Berkeley Police Chief Michael K. Meehan Swearing-In Ceremony January 28, 2010

Transcription

1 Berkeley Police Chief Michael K. Meehan Swearing-In Ceremony January 28, 2010 I d like to thank the Mayor and the City Manager, Members of the City Council, my fellow chiefs of police and other law enforcement officials, department heads and, most importantly, the members of the Berkeley Police Department, and my family: my two children, affectionately knownn as the A Team, Adam and Andrew, who got of school early today, and my wife Becky. I ve been very welcomed by the City of Berkeley. To give you an example, on my very first day of work, I received my first parking ticket. I shouldn t go further, but, I actually received two in front of the police station in the police chief s car. And I was guilty, so I paid them. My wife, a week later, was also so welcomed by the City of Berkeley. She also was guilty, and she also paid up. So, if you call me to complain about a parking ticket, I m very sympathetic; but that s all you re going to get out of me. I d like to introduce to you four very important people. They are Cynthia Harris, Eric Gustafson, Dennis Ahearn and Lynne Ohlson. These are the commanders of the Berkeley Police Department who are going to lead this team forward. This is not a one captain ship; it s a multiple captain ship. These four people are very, very important to what we re going to be doing in the future. As some of you know, I was born and raised in California. I went to school in California. My family is in California, and actually they re here now. I have many friends in California. I have twenty threee years of experience before I came here to Berkeley, and I have to tell you that Berkeley is a very well-known police department. It s very famous in policing circles, legendary in some respects. The Berkeley Police Department was the center of policing ideas for decades. Just to give you some examples, the Berkeley Police Department had the first bicycle patrol in the world, the first motorcycle patrol, the first radio communications, the first scientific investigation, think CSI, the first lie detector, the first police academy, and the first college educated officers, which continues to this day. Every sworn member of this police department has been to college everyone. I m very proud of that. The City of Berkeley and the Berkeley Police Department have very amazing histories, and I feel very proud to be here. I ll never forget that, and I ll always try to live up to that, as I hope you do. I ll respect and honor and learn from the past, but I don t live in the past. 1

2 We live in the twenty-first century, and in the 21 st century, we do things differently than we did in the 1800 s and 1900 s. We form partnerships with other police agencies, so I m very gratified to see so many police chiefs here. I ve reached out to them; they ve reached out back to me. We work on best practices, we follow national standards, and we re driven by data and information. We use modern tools and modern technology. Police Officers today are better educated, better trained; more attuned to technology and use less force than ever before. That s great news, and that s going to continue. But Berkeley has a crime problem. The crime rate in Berkeley is 50% higher than the average of comparably sized cities in the state of California, in violent crime and property crime. I am committing this police department to addressing that. Some of you may know Fred Medrano. Fred Medrano just retired after thirty years with the Health Department in Berkeley, and before he left, I had a chance to sit down with him. I said, Fred you ve got 30 years and I ve got three weeks teach me, educate me. How can I be successful? He talked to me about a number of things, but one really stuck with me. He said, Don t let the detractors get you down. Stay focused on your mission. Fred, I will, and thank you because what we do is so important I can t be distracted. But I will listen to everybody, even our critics, because everybody has something they can teach us. I want to speak directly to the employees of the Berkeley Police Department. But I want to note two who are not here, and can never be here, other than in spirit; Berkeley Police Sergeant Jimmie Rutledge, who was shot to death by a man who also killed a four-year-old girl, and Officer Ronald Tsukamoto, who our police station is named after, a graduate of Berkeley High School, shot to death at the age of 28. They can t be here, but they re here in spirit-we know that. Your health, your safety, and your professional development are vitally important and I m committed to always remembering that. This department is very proud of you and it will be successful because of you. I believe in treating honest mistakes like honest mistakes. And if you need retraining, we ll get it for you. We will recognize your good work, and will remove obstacles to what you are trying to accomplish, because you are why this department matters. The best ideas come from the people closest to the work, and I commit to listening to you, not just your ideas, but also your concerns. I want you to go home feeling very proud of what you do. I want you to look in the mirror and say, What I did today mattered and I want you to stand in front of your children those of you who have children and be proud of what you do, and share that with them. 2

3 But officers need the tools to do this job properly. In the 1800 s we equipped police officers with guns and clubs. But do you know what we re equipping our Berkeley Police officers with today? This is the 21 st century, and we need 21 st century strategies, training and equipment. These are my expectations of you: Know our mission. It begins and ends with crime. Crime is why we exist. It s why we are funded. It s why there are three hundred people sitting in this room, in part, and out in the street. It is why we re in business. Everything we do revolves around it. Nothing is more important than crime. Preventing one person from being raped today matters. Preventing one person from being robbed, or having a gun stuck in their face, or having their home burglarized, or having their car stolen, or having their child run over in the street matters. It s why we exist and I want you to stay focused on that at all times. I want you to earn people s respect, and I want you to be respectful. And that means every encounter, every employee, every day, even the people you don t like, or you disagree with. I want to insure that you understand that we are a responsive and accountable organization. We will be open and transparent and we will not be afraid to tell people what we do. When we mess s up, we ll fess up and we ll fix it. I want you to refrain from misconduct, but that s not all, I want you to prevent misconduct. If you want to save somebody s job, and your own reputation, you must act. If you wait for it to get to me, it ll be too late. I want you to know your areaa of responsibility, know its problems, know its people, and have a plan to deal with it. I want you to focus only on behaviors, and never on just how people look. I want you to be willing to apologize, because sometimes even if we re technically correct, we leave people with a bad experience. We respect the constitution, including the 2 nd Amendment. But if you bring a gun into Berkeley and commit a gun crime, we are going to find you, we are going to arrest you, and we are going to prosecutee you to the fullest extent of the law. Don t do it. The Berkeley Police Department consists of many diverse members. Over one-third of our members are civilian. You see the uniforms, but we have a lot of civilian employees with many talents, and I want to remind everybody in our department that we all began as civilians we will all end as civilians. We all have the same mission... we re all on the same team. 3

4 Each of you is responsible for the safety of this community. People should feel safe in Berkeley, and they should know why they feel safe. It s not an accident; it s because of your work. That is why they feel safe. Success is not the absence of failure. We make mistakes. Police work is difficult, it s frustrating at times, and the demands on you are very high. But support, success and accomplishment are cures for frustration. To the community, I offer you my commitment. We will be focused on crime. We will be focused on your safety. We will be respectful, and we will be an open and transparent organization. Community Policing is a proven strategy to reduce both crime and fear; we are committed to it and we will practice it. But we won t make promises we can t keep. All members of our community deserve equal treatment. We need to remember that race has been used by law enforcement in the past. There s a negative history there, and our communities of color remember that and so should we. Racial profiling is wrong. It won t be tolerated, it won t be practiced, and it s no way to enforce the law or to prevent crime. We should also acknowledgee that global migration is a fact people move around. We deliver our police services to everybody, regardless of whether they re victims or witnesses, and regardless of what country they came from. We cannot both simultaneously alienate our community, and prevent crime. It won t work. But we can use information to focus our efforts on the worst offenders, on the most problematic locations. Nationwide 5% of the people commit 50% of the crimes. It s not complicated. It guides us on whom we should focus. We will work to earn the community s trust based on our performance, and we will prudently manage our finances. But we are in for some rough financial times ahead. We deliver police services. We ree in the service business. Ninety percent of every dollar we spend is for people and it takes people to deliver those services. But we don t just need more cops we need effectivee strategies. We also need community leadership. And we need you to have reasonable expectations of what we can and cannot do. Police are not the answer to every problem. There are no simple answers to complex social problems. We cannot fix alcoholism. We cannot fix drug addiction. We cannot fix mental illness. And yet, who do you call when we see the end result of those problems? 4

5 I ask you to be loud and vocal supporters of your public servants; don t be the silent majority. Have high expectations of us. Have high demands of us I do. But don t judge us until all the facts are in. Our communities succeed because people want to live here, they want to work and shop here, and because they feel safe in and out of their homes and their children feel safe in school. Having homes, businesses, and public places, not scarred by graffiti or other forms of neglect and intimidation, promote feeling of safety. That s why people want to live here. Crime is not inevitable, and victimizing our families and our communities is not a civil right. My family and I live in Berkeley. I work in Berkeley. My children live in Berkeley and go to Berkeley schools. We are invested in this community. We are looking forward to working with each of you to insure that this police departmentt is the most compassionate, the most professional, and the most successful it can be. Thank you. 5