Public Safety Advisory panel requests complaint data and NPD policies
On Monday, October 5, the Public Safety Advisory Commission held a regular meeting at City Hall. All of the commissioners present attended over Zoom videoconference, and the Commission discussed a range of topics including its role in the community, what information it should have access to and recent increases in police calls.
The meeting was attended by Commissioners Carol Piscoya, Traci McGarry, Justin Noffsker, Lisa Ellanna Jana Hoggan and Andy Miller remotely over Zoom. City Manager Glenn Steckman, NPD Chief Mike Heintzelman and NPD Deputy Chief Bob Pruckner attended in person. Because Commission Chair Irvin Barnes was absent, Commissioner Piscoya chaired the meeting.
First on the agenda was a review of the city ordinance that formed the Commission and lays out its responsibilities. Commissioner Ellanna pointed out that in the midst of a national discussion surrounding missing and murdered Indigenous women, the PSAC should have been contacted about the disappearance of Florence Okpealuk. “It seems like we should have some voice at the table on this issue,” she said. “And not being pulled into this conversation when the whole reason we were created was around Alaska Native victims was pretty tone deaf.”
She pointed out that the Commission could have acted as a liaison between the police and the wider community, as well as organized community searches, if they had been notified about the disappearance right away.
Commissioner Piscoya brought up the two vacant seats left by the decision of Irvin Barnes and Mo Koezuna to not serve another term, neither of whom were in attendance. City Manager Steckman said Barnes and Koezuna are still technically commissioners until their replacements are named, and that Mayor John Handeland is currently searching for qualified candidates that meet the diversity requirements laid out on the ordinance.
The commissioners agreed to begin looking for potential candidates and making recommendations to the mayor.
City Manager Steckman told the Commission that he had received no complaints about “public safety,” but he had received a few about the dispatch center, which he had forwarded directly to the police chief. He did not give details about how many complaints had been received.
Commissioner Piscoya proposed a motion asking the City Manager to submit a report with the number and types of complaints he has received at the next meeting. The motion passed unanimously.
Commissioner Ellanna asked about viewing the NPD’s use of force and sexual assault policies, which she requested in June but has yet to receive. City Manager Steckman said that all the NPD’s policies are currently under review by an external organization to bring them into compliance with the national Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) standard, and that both the use of force and sexual assault policies would undergo major rewrites in the near future.
“I’m not sure what the intent is to review regulations that are going to be discarded for entirely new regulations that will meet the CALEA standard, which is a national accreditation standard,” he said. “I’m not sure why anybody wants to waste their time in use of force when our own regulations need to be redone.” Commissioner Ellanna responded that examining existing policies was still a task of the PSAC, and the Commission moved unanimously to see the current policies in time for
the next meeting.
NPD Chief Heintzelman then submitted his report outlining the staggering increase in crime this year compared to previous years, possibly due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Already this year, NPD has received 109 reports of sexual assaults, compared to 58 this time last year, an 87 percent increase.
They have also received 317 reports of domestic violence in 2020, a 111 percent increase from the 150 reports at this time last year. Chief Heintzelman said the police department was struggling to address the huge increases in call volume with roughly the same number of staff as last year and three positions – two officers and a sergeant – still unfilled.
The Commission agreed that the increase was a disturbing trend. Commissioner Ellanna brought up a 2014 study that found that 51 percent of women in the Nome Census Area have experienced some sort of intimate partner or sexual violence, and that nationally only about 30 percent of rapes are even reported to police. “This is a major public health situation, and it’s one of the reasons this commission was founded,” she said. “There are social service agencies in this region that are really working hard at trying to address this issue, from every angle, and I think pooling all these resources together and having this conversation at a larger interagency level is going to be really important as we move forward.”
The Commission’s next meeting will be on Monday, November 2. The meetings will continue on the first Monday of every month.