Manassas Local spoke with Manassas City Police Chief Douglas Keen about what the role of police officers are in his community in 2016.
ML: What do you see coming down the pike locally for law enforcement this year?
Keen: There are two major things, and they are tied together. One is rebuilding community trust. We see this across the country. We in law enforcement need to do more of getting the public in our community to understand what we do, why we do it, and how we do it, to convince the community they can trust us, by doing the right things every day.
ML: What is your department doing to build trust in your community?
Keen: We are looking at body worn cameras. I think this is the biggest technology thing in the region in 2016. With us, there is a huge expense with body-worn cameras. If you were just buying the cameras, it’s pretty affordable. But you have to manage the program. And there are the Freedom of Information Act requests that come. It takes staff because you have to review them.
ML: 2015 was a challenging year for law enforcement. Though we didn’t see the same problems here as in other big cities, by working to regain the trust of residents in the community, it that because of riots as we saw in Baltimore?
Keen: The tipping point after all of the incidents we saw last year is going to be the message from some groups that “you can’t trust the police.” I truly believe that is such a minority when you look at the thousands of police officers who are in the U.S. who are doing outstanding work every day. I don’t think we’ve publicized that enough. Mostly because when you ask a police officer about it, they say “that is what I am supposed to be doing.”
We have to do a better job of putting the positive experiences out there in building these relationships. Even when a person may shy away from us, we have to be the one with the olive branch to say “it’s OK, this is who I am, this is what I do, this is how I do it.”
