Latest / Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog / Police Strategies for Teens
Transcript
- Rick Outzen: Rick Eltson, this is Rick's Blog Live. We've been talking this summer a lot about teenagers. All right. Particularly, you know, coming off of the Fourth July weekend event, where the shooting and the the groups of teens that pretty much tried to take over downtown. there's been a lot of discussion about it. recently the mayor and police chief Eric Windstrom went to San Diego to the U.S. Conference of Mayors Task Force. I've talked to the mayor about it, I've got it on the blog, but I've asked the chief to come on, and Eric you for doing this. Chief Eric Winstrom: Yeah, thanks for having me here, Rick. Rick Outzen: What were some of the takeaways? You had the mayors and the police chief at this police chiefs at this event. Chief Eric Winstrom: Yeah, really important conversation, especially where it comes to team violence. These what we used to call team takeovers, which now we're trending to call team gatherings, just signaling that we don't want to let anyone take over, you know, part of our city. But recognizing that talking to these mayors and police chiefs across the country, that this is a this is not an issue that's just in Pensacola, it's just in a region, it's something that's been faced nationally with changes in social media, changes in team trends and things. So And then having a conversation with the police chiefs where a lot of us are doing the same things, you know, front some of the big cities they said, how you how you deal with these, you gotta flood the area with with police officers. And you know, police are good at problem solving when there's a when there's a an instant in time that an issue is happening in arriving and dealing with that situation there. But the the conversation got better as far as I'm concerned when we talked about how do we get to a place where we're not having these Rick Outzen: Proactive instead of real. Chief Eric Winstrom: Exactly right, exactly right. Yeah. And so very very important and very good conversation to hear ideas from across the country. Rick Outzen: the mayor mentioned that he felt like the conferen the US Conference of Mayors was gonna put together sort of a best practices manual or or guide. W what are the things you think will be in there? Chief Eric Winstrom: Yeah, there were between thirty and forty, I would say, mayors from all across the country. This wasn't a topic that anybody was surprised about or said, we don't really have that. Everyone had something to to contribute. So talking about what what different jurisdictions were doing and we realized we gotta have somebody actually sit down, put all of this together and push it out, and I think that's what what they're doing. You know, part of my contribution, some something that hadn't come up in every city was the proactive steps that we take when our social media our our investigative team sees on social media it's calling for, you know, we're gonna take over this intersection, we're gonna take over this park, the mall, et cetera. That what we do is have our investigators try and identify who that poster is so that we can actually make a house visit, deliver a strongly worded letter from from the law department, but also have that face to face. What we found the best success is when you knock on that door and you inform oftentimes somebody as young as 13, their parent that that is there. And realize that their parent was totally unaware of their social media presence, totally unaware that they're calling for this teen takeover at the at the mall. And they're now they're confronting their 13-year-old in front of the police and saying, this is not gonna stand. And the the takeovers have just been, you know, the there and then we took care of that that issue. So preemptively taking care of it. So that's one of things that I brought to it. But more more informative to everybody and more important to me, I would say, is the people that that take it a step further, say, How do we get to a point where our teens aren't talking about, hey, where can we all get together and and sort of create havoc? How are we going to engage our teams in healthy, safe environments where they feel supported, where they feel love, where they feel like they're fitting in? And that's a challenge, that's a that's a a much much heavier lift. Certainly the police department has has a role in all this, but we realize we we might not be the ones to be able to to to solve that sort of a larger issue, but we certainly want to be there to stand next to the people that are doing it in any way we can support them. Rick Outzen: Yeah, Chief, it just and you know, what struck me in what you just said is is that you've got officers that are watching social media all the time. And y y'all in today's world there's so many different platforms, it is probably a full time job for several people. Chief Eric Winstrom: Yeah, that's right. So fortunately we have the partnership with the real time crime center. And whether you're looking, you know, if if you go before all these teen takeovers here, you were looking for more signs of you know, domestic terrorism, et cetera, be people posting things, school threats, school violence, school shooting violence, et cetera. But it it's it's gotten so much bigger than that where those same analysts now on really a continuing continuing basis, and The more of us have eyes on it the better. So we're partnered with the sheriff's department and if they see something in in the city or if we see something in the county, we share that information. And oftentimes it's as simple as somebody posts something on a on a platform publicly that everybody has access to and just some some threatening behavior. We we had some football games scheduled over the past weekend that Some individuals who probably thought they were very good technologically and and as long as they posted anonymously, you know, they weren't gonna be able to be find out. Sending some veiled threats where our intel our Intel analysts are gonna look down, they're gonna figure out who that individual is, even if it comes to an IP address, where that person is posting from, and we're gonna make a visit to their house and make sure that there's nothing more to these threats. So but it is, like you said, a full time job. Rick Outzen: You know, it's it's in in my in role as an investigative reporter, oftentimes when there is a crime, the first place I go is try to find them on social media because you you get a lot of information. They're they've gotten more skilled at it now than they were, but you could you could find out where they were last night, you could find out where they were afterwards and it's it's fascinating. Chief Eric Winstrom: Fortunately, you know, not every criminal is the is a criminal mastermind. I have been involved in homicide investigations in in Chicago where we got the final charges because after the homicide or before the homicide, the individu sorry, after the homicide, the picture the the individual who had committed the murder actually posted image of them bragging with a a firearm that we were able to to to digitally enhance and get the serial number off that firearm, obtain that firearm, test that firearm, identify to the ballistics on scene, and and the whole case, the only reason we got a charge is because of that bragging poster of the of the person posing with the nine millimeter handgun that they just murdered someone with, thinking that they were above everything. So Rick Outzen: Yeah, let's go w we got off track, but it it fascinates me that part of of of in reporting and in and police work. But i the other thing coming back from the conference, what's was there some low hanging fruit, something that y'all you're looking at trying to implement pretty quickly? Chief Eric Winstrom: One of the things that I I believe it was a town of Columbia, South Carolina said that that they did, you know, oftentimes police are the conduit for the information of what's going on in these young people's lives that other adults in their lives just aren't getting. And sometimes that's restricted because of privacy issues. You know, if a child is a is a victim of something, we might become aware of it and we can refer them to say the Gulf Coast kids' house where they can get services, et cetera. But there's other adults in their lives and and for this specific example, I'll say the the school system. So I believe it's called a handle with care process is is what they they call it. And so when police become aware that a a young person who's in school has perhaps even just witnessed some sort of incident of violence, some sort of traumatic incident at home. Or e even if you know a loved one of theirs has has been arrested, involved in something that you know us all have having been school kids at one point in time, the next day that young person has to be in a class. And their head is not going to be in it. They're not going to be learning. They're just not going to meet in a good place. Maybe they'll act out. Maybe they'll just shut down. And that teacher may have no idea what they're going through. So in the the with the ability working with our attorneys, make sure we're not violating improv privacy rights, working with the school district. Come up with it is this system, and this is something that's already in place in some jurisdictions where once we become aware of this traumatic incident in this young person's lives, we're We are able to at least notify the school and the teachers involved in that that young person's life, handle this kid with care. He he or she went with went experienced something the day before and they may need extra attention, please give them extra grace, talk to them, maybe they can share with you information that we're not even allowed to permit. But and it's something it's an insight that you wouldn't have gotten previously that it's too bad because you know I can see this kid suffering and I know this is gonna carry over tomorrow. if I don't have a way to reach out to those kids. So low hanging fruit, something that we're able to to we immediately got our attorneys working on it, make sure we're we're crossing all our T's and doting our I's and we'll we're gonna roll that out very, very soon, within days. Rick Outzen: Great, great. Eric, thank you so much for coming. We'll do we this is becoming a regular event. I really enjoy the conversation. Chief Eric Winstrom: Appreciate the t the the time to be able to talk to you and have others hear what's going on in the police department. Rick Outzen: great. We'll go ahead and take a break. We'll pay a few bills. We'll be right back.