Do you know who oversees the people expected to assist you in an emergency?
In Indianapolis, the Department of Public Safety has a vital role as the agency in charge of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, the Fire Department, Animal Control and the Division of Homeland Security.
This week, current Public Safety Director Troy Riggs and Valerie Washington, deputy safety director and chief financial officer, met with the Recorder to provide an update on what the department is accomplishing and planning.
One of Riggs’ top priorities has been to be fully engaged with the community and get a good sense of what residents need and want from their public safety department. He would also like to see public safety personnel and residents have more communication.
“As I’ve been out talking to our (public safety) workforce and been out discussing issues with the community, I’m hearing a lot of common themes,” said Riggs. “The community and the workforce are not that far apart in their thoughts as it relates to where we need to go in the future. That is good news, so we’re going to put them in rooms and talk about all the issues both have raised.”
Developing solutions
To achieve that goal, the Department of Public Safety has organized “Efficiency Teams,” or groups of residents, neighborhood leaders, public boards and labor to review key public safety functions and processes. Each efficiency team will discuss a specific topic and make recommendations on how to address it.
Some of the topics, about 25 in total, range from violent crime, graffiti and community outreach, to crime reporting and administration and hiring processes.
“This isn’t just a list of groups that talk about an issue until we’re all blue in the face,” said Riggs. “It’s about talking about an issue, coming up with a game plan and getting it implemented soon.”
After each efficiency team meets, its members will be thanked for their service, and their recommendations will be reviewed by public safety officials. Each team member will receive a response explaining which recommendations can be implemented, and a target deadline will be set for goals to be reached.
Already, seven efficiency teams have met on various topics, and Riggs said officials will start putting recommendations from those meetings into action in as little as two weeks.
“We have to move fast because public safety is at stake, but we can’t move faster than the community and our workforce,” he stated.
Riggs admitted, however, that the efficiency team process hasn’t been completely smooth, and arguments and disagreements have taken place among some team members with different viewpoints.
“However, if they come with an open mind and reach a consensus, they have vetted everything before we roll it out,” he said.
Other issues
Riggs and Washington added that one of the goals of the Department of Public Safety is to be as open and transparent as possible.
“If you go to our website, for example, you will see that the first efficiency teams that have been posted,” Washington said. “You will find a listing of members, documentation, directives and other detailed information.”
Washington noted that concerned residents can send comments and suggestions to the email address dps@indy.gov, and so far this year more than 300 messages have been sent.
Officials are also concerned about raising police morale, and have plans to adopt a successful model, used by the military, of focus groups to address complications related to stress, strained marriages, working hours and many others.
Public safety officials acknowledge that they deal with complaints by some citizens regarding occasional abruptness and a curt attitude from police officers.
Riggs noted that not all officers have a poor attitude, but agrees that some do for various reasons. Often, he noted, they just don’t have time to interact because limited manpower forces them to quickly go from one run to the next.
“Sometimes they might just be rude, it’s that simple,” he said. “But there are other times people might perceive what they’re doing as rude because they come in, they might deal with a problem in a curt way and go. That’s because they may have four or five runs, and people don’t understand that.”
“Sometimes it may be forgotten that you need to get out of your car, shake someone’s hand and look them in the eye and talk to them to find out what’s going on,” Riggs said.
IMPD currently has an internal process that helps track complaints, and an investigation occurs if several complaints are made about an officer.
“Sometimes we find disciplinary issues with a person, or they’re having some type of family problem,” said Riggs. “We can review the situation before it gets out of hand.”
He added that the poor attitude of some officers is both a morale and limited personnel issue, and that hopefully city budgets over the next few years will call for more officers.
Until then, Riggs said, police and other public safety employees are expected to treat residents with respect if they are not causing trouble.
“I don’t care if you’re homeless or you’re rich, you need to be treated with the same respect and dignity of any human being,” he said. “Some in our workforce say morale is low in part because they don’t have respect. But we know that in some areas of the city they have to earn that respect back, and we want to give them the tools to do that.”
In Part 2, Riggs and Washington discuss other issues such as the relationship between police and youth, the causes of most crimes, hiring and promotion of minorities and their personal goals.
