Petaluma community policing touted in time of national tensions

After 18 years in law enforcement, Petaluma Police Department Officer Rob Hawkins said he recently experienced a first as the nation was reeling from the July 7 shooting deaths of several uniformed officers in Dallas, Texas, ten days before a similar event in Baton Rouge, La.

“My wife, she worried,” said Hawkins, recalling a recent morning in the wake of the shootings. His 14-year-old son chimed in, too: “‘Dad, be careful.’”

It was the first time Hawkins, 46, heard his family express those concerns. He then went to the police station, his workplace of 16 years, and saw how Petaluma itself saw fit to respond.

“It really affected everybody. But what we saw after that – people brought us flowers, kids baked us cookies,” he said, “I’m in Starbucks, and people buy me coffee.”

In the aftermath of recent high-profile shootings of police officers, as well as officer-involved shootings that have increased tensions between police and minority communities on the national level, Hawkins and others cited the support of everyday Petalumans as evidence that the department has been successful in its efforts to forge beneficial connections in the community of approximately 60,000 people.

It’s a moment that puts a spotlight on a community policing strategy known as Petaluma Policing, which assigns officers to regular patrols in one of 15 geographic districts and involves a series of regular meetings and collaborative initiatives between the public and law enforcement.

Several described the community policing strategy as an extension of a culture that has long existed for Petaluma law enforcement. Yet it is one that also seeks to formalize and optimize those efforts at a time of limited resources, when Petaluma officers have an average of nine minutes per hour to freely work their beats.

“A reduction in staffing, typically, does not benefit you in improving community policing. It’s time and labor intensive – to be able to peel staff off to work on community issues, it takes away from calls for service,” said Police Chief Patrick Williams. “From the status quo piece, we challenged that. Doing less with less in this time of our history of policing is a failed strategy.”

Created shortly after the arrival of Williams in 2012, the Petaluma Policing strategy subdivided the city’s four police beats into smaller geographic assignments. Two officers assigned long-term to each of those areas are expected to forge relationships there and beyond, compared to historic models where community relations would often fall to a separate team, Williams said.

For Hawkins, his slice of the city involves a broad swath fanning out from the police station on Petaluma Boulevard to encompass the winding residential areas on the city’s southern edge. It’s an area that he said faces many of the same issues as the rest of modern-day Petaluma, including homelessness, traffic crimes and thefts.

Yet each day is different, and on hour three of a 13-hour shift, Hawkins was knocking on a front door off Natalie Court to confront a resident accused of illegally using a nearby dumpster. It didn’t take long to write off the allegation, but the conversation continued as many others would in Petaluma, shifting to topics like housing prices, new development and the commercial expansion of the nearby Clover Stornetta facility.

“I’m low key. I don’t talk ‘like a cop.’ It helps break down that shield,” Hawkins said of his approach, chatting while typing out a short report on the laptop mounted in his patrol car. “We’re all human.”

He theorized that ties between Petaluma police and residents became stronger after the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993, which spurred a massive community response in collaboration with law enforcement.

Today, as many as 70 people volunteer for the Petaluma Police Department, performing duties like community education and code enforcement, said Lt. Ken Savano. A first-ever volunteer coordinator joined in June 2015.

The department also runs a community academy program and a junior police camp, he said, and holds town hall-style meetings across the city in the spring and fall.

Petaluma police held their first Spanish-language town hall meeting in March 2015, and Savano said the department now also offers its community academy in both English and Spanish. The department has also worked to recruit more bilingual officers, which today represent roughly 15 to 20 percent of the force, he said.

Those efforts have helped forge greater relationships with law enforcement for Spanish-speaking undocumented residents in Petaluma, said Abraham Solar, the pastoral director at St. Vincent de Paul Church and a Latino community leader who has worked to facilitate multiple Spanish-language town hall meetings with police.

“That lowers fear barriers, or stereotyping barriers, on both sides,” he said.

Residents identifying as Hispanic or Latino represent around 30 percent of the Petaluma’s total population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest estimate from 2014. The data does not specify primary language.

Petaluma Mayor David Glass lauded the police department’s efforts to make inroads in the city’s Spanish-speaking community. He said the actions were at a premium after regional tensions rose in the wake of a the fatal shooting by a Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office deputy of 13-year-old Andy Lopez in Santa Rosa, who was carrying a BB gun made to look like a high-powered assault-style rifle.

Glass said he’s joined police on evening patrol during the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the night after Butter and Egg Days, after being told they are the two hardest nights for local law enforcement.

“The job is tremendously difficult, and the way they handle themselves on the job, they should be complimented for it,” he said.

Once budgeted for 78 officers, the Petaluma police department now has 62 funded positions and a handful of grant-supported roles as a consequence of recession-induced cutbacks.

Amid that staffing crunch, Williams said he was quick to enact the Petaluma Policing strategy, which he acknowledged was seen at first by some staff as an additional burden at a time when fewer resources were available. Yet the work has appeared to pay off in Petaluma, where Williams said he frequently hears from residents who cite positive experiences in various town hall meetings.

Still, he noted that the dangerous nature of law enforcement meant that police must balance safety with service, a message he has reiterated to staff after the recent shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

“We’ve got to stay tactically and situationally aware of what’s going on around us, but we have to be able to differentiate, and still deliver service through our service model,” he said.

Hawkins, who also has a brother in the California Highway Patrol, said he was most concerned of the impact that the recent shootings could have on younger officers at the start of their careers. But after nearly two decades in law enforcement, he said he’s come to see how the community dynamic between officers and residents in Petaluma is not a trivial benefit.

“We’re lucky to have a community that supports us,” he said. “We’re in the community as well.”

(Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com. On Twitter @Eric_Reports.)