Cd'A crime rate continues decline

COEUR d’ALENE — When Lee White talks about his department, he gushes.

It is the men and women under his employ who have stemmed the city’s crime rate, resulting in a drop like a black diamond ski slope.

In the last three years, according to the department, crime in Coeur d’Alene dropped 14 percent from 2014 to 2015, 4 percent the following year, and 22 percent so far this year, White said.

The Coeur d’Alene chief of police, stout and terrier-like wearing desert colored boots and cargo pants, attributes the dramatic drop in crime in the city to the uniformed men and women under his command.

“They don’t usually blow their own horn, so I am going to,” White said.

In the last four years, White and department heads including captains, sergeants and detectives, as well as the department’s patrol division and the men and women behind the scenes, he said, have developed a system to find bad guys that can be compared with patterning white-tailed deer, or chasing spring chinook.

They observe the signs, pinpoint a location and catch — criminals in this case, but, nonetheless.

“It’s like fishing,” Capt. Dave Hagar said.

The system is simple, but it’s not easy.

The 103 members of the department, including the 85 uniformed officers, are part of what Hagar likes to call a culture.

The culture involves talking, focusing, sharing information and responding to problems, perceived or in progress.

“We’re extremely busy and extremely lean, so we have to work smart,” White said.

When he took over the department four years ago, White and his staff began building databases and mapping the city according to criminal activity.

Trends were observed and outlined.

Types of crimes were pegged.

Warrants were matched with addresses, and seasonal criminal activity was given a name and location.

Cops pulled over, left their patrol cars and talked. To people. Neighbors, pedestrians and bicyclers.

The culture of the department had gone proactive.

As one of the department’s crime analysts, Liz Peterson’s job of crunching numbers into intel easily digested on the fly by cops, is the axle the department rides on.

It includes building colored maps with dark clouds of high crime areas, pinning it with coded flags and trending topics, and handing out weekly sheets like topo maps, or depth charts that show the feeding grounds of fish.

Peterson winnows further.

Aggravated assaults aren’t just street fights; they may be alcohol-infused tavern brawls, domestic violence or random acts, each one treated differently by patrol officers.

In areas of low-cost motels, Sgt. Jeff Walther said, assaults often stem from dope deals gone bad.

“People get into fights after drug sales have gone poorly,” Walther said.

Peterson maps it.

After analyzing vehicle burglaries, data showed cars were left unlocked, or had their keys in the ignitions overnight. Established neighborhoods where longtime Coeur d’Alene residents felt safe were often targeted.

Officers visited the neighborhood to let property owners know the obvious.

“We had officers knock on doors as kind of a community outreach,” White said.

It made an impact. Vehicle burglaries dropped off.

Within the past four years, the department has developed a Community Action, or CAT, team comprised of uniformed cops who flow between high-crime areas, building rapport with residents to get a heads-up on crime before it happens, and stanch it when it does, White said.

Last year the department divided the city into quadrants and assigned patrol officers to each one. The reason: get to know the people and the area, exchange contact information, get out of your cars and walk.

The result.

“It’s made an impact,” White said.

Part of Peterson’s handiwork is on the department’s website. Numbers, charts, graphs and maps and the colored flags are there too. They denote larcenies, thefts, burglaries and robberies, neatly pinpointed along corridors with names like Appleway, Downtown, Sherman and Harrison.

As a 21-year department veteran, Peterson has seen the impact of the department’s cultural change.

More communication and more proactive policing has not only reduced crime, she said, but it has increased morale in the department that covers an urban area at the crossroads of two major state thoroughfares just a stone’s throw from the sizeable metropolitan area of Spokane.

“Years ago, we would run from call to call, from hotspot to hotspot,” she said.

Better information and good leadership has focused the department.

“I think this group is the best group I’ve seen,” Peterson said. “There’s so many layers of proactive policing going on.”

White’s focus is on the others though, and how they apply inside resources to outside work.

“Cases that would have taken three or four weeks, a few years ago, now take us three or four days,” White said. “We’ve developed that kind of a community.”