The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Police target drugs, guns
to devise a 40-point plan to address the issue and curb the violence that remains one of the primary stumbling blocks in changing the perception of Norristown and restoring confidence in public safety.
The plan consists of six basic principles designed to attack the problem comprehensively and in ways that can be tracked and quantified:
1. Embracing the leadership challenge;
2. Accelerating gun violence reduction strategies;
3. Enhancing collaboration with stakeholders through a police chief’s advisory board;
4. Controlling “impact players”;
5. Focusing on gun violence hot spots;
6. Eliminating drug markets;
“One of the most important things I can do is to make sure we don’t get stuck in on any particular way of doing business,” Talbot said, explaining the impetus for the plan.
“There have been a number of things both within the department and within the community that made me think that it’s time to take a real hard look at operations and decide what’s the next step for us in terms of how we engage with these types of problems in particular, gun violence.”
Talbot said one of the factors that drove the number of gun-related incidents up this year was an ongoing dispute between two neighborhood groups.
“We historically haven’t had any gang disputes that resulted in territorial violence or anything like that,” he said, “But we have dealt with some types of violence that I’ll call expressive violence, where based on some type of provocation one group ends up shooting at the next and then you have retaliation and the groups go back and forth to certain degree.
“We’ve made a series of arrests related to those incidents. As we stand now, I don’t think there’s any concern about that particular problem.”
An integral component of the plan is the chief’s advisory board — the first of its kind in Norristown— which solicits aid from citizen stakeholders to identify problems, increase public awareness, implement integrated strategies and amplify transparency.
Talbot said he is currently in the process of interviewing applicants for the board, which will have of 15 to 25 members, and he hopes to finalize the group’s membership by month’s end.
The idea for the board was, in part, inspired by the Police Department’s participation in a symposium on unbiased policing organized by the Montgomery County Chiefs of Police Association and chapters of the NAACP.
“It allows connections to the police department with different social service agencies through individual connections as opposed to agency-to-agency relations,” Talbot said. “It gives me the opportunity to open up the operation in a more transparent way than we already are, to talk about the strategy a little more in detail.
“I think when you speak to some of the people who are not law enforcement, you get different feedback and that’s what I’m looking for. I’m really looking to expand my thinking around policing, around how we’re engaging with the community, around how successful we are or how successful we aren’t.”
Another component of the gun violence reduction plan that incorporates community input is a more robust town watch program, which Talbot says is essentially about getting neighbors together to help make their communities safer and teaching residents how to be more vigilant and develop skills as watchdogs and witnesses.
But as much as community involvement is essential to establishing a united front line in the battle against gun violence, the true determination of the efficacy of the plan will be in its success in dismantling the three overarching causes of the problem: drugs, those with a propensity toward violence and the proliferation of guns on borough streets.
In an attempt to uproot drug markets that are often the source of gun-related violence, the Police Department has engaged in what Talbot calls a “narcotics audit,” an intensive effort to map and calculate where and how many drug distribution points are operating in Norristown and devising a plan on how to shut them down.
“Where there is a demand there is going to be a supply,” Talbot said. “Norristown is not the only place driving the demand. It’s being driven from outside our borders, and identifying these drug markets is going to go a long way toward clarifying the nature of the problem. Then we’re going to go after it with a vengeance.
“What we’re talking about is different than the ‘war on drugs,’ which doesn’t make any sense — never made any sense — but what does make sense is to go after the drug markets where a stranger can go in and buy drugs. It’s really the drug market that drives violence, that drives property crimes, and that hurts neighborhoods.”
Talbot said the department is authorized to carry the opioid overdose inhibitive naloxone, and unfortunately, officers are called upon to use it “all the time.”
It’s one of the few things, he says, leaves him “without a lot of words,” as he expressed frustration at the daunting task of solving such a pervasive problem, which crosses jurisdictional, professional, demographic, and socioeconomic lines.
“How do you go after something that doesn’t look like anything else we’ve dealt with?” he asked.
To address the problem of potentially violent actors, the police department has taken a novel, grass-roots approach. Talbot and his team have initiated a proactive strategy of having conversations with those socalled “impact players” and their families and associates in an attempt to pre-emptively stifle situations that could lead to gun violence.
“The most important thing about that is it’s fair,” Talbot said. “I think police everywhere, if you’re doing your job, you’re paying attention to those that are most likely to victimize others or you’re paying attention to those who are most likely to be victimized. Ironically, it turns out to be relatively the same group of people that at some point become victims themselves.
“I think the most important thing about that is it’s fair for us to go out and say, ‘This is your history, based on your history there’s a strong likelihood that you might engage in violent behavior. There’s also a strong likelihood you might become a victim yourself. We don’t want either of those things to happen. We want you to stop doing what you’re doing, but also, we want to help you as best we can.’
“Those conversations include members of their family social service agencies and members of our chaplaincy corps. So it’s not just us having the conversation, it’s a collective.
“It’s surprisingly effective in changing how people view themselves and how they behave in the community.”
In addition to the preemptive measures, Talbot has also reached out to the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office to establish a system of geography-based prosecution that assigns prosecutors in acc ordance with their familiarity with specific neighborhoods to help encourage community cooperation with investigations and identify offenders.
Talbot said there is a small percentage of legal gun owners who commit crimes, and it is the Police Department’s responsibility to make prosecutors aware of illegal gun seizures, straw purchases, supposedly “lost” firearms and other violations.
“Other parts of the criminal justice system and government need to pay attention to where the guns are coming from and how many are there,” he said. “That’s for someone else to look and we’ll focus on our piece.
“I can say the 40-point plan will work,” he added, although he said he has no lack of confidence in the strategy.
“What we’ve put together directly focusses on the vulnerabilities in the community,” he said. “Having overtime patrols in gun violence hot spots, putting additional attention in those areas, shifting resources, to some degree, away from some things and toward others ... Policing is always in progress. It’s not about victory, and I think we’re definitely moving in the right direction.”