Rogers to resurrect Crime Suppression Unit
Posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007
ROGERS - The Rogers Police Department views graffiti on neighborhood fences and abandoned buildings as more than just a nuisance - the graffiti is a sign that gang members are once again asserting their presence.
After a string of burglaries, muggings and assaults in late 2005, eight officers have spent about one night a week targeting gang activity. Sgt. Kelley Cradduck has collected notebooks covered in gang-related doodles from area elementary schools, hats, T-shirts, photos of teens flashing gang signs and other trinkets exposing the gang infiltration in this northwest Arkansas city.
As soon as next month, the Rogers Crime Suppression Unit will be resurrected into a full-time force, establishing the only fulltime gang unit in Benton and Washington counties.
This will be the second go-round for the Crime Suppression Unit.
The original unit was created under then-Chief of Police Mike Jones on April 29, 1997, after officers started seeing gang tattoos, graffiti and a crescendoing methamphetamine problem and were told by Tulsa gang experts that the city had a burgeoning gang problem, said Capt. Ron Largent, who supervised the unit.
The four full-time Crime Suppression Unit officers targeted specific issues - car break-ins, muggings, gangs and drugs - often working from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. They gathered intelligence on suspected gang members and took Polaroid pictures of them.
"We were able to make a lot of arrests," Largent said. "We were not a communitysupport unit. We were doing no touchyfeely community-support stuff. We were putting people in jail."
Then in 2001, the unit was transformed into a Repeat Offender Unit in the Criminal Investigations Division after covert signs of gangs disappeared, Largent said.
Officers in the Repeat Offender Unit wore plain clothes and drove unmarked cars, Police Chief Steve Helms said. They made arrests for prostitution on East Mulberry Street, people exposing themselves and vehicle break-ins, Helms said.
But after three years, officer shortages caused the Repeat Offender Unit to dissipate on Sept. 11, 2004.
Cradduck, who worked as a police resource officer nearly a decade ago, started seeing gang signs surface in student art projects.
"He came and said, ' Chief, it's getting bad again, '"Helms said.
So at the end of 2005, despite the Police Department's struggle to maintain a full force, selected officers worked overtime in the part-time Crime Suppression Unit supervised by Cradduck.
Last month, the Rogers City Council approved making the unit full time, something Helms hopes to accomplish by late February or early March, when five new officers will finish their field training and be able to fill the gaps when the senior officers are transferred to the Crime Suppression Unit.
Cradduck has already selected officers for the unit that he will oversee: Patrolman Alex Amaya, Patrolman Rick Thexton, Cpl. Craig Renfro and Cpl. Tommy Helmich.
Cradduck said the Crime Suppression Unit will focus on gangs and the crimes that make gangs thrive, such as selling weapons and drugs, burglary, assaults and criminal mischief. The Police Department will keep a database of suspects, work with probation and parole offices to identify newly released convicted criminals, target repeat offenders and survey high-crime areas.
"We have a lot of work ahead of us," Cradduck said. "There will be many things we will be called upon to deal with."
Detached from the need to respond to accidents and crime reports that consume most officers' time, the unit will be able to investigate crimes and assist divisions within the Police Department. Cradduck envisions 10-hour days but not set hours.
But unlike the original Crime Suppression Unit, community outreach will be a goal of the new group.
Cradduck will continue giving presentations on identifying gang members and gang symbols to teachers and school administrators, parents, civic groups and even nearby police departments. School resource officers will continue the studentoutreach program Smart Choices Better Chances as they have for about five years, and Cradduck will still hand out pizza to garner goodwill.
Stephen Metheney, chairman of the Northwest Arkansas Anti-Gang and Violence Committee, said he applauds the Police Department's efforts but worries they won't be enough.
"It's not going to stop the problem. It's going to help," he said.
To really reduce gang activity, said Metheney - who has worked as an officer for 12 years in several states, including a gang unit in Oregon and as a deputy with the Benton County Sheriff's Office - law enforcement agencies throughout the region need to work together, and the community must join in.
"You've got to have everybody involved," Metheney said, including politicians Metheney became involved in the anti-gang committee when it formed in 2005, but he said community interest has since dwindled. He considers denial of the problem to be the biggest hurdle in combating gang activity.
"I don't know what the answer is to this, but Rogers is heading in the right direction," Metheney said.
The Springdale Police Department, which often shares information with Rogers, plans to start its own gang unit this spring, public information officer Chris McCarville said.
"We share a lot of information with them because a lot of what they see, we see," Mc-Carville said.
Like Rogers, the Springdale Police Department is waiting to fill vacancies on its force before transferring the four or five officers trained on gangs to a dedicated unit.
McCarville said that with city departments so close together, law enforcement agencies need to cooperate to solve criminal issues.
"A lot of our criminals - our city limits don't stop them," McCarville said.
He said the county may want to create a gang task force composed of several agencies that would mimic the county's interagency Drug Task Force, similar to the Drug Task Force in Benton County.
The Fayetteville Police Department has no immediate plans to start its own dedicated gang unit, PIO Shannon Gabbard said.
"The big drawback for us at this point is allocation of manpower," Gabbard said. "I think it's something that may happen for us at some point in time, but for the time being, we just simply don't have the resources to put something like that in place."
But, Gabbard said, the Fayetteville Police Department still documents graffiti and trains its officers to recognize signs of gangs, including a planned training session by Cradduck.
Bentonville Police Chief James Allen said Cradduck has likewise offered to train Allen's officers, though no date has been set. He said Bentonville has a different dynamic than Rogers and has less need for a Crime Suppression Unit.
"Our needs are a little different, and our problems with gangs are a little different," Allen said.
Plus, with a mutual-aid agreement between the abutting cities, Rogers has assisted in crimes that hover near the boundary, such as when a man shot at police on Oct. 30 near Moberly Lane and 28 th Street in Bentonville, and the Rogers Police Department set up a command post and had a marksman monitor the situation. And every year, officers from both departments monitor the football games between the cities, Allen said.
"They've been really great," he said of Rogers officers. "It's something we'll certainly repay whenever we get the chance."
The Siloam Springs Police Department dispersed its Crime Suppression Unit in October after having one for several years. Lt. Bryan Austin, who still references the Crime Suppression Unit on his voice mail, said the four-man unit acted as an attachment, with its officers pulled from their regular patrol for six to eight weeks to target high-priority issues such as narcotics surveillance and graffiti, as well as high-crime areas.
"It was mainly a narcotics unit," Austin said. "We worked hand in hand with the county and with Bentonville and with Rogers as well. "In the mid-1990 s, the Rogers and Siloam Springs police departments took turns displacing gang members who would flee from one city only to take root in the other, Austin, Helms and Largent said. "We didn't care where they went, just not Rogers," Helms said. The displacement of gangs - the goal of most gang units - is something even big police departments see.
Lt. Eddy Day, who supervises the Houston Police Department's Gang Division, said that when the department strongly pursues gang activity - such as setting up zero-tolerance patrols in which officers ticket every crime they see in a high-crime area - the gang members will go underground or sometimes take up residence in a nearby suburb. "In most cases, they don't go far away," Day said. The Gang Division started in May 2005 with seven officers, a sergeant, a lieutenant, a captain, a criminal analyst and two secretaries shortly before Rogers' Crime Suppression Unit reinstated a part-time patrol. Before then, each Houston Police Department patrol department had a gang unit, Day said, but the units were cut when the city lost about 1, 000 police positions over several years because of budget constraints.
"The next thing you know, the gang members take advantage of that," he said.
The Fort Smith Police Department had a gang patrol cycle similar to Rogers and Houston.
In 1991, Fort Smith started a crime-suppression unit, which began as a uniformed six-man patrol in unmarked cars. The officers targeted street gangs and drugs. But in 1999, the unit's success put itself out of business, which should be the goal of any crime-suppression unit, said Sgt. Edward Smalley of the Fort Smith Police Department. Then in 2005, the City Council asked police to temporarily reinstate the unit in a slightly different capacity - this time targeting sex at city parks.
The unit became full time by year's end, making 80 arrests for sex in public or sexual indecency; 51 for prostitution or patronizing a prostitute; and 78 other arrests in 18 weeks, Smalley said.
In 2006, the group made 271 arrests because the criminal activity became less blatant, Smalley said.
"What happened was we had an impact," he said.
In Rogers, the Crime Suppression Unit has come full circle, Largent said, with gang signs being identified in the schools.
This time, Metheney said," I hope they keep it forever."
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