Juneau’s outgoing police chief says several major initiatives that got underway during his tenure will continue after his departure.
Bryce Johnson’s last day as head of the Juneau Police Department was Friday. Ed Mercer, currently deputy chief, will be sworn in as the new chief on Monday.
“I think he’s going to do really well,” Johnson said. “I’m happy for him. We’ve worked together for four years now. He’s been just a great help to me, and I think he’s going to do a really good job. I’m really happy for him.”
Johnson said the department continues to be short-staffed. The problem is not recruitment, but retention. Many officers with additional training under their belt head off for higher paying positions elsewhere after 4 or 5 years.
Johnson expects the department to start rolling out body cameras to patrol officers about a month after he leaves. All officers should be wearing them by fall. Johnson said the biggest hang up has been computer networking infrastructure and docking station connectivity.
Body cameras won’t fix every problem. However, Johnson views cameras as not only good for officer accountability, but also good for citizen accountability.
“What we find is the public is much better behaved when they know they are on camera,” Johnson said. “The agencies that incorporated body cameras have found that people behave much better. That helps. There’s research out there that says if you have officers that aren’t behaving well – which I don’t believe we do – but if you do have that, they behave better. And so that helps as well. Use of force incidents go down. The number of complaints citizens make against officers go down. When they do make the complaints, you have a pretty good record of what occurred.”
Johnson suggests Alaska follow the lead of other states like Michigan which passed legislation exempting public disclosure of camera footage in certain circumstances. He says that might help police departments from getting swamped with public requests.
Johnson says one of his first goals when he started at JPD was to get CIT or the Crisis Intervention Team off the ground. They’re specially-trained officers who respond to a suicidal person or other mental health emergencies. Johnson says a third of officers are already CIT trained. The next academy is planned for October.
Also under development is an expansion of the program called the Mobile Crisis Outreach Team. In case of a potential use of a firearm, officers would still be dispatched to make the scene safe, but the primary response will include dispatching a mental health professional to the scene. Such a low-key response can de-escalate a situation and provide a solution, and avoid public embarrassment to someone in distress.
“Even if they don’t go to the hospital, there’s someone there that referred them to the help they can get, give them help they can get,” Johnson said. “Some help was given instead of just going in and leaving. So, it’s a better way of doing it. It treats the person with mental illness with respect and helps them get the help they need.”
Johnson says another continuing effort is the Juneau Police Department’s accreditation by the Alaska Association of Chiefs of Police. The department hopes to meet 123 standards that would demonstrate they’re adhering to best practices on everything ranging from dispatching procedures and running an evidence room to dealing with hate crimes.
Johnson was asked what that means for the average taxpayer or average citizen to have their local police department accredited.
“It means your police department is a good police department and they’re doing police work the way it should be done,” Johnson said.
Johnson expects burglaries and thefts in Juneau to level off at last year’s high, but they still need to go after root causes like drug addiction, including opioid abuse. Senate Bill 91 has a framework in place for rehabilitation and treatment options, but it will be awhile before those programs are up and running.
Johnson tried to make the department and officers more approachable by implementing various community outreach programs. They range from designating officers for certain geographic areas to Coffee with a Cop and the recent Beat versus Street bowling tournament. But he says a lot of those ideas came from other department employees.
Johnson says he believes those initiatives had any measurable effect on community’s trust in police department and officers.
“If I can be absolutely frank, we’ve had a crime spike, have we not?” Johnson asked. “The community has not yet turned on the police department. I think they see how much good work those officers are doing, and they understand kind of the realities on the ground that I explained to you earlier. And so, I think there’s a connection between the community and the police department.”
Johnson also referred to last December’s officer involved-shooting as another example.
“We saw what happened in many other communities with officer-involved shootings,” Johnson said. “This community gave us time to do the investigation and get the facts. We didn’t see what occurred in other places. So, yeah, I think there are tangible results from all of that.”
After Johnson’s last day on Friday, he’ll become the new police chief in Idaho Falls, Idaho. He says that’s a community of about 58,000 people served by a police department with 125 employees, including about 90 officers, which is well over twice the size of Juneau’s department.
Johnson says he accepted that job to be closer to children and grandchildren in Utah.
