Post Falls Police Chief Scot Haug said officers are policing in the most trying times he has seen during his 35 years in law enforcement.
“It’s very unfortunate that the second-deadliest day in law enforcement happened yesterday, with five Dallas police officers being killed,” Haug said Friday. “But I think it does go to the point of the necessity for us, at a national level, to step back and think about how we are policing in America.”
The events in Dallas added an element of timeliness, Haug said, to a briefing he and Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White were invited to at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
There were 36 other police executives from around the country at the briefing, which centered around a report created by President Barack Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.
“This is a task force put together in December recognizing that there are problems in American law enforcement as we’ve all seen,” Haug said. “You need to have the community working together to be effective. One of the problems across this country is that we don’t have those relationships in place that are necessary, so you see the deterioration that you are seeing lately.“
“It’s something that has been on a lot of police chiefs’ minds for a long time,” White added. “This isn’t really a new concept, but every once in a while we try to change things up and evaluate what we are doing so we make sure we are doing our very best to be as responsive to our community as we possibly can.”
Here are his 6 Critical Steps For Safer Communities:
- Building Trust and Legitimacy in Law Enforcement
- Policy and Oversight
- Technology and Social Media
- Community Policing and Crime Reduction
- Training and Education
- Officer Wellness and Safety
Via CDA Press