Cops vs Lawyers: Richmond Police

Image by Granger Davis

Interview by Mike Conway

The City of Richmond recently found its culture of street crime under intense media scrutiny. Headlines spoke nightly of "Richmond’s renewed state of gang violence." But in all memory, blocks in the 948's were always hot. Inspired by the hype, citizens lobbied for a state of emergency: curfew, checkpoints, perhaps the National Guard—drastic stuff. Luckily, it was ruled a "bad idea."
It all begs the question "how far would folks go for security?" We spoke with both Richmond's Public Affairs Officer, Lieutenant Mark Gagan, and the North Cali ACLU's Police Policies Director Mark Schlossberg about emergency states and so-called "gang violence." Here's what Lieutenant Gagan told us...

Is declaring a state of emergency the right way to go?
No. Funding was already given to us by voters, regardless of whether we created a state of emergency [or not], that was sufficient enough to create 15 additional officer positions. We divided [them] into three groups. The first and most visible would be officers on uniformed patrol, focused on the high-crime areas, doing what is called self-initiated activity. Another component would be an intelligence unit. These will be undercover detectives who will work with probation and parole officers to follow people involved in criminal activity. The third component is a bit longer commitment, which is officers in schools having a different type of relationship with the youth. Those officers will then be able to identify which kids are behaving in a way that leads to serious criminal activity.

How are police identifying gangs and gang activity?
We see territorial behavior as well as graffiti and even certain criminal activity that indicates an area is a gangland. The ironic thing about that is being able to prove gang-related crime is more difficult. Guys may be loitering and congregating in a gang area that they also happen to live in, but that doesn’t always mean they’re engaged in criminal activity. We don’t always know the motivations for a homicide, but there are times we suspect gang activity based on location, number of shooters, or the fact that other gang members were shot the night before.

How do you discern between gangs and civilians?
You don’t want to alienate civilians. And that’s where our intelligence officers put the most effort into: learning how to deal with the community and re-evaluate our interventions. Just because teenagers are hanging out in certain areas or listening to certain types of music does not mean they’re involved in gang activity, and it would be a huge mistake to treat them as such. And now you have a situation where [we’re] trying to clean up the streets and protect people, but we’re actually alienating those people we’re trying to protect.

What tools are officers given to develop this approach to gangs?
The most valuable tool I think our officers are given is the daily roll call, where officers interact with one another and expand upon certain situations and experiences from the day/shifts before. This is where the real specific and sophisticated techniques are given. We don’t have specific courses we give our officers. However, we have daily briefings where detectives and and others with insight into the community address the patrolmen that work the area and explain the crime trends. We have an elaborate crime analysis, and detectives track specific individuals known to be involved in criminal activity.

Parting thoughts: what’s to be done?
I have to say that if you asked me this question a couple of months ago, I wouldn’t know for sure. But now, I am certain that it has to start with the community and the family members of these people that commit crimes. There needs to be more honesty about what some of the youth in our community are doing. We’ve had homicides where kids have been murdered with $1500 cash, rock cocaine and a gun on their person, and family members tell us that the child wasn’t doing anything illegal. It doesn’t mean that is was okay that they were killed; it’s not okay. But we have to look at what behaviors contribute to this violence. Violence continues to exist because the community as a whole has not sent the message that we will not accept this. The police can not do this alone.