NPD on ICE, 911, and staffing

The Norwood Police Department (NPD) met with about a dozen residents last Wednesday night in the training room of the Norwood Public Safety Building.

NPD Chief Christopher Padden said the night was an open forum to allow residents to get their questions and concerns answered about what the NPD does and how residents should interact with the department.

The first question concerned NPD’s relationship with U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE). Padden said there is a bit of communication between the departments when/if ICE comes to Town, but the NPD does not have the jurisdiction or information to enforce immigration citations.

“It’s a civil immigration matter, it’s not criminal,” said Padden. “We have no authority over that. That’s just the law that Massachusetts has decided. Different states have different rules.”

Deputy Chief Chris Flanagan said the NPD does not even have access to the federal databases with immigration status information. Padden said, however, there are sometimes clues as to someone’s immigration status, like for instance having a driver’s license from another country, but he pointed out that those are only valid for a certain period of time.

Padden said there is, usually, communication between ICE and the NPD if ICE is conducting operations in Norwood, so as to prevent any accidental confrontations between the two agencies.

“So that we don’t have any kind of, it’s called de-confliction, so we don’t have any issues where our patrol officers run up on any other law enforcement, and we generally don’t have any issues with that,” he said. “But generally, we don’t participate in what they do.”

Residents also asked Padden about crowd control between ICE and protesters.

“To minimize the potential for what happened in Minneapolis,” one resident said, referring, presumably, to the protests, civil unrest and other altercations around ICE’s enforcement surge in the city and the resultant killings of Rachel Good and Alex Pretti.

“That’s a tough situation,” Padden said. “Our job is to keep civil order. What the federal agents are doing as far as that goes, that’s their responsibility, not ours. But, for example, you saw on the news today in Minneapolis they have protesters on the intersections setting up barricades. We wouldn’t allow that, that’s just too dangerous. Our job is to keep the peace.”

The barricades, in many cases, have reportedly been set up as checkpoints to provide warning to neighbors if ICE is coming in their neighborhoods – https://tinyurl.com/yeyzutaf – and while the Minneapolis Police have been taking them down regularly, residents have rebuilt them in many instances, many times over.

Padden went over the tactics of crowd control the NPD has on the books.

“When you get into a situation where the crowd is very agitated, sometimes law enforcement will pull out so they don’t have to use force,” he said. “It’s always going to be a ‘facts and circumstance’ situation where you have to have that balancing act to determine the best overall situation for the public. Not a simple situation.”

One resident asked what the police’s role would be if they witnessed an ICE officer committing a crime within the NPD’s jurisdiction.

“So it would depend on what happened,” said Padden. “This is actually going on right now with the legislature in Massachusetts. The question is, if I roll up onto a situation and I see something happening and I don’t know what’s going on and let’s say they’re using force, they might be using force justifiably, I just don’t know. So it would have to be pretty, well, I’ll give you an example. If somebody’s laying on the ground and they’re not resisting and ICE is hitting them with a nightstick, we would be obligated, probably, at that point to interfere or step in.”

But Padden allowed that use of force is a very difficult issue, and it’s not always so clear cut.

Onto more local topics, Padden and Flanagan both asked residents to call 911 when they have a police issue.

“If you need police service, even if it’s just a parking complaint, call 911,” he said. “It goes right through and gets logged in. If you had a need to ask a question about firearm licensing or something along those lines, then you call the business line. But any time you have a need, a motor vehicle collision or something, call 911. The old school rule was that 911 was only for emergencies, but now it’s become the number for the police.”

This came up during a discussion about community police, which Padden said is about getting officers into more unofficial events to get the community to know the officers. He said National Night Out is a great example of this, but things like Norwood Day, the Concerts on the Common, and more are additional examples of this.

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“We’re part of the community, and so the goal for police officers to understand and solve problems, is to go out into stores, walk the beat, go to school functions, and we do a lot of stuff that’s not police related,” he said. “We run a youth academy camp every summer, and all those kids who went through that, we’re starting to hire them. We have two (school resource officers) they’re not there specifically to enforce the law – I mean they help when there are legal issues – but they are there to help us connect with the kids.”

He said there is a practical necessity to this for policing, and while building good relationships with the community is simply a good way to work, he said it helps because residents are effectively the eyes and ears of the NPD.

“Norwood has 31,000 people, and we have 65 officers and we had 34,000 calls for service last year, 11,000 911 calls, and 460 arrests,” he said. “When you see something, give us a buzz. There are so many people who talk to us after and are like, ‘Oh yeah I did see something.’ That doesn’t help us.”

“And we want our guys to get out there as early as possible and prevent the crime and all the associated paperwork,” Flanagan added.

And Padden touched on the staffing issue the department, referring to the upcoming police and fire budget override, which would provide six more officers to bring the total to 71 officers. Padden said this is not only to bring up their coverage numbers, but to reduce strain, stress and therefore stress-related injuries due to overwork on the force.

“If we’re burning through people, they’ll pack up and go somewhere else,” he said.

He pointed out that officers can be out for any number of reasons, including child leave, injury, retirement and even a combination of the two. He said he has one officer out on injury waiting to rehabilitate and then retire, but he can’t fill that position until that’s completed, and so they’re basically down an officer. Having more officers would lessen that burden and hopefully increase officer retainment, because he said hiring quality officers is the number one problem departments across the country are facing right now.

Padden said they’re hoping to do more of these Q&A events in the future, so keep an eye on the calendar section.