, and wants us to do MORE to deter crime and get criminals off the streets whenever possible, for as long as possible.]

Trust and a difference of opinion or perspective is not the same thing. Trust cannot be developed when a lack of willingness to come to a viable resolution about a disagreement does not exist. An auditor is no magician and any perceived improvement in trust derived from the position being in place will be a short-lived patch at best. The police have the best interests of law-abiding citizens at heart and any belief otherwise is wrong. Which is why the term "community policing" is odd and redundant; if we’re not policing for the sake of the community, then for whom are we policing?

The silence of the squeaky wheel will wear off just as WD-40 won’t make that screen door quiet forever and I fear that we’ll be no better off than we were before. You can’t resolve that which some just aren’t willing to fix. I happen to believe that the relationship between the community and its police is just fine. But nobody wants to hear that…it’s just not that interesting.

I’m just wondering: Is dispatch no longer allowed to hold calls based on priority (or, in some cases, just plain logic), and if not, why not? I’m not trying to be difficult (or ensure that I’ll be taking every call in the city to assist OFD for an appliance fire), I just think street officers wonder why the assignment of calls has become what it is over the past year or so. I really don’t think all of it can be attributed to the officer shortage. And I am also certain that some of the issues are probably our own fault (hey look, another random Sergeant’s assignment!). But too often, cruisers are being sent so far out of their precinct that it completely defeats the purpose of even being assigned to a district or precinct. Further, such practice typically ends up causing bigger problems later when cars from other precincts get sent to take the place of the cruiser being sent out of its own in the first place. Frequently, a cruiser will be sent from, for example, Southeast to Southwest…only to have a Southwest cruiser then later sent to Southeast, thereby putting both cruisers way out of position. I wouldn’t mention this if it rarely happened. It’s a frequent occurrence and it’s just plain silly. We don’t enhance our response times whatsoever – we make them progressively worse as cruisers circle the city and rack up unnecessary mileage.

Citizens depend on officers to be nearby when a crime happens in their neighborhood and the practice of dispatching any available car from anywhere in the city violates that citizen’s trust that we’ll be there when they need us. I think the overwhelming majority of street officers would agree that the current dispatch philosophy needs to be reconsidered. It would not only be a benefit to street officers but to the high-mile, worn out cruisers…and the people of Omaha who would want the officer taking the stray dog complaint seven miles out of their precinct to be nearby to try and catch the person who just broke into their vehicle.

We don’t have ‘em all so be safe out there, huh!

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