EDITORIAL: Next police chief must advocate a force empowered to solve problems instead of ushering them into jails and courtrooms

Not so long ago, Aurora police would wander the city in squad cars day and night, looking for trouble to fix.

That was before Aurora grew so large. The city is so big now that calls for help essentially have officers driving from one crisis to another for most of their shift. Last year, dispatchers answered more than 415,000 calls for help, about 1,100 calls each day.

These days, residents have to report many crimes online or drive to a police station to fill out reports.

If you’re thinking that Aurora is so riddle with crime that the city’s 650 cops can’t even take stolen car or burglary reports, you’re wrong. The problem is that the nature of what police do, and the frequency they have to do it, eats away at tens of thousands of police man hours each year. The rate of crimes such as murder, rape, assault and burglary have essentially slowed here, and across the region. But what takes up so much police time are troubled families, alcoholics, mentally ill people, neglected or abandoned children and elderly people — and an endless river of traffic woes.

In a sense, policing has returned to its urban American roots. Then, cops patrolling a beat learned to manage the neighborhood’s problems, partly because so much trouble comes from relatively few people and locations.
That much hasn’t change. Police administrators for years have consistently pointed out the fact the largest percentage of police time is spent on a small percentage of the population.

Last week, as members of the community, including Arapahoe County Sheriff David Walcher, were suggesting to city officials what they’d like to see in Aurora’s replacement for recently departed Police Chief Dan Oates, the answers were similar and pointed.

Walcher said it best: Aurora needs a chief  dedicated to problem-oriented policing, a model where police officers can address social issues, and one that encourages non-punitive solutions instead of jail time, reporter Rachel Sapin wrote in a story from last week.

We agree. The next police chief must be an internal force and vocal lobbyist to ensure that problems that continually warrant police intervention are addressed by agencies outside the police department. Mentally ill “frequent fliers” must have mental-health intervention, not repeated rides to the emergency room. Dangerous alcoholics must be forced into treatment. Unsupervised and abused children must be attended to. Poorly engineered or maintained roadways and intersections must be corrected.

But to make all of this work, police must be given the flexibility and options to get annoying juvenile delinquents into diversion programs before they become convicted criminals. They need the ability to get shelter for homeless people or medication for chronically mentally ill residents.

Besides the obvious fact that such non-traditional policing is much cheaper than putting out the same fire thousands of times each week, it goes beyond a system that documents and tickets problems, rather than solving them for good.

The systems aren’t without risk and subject for abuse, but a transparent, accountable and well-trained force under a police chief that advocates this system helps create a safer, more comfortable, more credible community.

Understanding and advocating for such a system should be not just desirable traits for police chief candidates, it should be the touchstone.