LA CROSSE, Wis. (AP) - La Crosse police officer Dan Ulrich sits on a couch at the South Side Boys & Girls Club for a private chat with a student, who drops his backpack to the floor and listens.
Ulrich’s partner, Nate Poke, waits for more students before making the rounds, smiling and asking about their school day.
The officers have been here at least once a week for the past year, breaking barriers and building relationships.
“We’re trying to change their perception of police,” Poke told the La Crosse Tribune (https://bit.ly/1BVL6u0 ).
Later that afternoon, the officers are in their white unmarked squad car, cruising a South Side neighborhood before slowing to chat with a man walking on Mississippi Street.
“You need anything, let us know,” Ulrich says.
He lowers his voice.
“You know anything, let us know.”
A year ago, the agency launched an intensive community policing program to support struggling neighborhoods, largely paid for by grants from Viterbo University, Mayo Clinic Health System-Franciscan Healthcare and the La Crosse Community Foundation.
“The La Crosse Police Department has always had a community policing philosophy. This takes it to the next level,” Chief Ron Tischer said. “A lot of people don’t call police until it’s critical. We’re trying to change that.”
The department gave its four Neighborhood Response Officers, or NROs, the autonomy to build partnerships and delve deeper into problems.
“On (traditional patrol shifts), we can’t stop and play football with kids. We can’t go to meetings and make contact with businesses,” Ulrich said. “On patrol, you don’t have the time to stop and say, ’Hey, what’s been going on?’”
Police officials say the fledgling NRO program is having an impact.
“We strive to have the community feel that it cannot live without them,” police Capt. Shawn Kudron said.
The NRO program was born in 2012 as Mayor Tim Kabat took office on a promise to revitalize La Crosse neighborhoods. Kudron, who oversees the unit, said his department saw it could play a role. City officials and neighborhood leaders wanted more engagement than patrol officers could offer.
“They’re dedicated to responding to calls for service, and, under that model, it’s tough for them to dedicate the time to understand the needs of the community and to develop strategies to solve problems,” Kudron said.
The agency needed more officers embedded in neighborhoods, going beyond regimented patrol duties to build relationships that could deter crime and improve the quality of life.
The Washburn Neighborhood on the near South Side stretches from West Avenue to the Mississippi River between Main and Jackson streets. It’s home to a university and a medical center. But it also includes dilapidated dwellings and pockets of poverty. Drug activity breeds other crimes. The Lower North Side, roughly between Clinton and Monitor streets from George Street to the Black River, faces similar challenges.
The city reached out to stakeholders. Viterbo, Mayo-Franciscan and the La Crosse Community Foundation contributed $337,164 to fund four positions for three years, adding to a $375,000 U.S. Department of Justice community-policing grant.
“We believe that the quality of life in the center city is important to the health of the people who live in the center city,” said Joe Kruse, chief administrative officer at Franciscan Healthcare.
The police department assigned the officers to the department’s investigative bureau, hoping the connections they made would yield intelligence they could share with investigators. The officers have great autonomy to build relationships with residents and business people.
Assigned to Washburn, Poke and Ulrich had the motivation, skills and personalities needed to tackle a new role.
“They asked what they should go out and do,” Kudron said. “I wanted them to find that answer for themselves.”
Poke and Ulrich had been with department for three and six years, respectively. The autonomy to strengthen relations between the police department and the community appealed to them, and they started the new assignment March 1, 2014.
“We want to see this place get better,” Poke said.
A year later, people are warming up to the idea that Poke and Ulrich are there to build productive relationships.
They stop weekly at the Boys & Girls Club at 811 S. Eighth St., where many kids once associated the uniform with a pending arrest. But Poke and Ulrich walk in smiling, take a seat next to the kids and talk about the importance of an education or their problems at home. They’re on the basketball court with them, helping with homework, joking with them, striking up friendships.
“We were able to break down barriers in about five minutes,” Ulrich said.
But make no mistake: They’re still fighting crime - gathering intelligence and building an impressive index of drug dealers and other criminals. The flexibility of the job allows them to monitor drug houses, a luxury not afforded to patrol officers.
“We’re able to dig deeper,” Ulrich said.
In their squad car, Ulrich is behind the wheel and Poke is on a laptop, running license plates, checking for warrants and monitoring dispatch calls. They’re together at least eight hours a day four days a week and agree they couldn’t do the job without the constant, immediate backup of a partner.
They’re looping the Washburn Neighborhood, looking for both familiar and new faces. They smile back at the driver of a black Cadillac who glares at them. They waive at the surveillance camera on the door of a house suspected of hosting prostitution.
Then they take Fourth Street north to find their counterparts on the Lower North Side.
Crime, Ulrich says, doesn’t stop at Main Street.
Tyler Pond, a La Crosse officer since 2012, began his North Side assignment in July. Dale Gerbig, a drug crime expert, joined him in January.
As in Washburn, drug activity on the Lower North Side fuels other crimes. The high volume of traffic at dilapidated dwellings frustrates neighbors. Pond said their flexible schedules allow officers to monitor visitors and knock on doors to build intelligence and cases. And the NROs in their unmarked Ford Expeditions are earning a reputation.
“The word on the street is, ’When you see the white trucks, run,’” Ulrich said.
Pond drives east on Island Street and catches a glare from a man walking past. Still in view of the Expedition, the pedestrian makes a drug deal. Poke and Ulrich appear.
“Go arrest them,” Ulrich shouts to Pond, who catches up with the suspect.
The neighborhood officers arrest two people and bring them to the station. One is alone in an upstairs interview room, the door shut while Pond shares the details of the arrest with an investigator. Pond weighs the marijuana he confiscated, leaves it in an evidence locker and returns to his car.
On this February afternoon, three of the four neighborhood officers revisit a North Side house in the 700 block of Wall Street. A camera shows the homeowner a surveillance image of his front door on a small black-and-white television inside. He lets the cops in, nonetheless, making small talk and chain-smoking on a small couch in the living room as the officers check out the tidy albeit grimy first floor.
“Tyler, are you coming to a grill-out here this summer?” the man asks. “I’ll buy the steaks.”
“Sure, man, I’ll be here,” the officer says.
Ulrich is in another room arresting a tenant on an outstanding warrant.
“Officer Dan, next time I’ll have to show you a picture of my grandbaby,” a visitor shouts to Ulrich.
The house has a reputation for being a problem property, with frequent visitors. The homeowner complains no one will visit anymore: “Everyone gets arrested when they come here.”
Pond said people are becoming more comfortable calling the officers. The officers initiate meetings with community groups and business owners, explaining their dedication to improve the quality of life in the neighborhood. Call them “Tyler” and “Dale,” they say, not “officer.”
They visit a Laundromat at 514 Lang Drive, making sure only paying customers are inside. Pond approaches a woman with a service dog at her feet, and they smile before Pond squats down. “Hi,” he says. “What’s your dog’s name?”
Later, the officers visit Bronston Chiropractic across the street. William Sterba meets the officers for the first time and the chiropractor jokes about whether they’re there to arrest him. The officers laugh, and the conversation shifts to small talk about football.
“Any problems? Any concerns? Don’t hesitate to call,” Gerbig said. “And don’t be surprised if we stop in.”
Pond and Gerbig crave the autonomy and positive contacts they can make as NROs, but they recognize the challenge and responsibility. Gerbig spent 15 years patrolling La Crosse and wants to break down the barriers that result when police only respond to crime scenes or disputes.
“Police are not always seen as helpers,” Gerbig said, “but we want people to know we’re not the bad guys.”
Boys & Girls Club Executive Director Mike Desmond wants the Washburn officers to visit the Mathy Center, providing positive role models in a neighborhood where 70 percent are eligible for free and reduced-price school lunches and 50 percent are being raised by single parents.
“In the beginning, when they walked in the door, part of reaction was, ’What’s wrong?’ …” Desmond said. “And that’s what we’re trying to get away from.”
Then a 9-year-old boy approached the officers, Desmond said, and told them: “Welcome to our club.”
Kids at the club now flock to the officers, who are willing to spend time with them, listening to their problems to gain their trust, Desmond said.
“This is totally changing the image. They’re not the enemy. They’re there to help,” Desmond said.
While running other libraries, La Crosse Library Director Kelly Krieg-Sigman said police brushed her off. But Ulrich understood that transient activity and other problems affect patrons and staff. She reached out to him when two people failed to return 488 rented items, confident he’ll deliver better service and help retrieve the stolen items.
“The program,” Krieg-Sigman said, “is doing everything the police department wanted it to do.”
A connection with the North Side officers means not making a “blind call to 911” if he needs help, said Cody Cottrell, who owns Ground Up coffee shop on Caledonia Street. “It’s like a friend having my back,” he said.
The stakeholders who invested in the program are hopeful.
Viterbo president Rick Artman said university leaders invite the Washburn officers to campus events. “This is (the officers’) neighborhood,” Artman said. “They own it. They take pride in it.”
Drug activity and the 2013 shooting death of a woman on nearby Division Street prompted concern about the safety of patients and staff, Kruse said.
“The long-term effect of this has yet to be realized,” Kruse said. “But because they are creating relationships, they learn about things that they otherwise wouldn’t have known.”
Leaders of the Washburn and Lower North Side neighborhood associations praised the officers’ approach. Residents are sharing their concerns, confident the officers will respond, Washburn Neighborhood Association chairwoman Vickie Unferth said.
“The impression I have is that they want to be treated like they live in the neighborhood,” said Lower North Side Neighborhood Association chairman Jerry Swim.
Burglaries, forced entries and vandalism are down in the Washburn neighborhood, and reported crime dipped 4 percent in the past year. Drug arrests are up. Community policing contacts skyrocketed 170 percent. The agency has yet to gather the data for the North Side.
NROs are gathering intelligence and feeding it to investigators, Kudron said. The officers used information from neighbors to arrest drug dealers, discovered materials for manufacturing methamphetamine in a truck during a traffic stop and on Feb. 25 recovered more than a pound of marijuana, stun guns and a firearm from 1417 Caledonia St. after responding to complaints about a drug house.
Said Kudron: “What reputation are (the NROs) earning? That they’re out there, that they are dedicated to suppressing criminal activity and they have the ability to focus on crime.”
NROs start each 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift with a briefing with detective Sgt. Andy Dittman, who also oversees the agency’s three drug investigators. He wants to know what they’re learning, and he offers guidance and suggestions.
“They inspire all of us, department-wide,” Dittman said. “Their energy is infectious.”
Mayor Kabat is reaching out to potential stakeholders to secure funding for neighborhood officers for downtown and the UW-La Crosse and Western Technical College areas.
“I see them as being ambassadors for the city in these neighborhoods,” Kabat said. “They’re on the front line.”
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Information from: La Crosse Tribune, https://www.lacrossetribune.com
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