Why I love my job

It's Friday again, and I've spent the entire week blogging about last Friday. It was a pretty laid-back day for me, with none of the usual crises--just a class to teach. Yet, the Friday series describes, in many ways, what I enjoy so much.

The biggest reward in my work by far is seeing great work by our staff, and feeling in some small way that I help set the stage for that to happen and make some tiny contribution to the success of a big team. Last Monday, Officer Cindy Koenig-Warnke received the Mayor's monthly Award of Excellence. My buttons were popping as the Mayor read a description to the City Council of a case demonstrating Cindy's commitment to protect those who are vulnerable. On Thursday, I was pretty delighted as the Optimist Club recognized Sgt. Mike Bassett, our officer of the year, especially as Mike spoke passionately about the neighborhood he serves. I get that same feeling with great regularity when I attend line up and when I read police reports early in the morning. Excellent police work goes on underneath the radar every single day.

The Friday series, though, was about another part of my job that I enjoy: helping others personally. I think I taught our police recruits some things about using our information resources that will help them do better police work as their careers unfold. In the middle of the class, I got to weigh in on an important issue of national significance. It is gratifying to contribute to the debate, and I hope my observations are informative to others thinking about this issue. After class, I got to help a family experiencing the ultimate frustration, and provide them with some guidance and suggestions. If nothing else, I had the opportunity to listen to them tell the complete story--something they really needed. Finally, Friday night I was able to give a dad a simple affirming sentence at 6:17 PM in the comments on The Chief's Corner: Keep the faith. Maybe telling his story will help others in similar situations hang in there, too.

And that is why I love my job.

Hang in there

A couple of times during breaks in last Friday's class, I moderated the comments on last Friday's post, Catalytic converter thefts. The very first post was a long missive that was completely off the topic. I recognized the author as J.J., who has posted comments concerning his problems with his young adult son on a few past occasions. After posting this comment, he took a mild bashing from other readers who didn't get the point. I didn't get a chance to come to his defense until early evening, when I told readers that if it helps him to lay it out there on my blog, I'm OK with it--particularly since he has been a long-time reader.

J.J. has posted under a couple of different nom de plumes since his first comment back in April, 2007. I've never met him before to my knowledge, but I empathize with his plight. He's trying to deal with a young adult son who is involved in some risky behaviors that are all-too common. He's not alone.

I talk to a lot of people similarly situated. So many, in fact, that several years ago I wrote this down so I could give people in writing the gist of our conversation. I've learned that when you are spilling your guts in the police chief's office, you miss a lot of what is said, so I want you to have it in writing to look at later, too. Here's the letter I send home with parents after these meetings:

"Several times each year, I talk to a parent who is at their wits end dealing with a teenager or young adult child who is engaged in serious misconduct or self-destructive behavior. The parents I talk to have tried everything, and are often overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness and despair. I want to provide my best advice.

It’s not your fault. Parents do not cause their children to behave badly as adults. You did the best you could. The problems he or she has now were not caused by anything you did or failed to do. Great parents who have done everything right still encounter these problems. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who were abandoned, neglected, abused, or orphaned as children who have done just fine in life. Don’t let the mistakes you may have made as a parent stand as an excuse for the bad acts of an adult child.

Don’t contribute to your child’s self-destructive behavior. Don’t help him or her escape the consequences of bad acts. Don’t cover up, lie, make excuses, or compromise your own ethics just to “keep the peace.” Do not give your child money or pay his bills so he can buy drugs, booze, smokes, gamble, or otherwise lead a destructive lifestyle. Help your child, rather than making it easier for her to hurt herself. You can help by making and paying for a dental appointment, by taking over a casserole, by offering the use of your washing machine, providing a ride to work—but not by giving cash or paying the rent and the cable bill.

Stay connected. No matter how ugly it gets, make it clear that your son or daughter is still welcome at your home. Visit, make phone calls, write letters, or do anything else you can to remain part of his or her life.

Have faith. It isn’t necessarily permanent. Lots of young people who engage in reckless and destructive behavior during their early adulthood are quite different a few years later. It’s entirely possible that a spiteful, addicted, angry, 17 year old will be a healthy, well-adjusted, happy and productive adult at age 27. Get a picture out of your child during some happy times when he or she was about 12. That same wonderful, loving kid is still in there, and will eventually emerge."

Ultimate frustration

Friday's class ended a bit after 5:00 PM, as I was hauling my equipment from the classroom complex back to my office, I encountered an acquaintance and his family who were waiting to speak with a deputy sheriff. The man I am acquainted with and his wife were at headquarters with their adult son. They had a court order in hand that changed the custody of the son's child from the mother to the father. The father had a baby a few years ago with a women he never married. After a series of court battles, he had now won custody of the child. His parents were trying to help him navigate the legal swamp of child custody.

Mother still had the child in her physical custody, and wasn't about to let her go with dad voluntarily. The family wanted to police or sheriff to make her give the child up. I see people regularly who are caught in a similar dilemma. Court orders are not self-enforcing. Nothing in the custody order gave us the authority to forcibly remove the child from the non-custodial parent. While there is a crime in Nebraska, called violation of custody, it requires as one of its elements the taking or enticing of the child from the parent having lawful custody. In this case, the mother had not taken or enticed the child away from anyone.

This young man's recourse, unfortunately, was to go back to court and ask the court to hold the mother in contempt, and direct the sheriff (or for that matter, me) to remove the child from the mother and restore custody to the father. I always obey judges when I am specifically directed to do something. When the deputies arrived in the lobby, they gave this family the same response. Our policies are virtually identical, informed by years of experience and legal advice from our County and City attorneys.

Many people find themselves in similar predicaments when children are being used as pawns in adult custody battles. It is most important for police officers to make sure the child is safe, but after that, there is nothing we can do unless a law is violated. With a couple of exceptions (notably, protection orders) it is not a crime to violate a civil court order. Some attorneys who work with clients in divorce and custody cases seem unaware of the law in this regard, and incorrectly advise their clients that all they need to do is take their court order to the police or sheriff. This is not the case. The enforcement mechanism is for the court to hold the violator in contempt.

I think judges should take a very dim view of people who elect to ignore the court's orders. If more people suffered serious consequences for violating such orders, litigants would be more inclined to abide by these orders rather than substituting their own needs, wants, and judgement for that of the court.

After talking with this family for about an hour, I gave the child's father two final pieces of advice before I left for the evening: "Do not make babies with a person who is emotionally unstable," (I used a more colorful word), and "No matter how rotten the mother of your baby acts, don't ever, ever bad mouth her in the presence of your child."

This is supposed to be better?

On the morning break during Friday's training, I read an email from my secretary, J.J. Mayer. Andrew Ozaki, from KETV(Channel 7, Omaha) had called, wanting an interview pertaining to a weekend debacle we had investigated. I told J.J. to just have him come down to Classroom C at his convenience. It would only take a couple minutes, and I thought the police academy trainees might enjoy seeing one of these TV interviews from the other side of the tube.

When Andrew arrived after lunch, he set up his camera in the classroom, and I gave him a short synopsis of the events from Friday night/Saturday morning. The backdrop theme of his story, however, was just what I suspected. It was set in the context of the recent call, by several U.S. college presidents, to roll-back the legal drinking age in the United States.

The argument goes like this: binge drinking by young people is a national epidemic. The legal drinking age of 21 contributes to this, by creating a legal taboo that makes the forbidden fruit more appealing. Rollback the drinking age, and the taboo phenomenon is reduced: young people learn to drink more gradually and moderately, under the watchful eye of parents--rather than at the frat party.

Personally, I don't buy it. The comparisons to Europe don't sway me: Americans, it seems to me, do everything to excess. I don't think it's the drinking age that causes the "let's get wasted" drinking culture. Even if it is, though, how in the world is dropping the legal drinking age to 18 going to change that? I can picture high school seniors out on their birthday bar crawl. This is supposed to be better?

The real cause of high risk drinking among young people is much more complex than the legal age limit or any alleged taboo. Most of these bingers started their drinking career well before college. The phenomenon of reckless drinking to intoxication and beyond would still exist, I think, among college freshmen who are out on their own for the first time without some measure of community and parental supervision.

The drinking age of 21 was adopted as public policy based on strong research in the 1970's showing that states with lower legal drinking ages had significantly higher rates of alcohol involved fatalities among young people. It would be foolish, in my view, to tinker with that public policy without revisiting that research. Lives are potentially at stake.

The Friday series

I am going to write a series of posts this week about things that happened last Friday, August 22. I thought it might be an interesting way to examine some significant issues that just happened to come up on a single day.

The day started early, when I did a little crime analysis research at home and posted Catalytic Converter Thefts. It was an apropos prelude to the day's scheduled activity, teaching an eight-hour class, Information Resources, that I prepare twice each year for the students in our basic police academy.

During Friday's class, the students did a couple of exercises to examine two crime trends: thefts from automobiles in which convertible tops were cut, and auto break-ins occurring at recreational facilities. The students found only a handful of convertible top cases, but we discussed how they could approach these crimes if a series was actually occurring. There was no need to speak hypothetically about the recreational areas, though: the students found a group of these within the past few weeks, occurring at places such as the MOPAC trailhead near S. 84th and South Hazelwood Dr., the Jamaica North Trail parking lot near 27th St. and Saltillo Rd., and the Pioneers Park Nature Center.

Looking at these offenses, the pattern is clear. Car windows are broken out while the victim is away for a hour or two for a workout. We first noticed this modus operandi a couple of years ago. Recreational areas like these offer an obvious opportunity. I had the students try to think more like criminals, to identify those opportunities:

• You can be pretty certain there is a purse or a wallet in the car. If it's an after-work workout, you have a good chance of scoring a laptop, too.


• When someone un-racks a bike and rides off down the trail, you know you have a window of time of at least an hour or so to commit your crime.


• You can simply wait around until the coast is clear, smash the window, and grab whatever is handy.


• Once you've got the purse or wallet, you can hot-foot it to the nearest self service gas pump, and fill you tank with the victim's debit card (no PIN required.)

I asked the students to think about how they could impact this problem. Some of their ideas included patrolling these lots to deter thieves, talking to people arriving for visits to suggest that they lock their belongings in the trunk, parking in spots with good visibility, and getting some awareness and prevention tips out through the news media. We had a good discussion about the efficacy of a preventive approach compared to an investigative one, and personal face-to-face contact vs. news reports. We talked about routine activities theory: the concept that crime occurs when there is a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of a capable guardian. Getting the word out to citizens increases guardianship, and may be the most effective way of reducing crimes of this type.

Since I was tied up teaching, I only glanced at my email during breaks. There were a total of forty emails in my inbox Friday. That's what I'll be working on today. A professor at the University of Nebraska wants me to speak to her ethics class, a colleague and the National Institute of Justice wants our 2006 Incident Report data for a research project, the County Administrator needs to schedule a meeting regarding the jail, a Los Angeles television producer wants to discuss filming an episode of a police reality TV show in Lincoln, and so forth. I have an interesting and varied job.

Catalytic converter thefts

Last November in The Chief's Corner, I noted that the thefts of catalytic converters was a growing trend in the United States, and one that hadn't been seen much in Lincoln yet. That appears to be changing this month. So far in 2008, we have had six cases reported; four of those during August. All but one of these thefts have occurred in the Northeast Team area:

Two of the cases were at automotive businesses: a salvage dealer and a used car lot. The other catalytic converters were removed from vehicles in parking lots. In at least one case, it appeared that a powered saw, such as a cordless reciprocating saw, was employed. We have an active investigation underway, and a suspect has been developed in one of these cases.

There was an informative article in USA Today a few weeks ago about this type of crime. The damage and loss from these thefts is large: the cost of replacing a catalytic converter can top $1,000. Hopefully we can minimize the number of these crimes.

Crimemapping.com update

A few weeks ago, I announced the availability of a new public crime mapping application, crimemapping.com. It is an alternative to CrimeView Community, and both are linked near the center of our public home page. While they both use the same data, the interface is somewhat different. Crimemapping.com employs the Google Maps API, whereas CrimeView Community uses our own more precise and complete geographic layers from the City-County GIS enterprise. They are both nice applications, and I thought we'd make both flavors available for now.

Recently, the Omega Group, which produces both of these applications, tweaked crimemapping.com a little bit, primarily by including the short summary "comments" field that so many readers of The Chief's Corner seem to appreciate.

I expect we'll continue to see some evolutionary changes, and I also notice that several additional agencies' data have been added.

Every now and then some controversy flairs up on the crimemap listserv about making information like this available to the public. Some cities are reluctant to do so, fearful that citizens will be unnecessarily alarmed, real estate prices will be negatively impacted, and so forth. I don't buy that. I do not think we should shield the public from the truth, even if the level of activity in their community might be a little surprising to some folks. I think citizens are thoughtful enough to make reasonable interpretations of "what it all means," and we are always willing to help anyone understand the context.

At the Lincoln police department, we have made interactive crime mapping applications available since 1998. These data are public record, and the mapping applications simply make the information somewhat more accessible. I think it is always a good thing when citizens are more informed about what's going on in their own city.

One of the cool features in crimemapping.com is the ability to sign up for notification. You can basically subscribe to an address of your choice in any of the participating communities, and a push email will be sent to you when a new offense has occurred within a user-specified radius of that address. Now that could really keep you informed about what's happening in the neighborhood. I'd be careful about the distance though, by keeping it small--there is a whole lot of stuff that goes on in Lincoln, and I wouldn't want to overwhelm your inbox!

Bravo, your honor

Some time ago, I blogged about the problem of chronic offenders who habitually fail to appear in court. The revolving door that results is not only annoying; it costs taxpayers a small fortune. Here's a common sense move in the right direction that I found in my bulging in-basket when I returned from vacation (click to open the file):