Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012

Police chief puts Garner on offense

One hears it often in management speak: A company or a chief executive or a work group needs to be proactive, not reactive. Proactive would certainly describe Garner Police Chief Brandon Zuidema.

Chief Zuidema has been in Garner a short time, but he has already taken steps large and small to fight crime and save taxpayer money.

Most recently, Chief Zuidema is moving to fill clerical posts in his department with civilians as opposed to sworn officers. This has the potential to save taxpayer money because sworn officers enjoy higher wages and more-generous pensions than their civilian counterparts. They also cost less to train and equip.

Also, the chief recently received the town council's blessing to employ a crime analyst, a cost Garner will share with a couple of other Wake County towns. As we've said before, we don't know that a small, safe town like Garner needs a crime analyst, but the chief, obviously, has a different opinion, and in any event, it's proactive to attempt to discern trends in crime. Which is to say that a police force is better able to thwart crime if it knows when and where crimes are likely to occur.

Perhaps most important, the Garner Police Department, under the chief's leadership, has launched the Police Athletics and Activities League, in which officers lead young people in sports and other activities.

Ultimately, PAAL might be more proactive than cost-saving civilians and a crime-predicting computer analyst. Because police can't be everywhere at once, they need help in fighting crime, and what could be better than a town full of people willing to call police at the sight of everything suspicious?

But not everyone trusts the police, and that distrust is especially keen, we suspect, among the young people PAAL aims to serve. A successful league could build a new generation of people willing to aid in the fight against crime. Even better, by exposing them to positive role models, PAAL could steer any number of young people away from lives of crime, which could provide Garner with the biggest bang ever for its crime-fighting buck.

That's proactive, and that's why Chief Zuidema is proving to be a good hire for Garner.