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'I'm not going to tip-toe around it'; How Detroit police are confronting taboo topics in their work
From mental health emergencies to the depiction of violence in entertainment, chief James White emphasized the need for community engagement and reflection between police and the residents that officers are sworn to protect as a path toward success.
DETROIT (FOX 2) - While speaking at a school recently, Detroit Police James White asked the students how many of them had seen someone get shot. The response shocked him.
"Almost half the kids raised their hand," he said. Almost half the kids raised their hand."
To him, traditional crime prevention programs like scared straight don't work. "They don't work because the kids are already scared. You can't scare them straight, they're already fearful."
For the chief, it's not the only strategy used in the past that fails to accomplish its goals.
White is now closing in on a full year as the Detroit Police Department's leader. Speaking exclusively with FOX 2, the former head of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights says to tackle the systemic problems of poverty and policing requires more a more critical lens of the practices deployed by law enforcement.
It also demands reflecting on some taboos of policing, from the high incarceration rate of the city to mitigating someone having a mental health crisis.
Part of the solution starts with improving the relationship with the community.
"I think you absolutely have to talk to and engage with young people. And even younger than we once thought because of the level they're having with social media. I think they're being tossed into a more adult environment, whether they're ready for it or not."
Yet, when someone has a negative experience with law enforcement, it can only cement beliefs young people might have toward police. "Trauma begets trauma," White says, arguing the failures of society can spiral into negative confrontations between police and others.
"A person that comes in contact with policing or comes in contact with the police in a negative way for violence or violent crime, there are a lot of things that failed to get them there,"
Nearly a third of the city's residents lives in poverty which is associated with crime. Studies out of the U.S. Department of Justice find people who live at or below the poverty line had a higher rate of being victimized by violent crime. Households at or below that level also reported violence to police at a higher rate than homes above the line.
While in 2018, the Brookings Institute released a study that found a strong association between the incarceration rate and the degree of challenges that residents have in getting a job. "…boys who grew up in families within the bottom 10 percent of income distribution were 20 times more likely to be incarcerated by their early 30s than those who lived in families with the highest income level."
For White, tackling crime means employing crime prevention strategies. He's using data to deploy those strategies, like community engagement, recruiting events, increasing visibility with officers on the street, while devoting more resources to drag racing and traffic enforcement.
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It can be difficult to show these strategies are working when the reactive business of policing uses proactive measures.
"When you talk about crime prevention, those are crimes that don't happen. Therefore, the police don't respond, so you're measuring against a variable that didn't occur," said White.
Among the trickiest situations to deal with are individuals having a mental health episode.
Of the 33 barricaded gunman situations in 2021, 10 of them involved a subject in the middle of a crisis. White, a state licensed mental health counselor says the unpredictable nature of those scenarios make them difficult to manage.
"If you're looking at someone who's having a mental health crisis, and you're getting very specific directives - from a law enforcement perspective of let me see your hands, put down your hands, turn around, walk backwards, those types of things - they may not be able to interpret what you're saying because they're in a crisis," he said. "And they may actually view your presence as something that's intimidating. Having officers trained in mental health intervention crisis is really paramount to our success."
It's a topic he discussed at length with former Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon.
Of the 1,400 inmates at Wayne County Jail, 50% had a mental health issue. At least a quarter were on medication for a problem.
But even if the acts that landed those individuals would always have incarcerated them, it can't be the final step in their recovery.
"And that really for us is key to not criminalize a mental health crisis because candidly, what's the benefit of that? This is a person that did not ask for what they're dealing with, so why not get them the services that they need?"