Public Safety Advisory panel discusses police accreditation

Members of the Public Safety Advisory Committee discussed the Nome Police Department accreditation plans, as well as a recent assessment of NPD facilities in their meeting on August 30.

The Public Safety Advisory Committee recommended NPD seek accreditation to Nome’s Common Council in June and continued discussing the process during their regular meeting on Monday.

To earn accreditation, NPD facilities, codes, and department policies must be brought up to national standards of “best practices,” according to the assessment, conducted by Robert Skowron, an instructor at the Virginia Center for Policing Innovation and former deputy chief at the Hopewell Police Department in Hopewell, Virginia.

“Skowron turned around the Hopewell PD in Virginia and was the one that was responsible for making sure the police department adopted accreditation standards,” NPD Chief Mike Heintzelman told the Nugget. “That was a major feat. I put a lot of stock in whatever he writes.”

Skowron, a retired officer with significant experience in the accreditation process, conducted his review and submitted his assessment in July, and found several glaring concerns, referred to as “high liability issues,” at NPD, including concerns with how NPD conducts video monitoring at off-site locations.

“Off-site video monitoring should be moved to onsite,” Skowron’s report says. “Off-site video monitoring of interview rooms should be suspended immediately! Equipment in these rooms should be disconnected ASAP. Recommendation is to use body worn cameras for recording until this is corrected. This cannot be stressed enough. This current setup violates the rights of victims and compromises investigations.”

As of Tuesday, August 31, off-site video monitoring has not been suspended.

Skowron’s report made more than a dozen recommendations for improvement at NPD, suggesting changes to evidence maintenance, emergency communications rooms, and updating police trainings and policy guides.

Part of Skowron’s assessment reviewed NPD directives and policies to see which, if any, will need to be updated to meet accreditation standards.

“The Nome Police department lacks a substantial number of policies to comply with accreditation standards and have several policies that need additional verbiage to comply with standards,” according to his report. “Some policies are robust and up to date, such as; sexual assault and use of force.”

Skowron recommended a complete re-write of the Nome Police policy manual, and additional training to meet accreditation standards. “Sections [of the policy manual]

such as budget and fiscal management, constitutional safeguards, inspections, records, crime prevention, do not exist,” according to his report. “New policies are only effective if there is training associated with policies that is documented.”

“Use of force is the biggest thing affecting police officers today,” Heintzelman said. “We have just rewritten the use of force policy, so that was good. The sexual assault policy was rewritten sometime before that, so that was good. The rest of the policy manual needs to be rewritten and brought up to accreditation standards. It’s not that every word is wrong, it’s just that we’ve got to modernize the policy.”

Heintzelman hopes NPD could receive accreditation within the next two years.

There are several accreditation programs the police department could use, including the CALEA program from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies and the Oregon Accreditation Alliance.

“Depending on what accreditation program we go with, if we use CALEA, I think the quickest it could be done would be in 18 months,” Heintzelman said. “If we use Oregon, I think within a year, we could have it.”

Commissioners also had the opportunity to review crime statistics for this year and last.

Most significantly, Heintzelman said, is the drastic reduction in calls regarding sexual assault. To date, there have been 37 calls regarding “sexual assault” and “sexual abuse” in the police record management system this year. On the same date last year, there were 80 calls.

Though the significant drop in sexual assault calls is a good sign, City Manager Glenn Steckman says the community is still far from where it should be.

“A community this size should only have two or three sexual assaults a year,” he told the committee during Monday’s meeting.

General calls for service between this year and last have also gone down, according to the 2021 statistics report. Between January 1 and August 30, 2020 there were 10,640 calls for service, 31 percent of which were alcohol related. In the same timeframe this year, NPD has received 7,402 calls for service, 30 percent of which were alcohol related.

“We believe the decrease in calls for service has been due to the COVID-19 pandemic starting to change over time and ‘normalcy’ coming back especially with vaccinations,” the report says.

During the committee meeting, Heintzelman shared his concerns about violence against Nome’s police officers.

“One of our officers received a call of shots being fired throughout the morning of one day this past week, and he was trying to locate where the shots were coming from,” Heintzelman told the committee. “He encountered the individual that allegedly fired the shots … very shortly after the officer encountered him, [the suspect] pulled his hoodie up and you could see a pistol in his waistband. He pulled the pistol out of his waistband, pointed at the officer” and fired. [See story on page 4].

Following the accreditation and crime statistics discussion, Steckman shared updates with the committee regarding public health and safety issues, including homelessness and alcoholism.

Steckman said the liquor store on Front Street, AC’s Quick Stop, has recently changed its policies regarding the purchase of alcohol, leading to a significant drop in police calls and reports regarding “unresponsive persons on Front Street.”

“There is also some discussion that’s been brought up about construction of a public bathroom down here, which will be a major challenge,” Steckman said. Much of Nome’s unhoused population stays near Front Street, and has limited access to public restrooms, particularly after regular business hours. “It is a public safety issue.”

Steckman said Kawerak, Inc. recently offered the city $30,000 for a public restroom, “but that’s not going to cover the costs of addressing the issue and providing the attendant that’s going to need to be there for probably the worst job in the city,” he said.

Funding for a public restroom is a good start but doesn’t address the “issues that have been festering the community for a minimum of 70 years,” Steckman said. “We are trying to find other avenues. We can’t just arrest ourselves out of this issue.”

NPD, like most police departments across the country, is struggling with staffing issues.

“It’s a very demanding job to be a police officer and dealing with some of the social challenges that some of [them] see in [their] positions,” Steckman said during the committee meeting. “Everybody needs to know that because of the world we are in today, a lot of folks are not choosing police careers, and there are shortages no matter what profession you’re in right now.”

The department is looking to hire more Nomeites and Alaskans as the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.

The Public Safety Advisory Committee plans to meet for a special session on Tuesday, September 7, at 5:15 p.m. to discuss a resolution regarding NPD accreditation.