December 20, 2024 • 10 mins
Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer Reflects on 2024
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Great time of the year to be thinking about everything
that's happened this year. And I know that one entity
that is constantly thinking about the things that are happening
in and around Omaha all year long is the Omaha
Police Department. And we are blessed to be joined by
Chief of Police, Touchmader, joining us on our phone line. Chief,
thank you so much for being a part of our
show today.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, thanks them very It's good to be on the
afternoon camp. I think your morning off morning audience has
known me pretty well.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Yeah. I hope that we can build that up in
the afternoon as well. I think the first thing that
I'm curious about you are, you know, you've been in
your position for over a decade now. This has been,
you know, a job that you feel like, you know,
it is an appendage to the city. And we see
(00:47):
so many other cities of Omaha size or maybe larger,
and the police department doesn't have a very good relationship
with the public at all. What makes Omaha different in
that regard.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I think there's a few things that make Omaha different.
One is both entities, the community and the police department
want to be in a relationship. We've realized that our
success over the last decade or so has been because
of our partnership and a lot of cities, I think
that one side or the other is a little hesitant
on whether or not they want to do this, and
(01:17):
they haven't seen the success to really propel them to
be all in. But we've seen the success here. And
the second thing I think Emory is just the stay
in power. A lot of the community leaders that we
work with, we've been working with for a good ten
to fifteen years, and I've been around for twelve years.
A lot of chiefs stay one to three years. At
(01:38):
twelve plus years, I'm the longest serving consecutive major city
police chief. So I think some continuity of operations and
just that stay in power has been good for Omaha.
But the main thing is community and police. We just
work well together here. We ride the waves good and
we address the low parts and they will ever come up.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, And that was one of my questions. I just,
you know, from my own personal perspective, I know that we're,
you know, four and a half years removed from a
lot of the stuff in the wake of George Floyd
and a lot of the relations that police were struggling
with in a lot of cities around the country, and
you would have been still in this post. And certainly
twenty twenty a tumultuous year for people in a lot
(02:18):
of different ways. But what you know, kind of what
has changed about the way that police departments in general,
from your perspective, have adjusted in the wake of you know,
some of these some people, some communities, some neighborhoods might
feel like the police officers aren't looking out for the
best for them as well.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Sure, twenty twenty was obviously fairly damaging to our professional
I mean we still, even Omaha, we still suffer from
staffing issues because of that, although we're making strides on those.
What I would say, you know, twenty fifteen, you had
had the George Floyd incident Ferguson, and that really caused
a lot of cities across the country to look at
(02:58):
how they're policing a little bit more up to best practices.
And then when twenty twenty hit, that forced every city,
every city that wasn't completely up to best practices, that
forced them to get on pace. And the beautiful part
of Omaha is we were pretty much there already, and
so we basically became part of the national narrative, although
(03:21):
there really wasn't local examples at the time of problems
with police and community, which is why after twenty twenty
we really got entrenched back into the community pretty quickly,
and a lot of cities still have not. Twenty twenty
saw spiking crime for all major cities. All the three
(03:41):
years prior to that, Omaha was at forty year lows
for our violent crime with shootings and homicides. We took
a little spike. Now we're right back down to those lows.
Lowest number of homicides we've had on record really for
the longest time is this year at nineteen, and our
shootings are just incredibly low. I believe it's a testament
(04:01):
to our police community relations. But definitely twenty twenty took
a major hit to our profession, and I see it
as a nation just starting to climb out of that.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
We're speaking with Chief of Police for the Omaha Police Department,
Tach Moder, on our phone line today. And when you
talk about that part of it recruiting, trying to attract
good officers to a police force that you need people,
you need a certain number of people if you're going
to have an effective police force and allow the community
(04:31):
to feel safe and cared for by the police department.
What are some of the strategies that you and the
rest of the force are kind of utilizing to try
to attract those good officers that either have no experience
or are just kind of getting their careers going, but
may have been scared off of being a police officer
(04:52):
based on things that have happened in the last few years.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, let me give a little background emory before I
kind of get to that, because I think it's important.
We used to have a tremendous amount of applicants right
at twenty twenty, that's when it kind of shut off,
and it shut off all across this country. So we're
part of the national narrative as it relates to our
(05:15):
hiring right now and our retention. And for a law
enforcement agency, it's not just numbers. You got to get
the quality applicants there, because we really only retain about
nine percent of all applicants that apply to the police
department here because we scrutinize it very heavily and we
want to make sure we're getting the best of the best.
If not, you just kind of run into problems down
(05:37):
the road. So that's kind of first and foremost. And
we've been fortunate here in Omaha that we don't have
any stress points. We're down in staff. I think we're
down close to one hundred officers above. Our response time
remains the same, crime is at it's all time low.
We just aren't seeing the stress points yet, but they're coming.
Because the internal stress point is we're going to look,
(05:59):
we're getting some staff burnout right now. And so we
put a lot of effort into the recruitment phase. And
one of the first things the mayor stepped up and
did really is they say, look, all law enforcement and
police officers is going to get a large raise, because
we needed to keep up with the wave across this
country of everybody raising their pay to try to get applicants.
(06:21):
And so we did that. But in addition to that,
we're really targeting our core. We get a lot of
lateral transfers from other major cities. Omaha is attractive. We
try to bring them in. Obviously, You and O is
a hotbed for us. Memory we really draw from the
U and O pool quite a bit. Happy to say
they've got more people in their criminalis program than they
(06:44):
ever have before, so they're signs of that's really starting
to turn around. And then of course there's the military
institutions and things like that have been good for us
as wealth nentery level police officers. And then you take
that complete overlay and you put it to national campaign
and then you really dive into the diverse parts that
(07:05):
you want too, because we want to be reflective of
our community and so we try to hit areas where
we can get diverse candidates as well. And we're coming around.
We were starting to gain ground last couple of years.
We keep adding more and more applicants. This year we
added more and more than we did the last few years.
So it's getting there. But it's a process, and it's
(07:26):
a process because of the national hit that was that
occurred in our country.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Speaking with a Chief of police, Tashmad from the Omaha
Police Department, you mentioned you and O and people trying
to learn about this. This is a good thing, I
think for a lot of people in general to be
thinking about ways that to reach young people and how
police forces are supposed to work because it's become a political,
(07:54):
you know, situation for a lot of places in the
country that the police officers do not represent everyone. That's
something that police departments like yourselves have to kind of
battle against you and O isn't a good tool. But
I noticed that you are having a book. You've released
a book recently that is actually going to be utilized
as part of a course at UNO as well. Tell
(08:14):
me about the book and what you hope that some
people that are college age are going to be learning
about from the book that you've written.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Sure, thank you. The book is called Synergy of Influence,
and it's really designed as a textbook, but we've crafted
it for as a reader as well. Again, a lot
of audience from just the general population have read it
and just really liked the content of it. What really
was the genesis behind it was sitting in my job
(08:42):
as long as I have, I've noticed that there was
no college curriculum on police leadership in the media. And
you can have a law enforcement agency be as adept
and as skilled as you could be in investigating and
making arrest, but if you can't relate that appropriately to
the community, if you can't relay what has taken place,
(09:05):
then your police community relations is forever going to suffer
and always be behind. So the book, it really is
the first of its kind that was written in the
first it would be the first college course on this
in August of twenty twenty five in You and O.
And the interesting part about the book Memory is that
takes the biggest cases, the national cases that OMAHA has had,
(09:28):
really dives into those and gives the leadership perspective and
a little extra as to what took place behind the scenes,
and kind of walks everybody through all of that. And
that's what's made it's sort of an insightful read for everybody.
But the book also gets into race and policing. It
gets into the media dynamics that you hear so much
about across the country, especially during political times. And the goal,
(09:53):
the goal of this book is to really streamline the profession,
take the politics out of it, and demonstrate what needs
to be done under these formats. Because you are right
on one thing, law enforcement, the court systems, they really
should not have any political spend to them. And I
(10:13):
think the country has taken that and we have now
a spin on some of this and we got to
get out of that.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
One thing at a time. Obviously, for a lot of
people in this country trying to understand what can or
cannot be done to try to do this, and Omaha
is certainly a jewel in that regard to try to
be an example for the people around the country as
to how to handle a city of the size of
Omaha nearly five hundred thousand people. Well, Chief, I hope
(10:43):
that this is just the first of many conversations you
and I can have about things that are happening in
and around Omaha. Thank you so much for being a
part of our show and kind of talking to us today.
Have a merry Christmas and happy Holidays and we'll speak soon.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Hey, thanks Henry for having me on. My best to
your audience, and Merry Christmas everyone,
Great time of the year to be thinking about everything
that's happened this year. And I know that one entity
that is constantly thinking about the things that are happening
in and around Omaha all year long is the Omaha
Police Department. And we are blessed to be joined by
Chief of Police, Touchmader, joining us on our phone line. Chief,
thank you so much for being a part of our
show today.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, thanks them very It's good to be on the
afternoon camp. I think your morning off morning audience has
known me pretty well.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Yeah. I hope that we can build that up in
the afternoon as well. I think the first thing that
I'm curious about you are, you know, you've been in
your position for over a decade now. This has been,
you know, a job that you feel like, you know,
it is an appendage to the city. And we see
(00:47):
so many other cities of Omaha size or maybe larger,
and the police department doesn't have a very good relationship
with the public at all. What makes Omaha different in
that regard.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I think there's a few things that make Omaha different.
One is both entities, the community and the police department
want to be in a relationship. We've realized that our
success over the last decade or so has been because
of our partnership and a lot of cities, I think
that one side or the other is a little hesitant
on whether or not they want to do this, and
(01:17):
they haven't seen the success to really propel them to
be all in. But we've seen the success here. And
the second thing I think Emory is just the stay
in power. A lot of the community leaders that we
work with, we've been working with for a good ten
to fifteen years, and I've been around for twelve years.
A lot of chiefs stay one to three years. At
(01:38):
twelve plus years, I'm the longest serving consecutive major city
police chief. So I think some continuity of operations and
just that stay in power has been good for Omaha.
But the main thing is community and police. We just
work well together here. We ride the waves good and
we address the low parts and they will ever come up.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, And that was one of my questions. I just,
you know, from my own personal perspective, I know that we're,
you know, four and a half years removed from a
lot of the stuff in the wake of George Floyd
and a lot of the relations that police were struggling
with in a lot of cities around the country, and
you would have been still in this post. And certainly
twenty twenty a tumultuous year for people in a lot
(02:18):
of different ways. But what you know, kind of what
has changed about the way that police departments in general,
from your perspective, have adjusted in the wake of you know,
some of these some people, some communities, some neighborhoods might
feel like the police officers aren't looking out for the
best for them as well.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Sure, twenty twenty was obviously fairly damaging to our professional
I mean we still, even Omaha, we still suffer from
staffing issues because of that, although we're making strides on those.
What I would say, you know, twenty fifteen, you had
had the George Floyd incident Ferguson, and that really caused
a lot of cities across the country to look at
(02:58):
how they're policing a little bit more up to best practices.
And then when twenty twenty hit, that forced every city,
every city that wasn't completely up to best practices, that
forced them to get on pace. And the beautiful part
of Omaha is we were pretty much there already, and
so we basically became part of the national narrative, although
(03:21):
there really wasn't local examples at the time of problems
with police and community, which is why after twenty twenty
we really got entrenched back into the community pretty quickly,
and a lot of cities still have not. Twenty twenty
saw spiking crime for all major cities. All the three
(03:41):
years prior to that, Omaha was at forty year lows
for our violent crime with shootings and homicides. We took
a little spike. Now we're right back down to those lows.
Lowest number of homicides we've had on record really for
the longest time is this year at nineteen, and our
shootings are just incredibly low. I believe it's a testament
(04:01):
to our police community relations. But definitely twenty twenty took
a major hit to our profession, and I see it
as a nation just starting to climb out of that.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
We're speaking with Chief of Police for the Omaha Police Department,
Tach Moder, on our phone line today. And when you
talk about that part of it recruiting, trying to attract
good officers to a police force that you need people,
you need a certain number of people if you're going
to have an effective police force and allow the community
(04:31):
to feel safe and cared for by the police department.
What are some of the strategies that you and the
rest of the force are kind of utilizing to try
to attract those good officers that either have no experience
or are just kind of getting their careers going, but
may have been scared off of being a police officer
(04:52):
based on things that have happened in the last few years.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, let me give a little background emory before I
kind of get to that, because I think it's important.
We used to have a tremendous amount of applicants right
at twenty twenty, that's when it kind of shut off,
and it shut off all across this country. So we're
part of the national narrative as it relates to our
(05:15):
hiring right now and our retention. And for a law
enforcement agency, it's not just numbers. You got to get
the quality applicants there, because we really only retain about
nine percent of all applicants that apply to the police
department here because we scrutinize it very heavily and we
want to make sure we're getting the best of the best.
If not, you just kind of run into problems down
(05:37):
the road. So that's kind of first and foremost. And
we've been fortunate here in Omaha that we don't have
any stress points. We're down in staff. I think we're
down close to one hundred officers above. Our response time
remains the same, crime is at it's all time low.
We just aren't seeing the stress points yet, but they're coming.
Because the internal stress point is we're going to look,
(05:59):
we're getting some staff burnout right now. And so we
put a lot of effort into the recruitment phase. And
one of the first things the mayor stepped up and
did really is they say, look, all law enforcement and
police officers is going to get a large raise, because
we needed to keep up with the wave across this
country of everybody raising their pay to try to get applicants.
(06:21):
And so we did that. But in addition to that,
we're really targeting our core. We get a lot of
lateral transfers from other major cities. Omaha is attractive. We
try to bring them in. Obviously, You and O is
a hotbed for us. Memory we really draw from the
U and O pool quite a bit. Happy to say
they've got more people in their criminalis program than they
(06:44):
ever have before, so they're signs of that's really starting
to turn around. And then of course there's the military
institutions and things like that have been good for us
as wealth nentery level police officers. And then you take
that complete overlay and you put it to national campaign
and then you really dive into the diverse parts that
(07:05):
you want too, because we want to be reflective of
our community and so we try to hit areas where
we can get diverse candidates as well. And we're coming around.
We were starting to gain ground last couple of years.
We keep adding more and more applicants. This year we
added more and more than we did the last few years.
So it's getting there. But it's a process, and it's
(07:26):
a process because of the national hit that was that
occurred in our country.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Speaking with a Chief of police, Tashmad from the Omaha
Police Department, you mentioned you and O and people trying
to learn about this. This is a good thing, I
think for a lot of people in general to be
thinking about ways that to reach young people and how
police forces are supposed to work because it's become a political,
(07:54):
you know, situation for a lot of places in the
country that the police officers do not represent everyone. That's
something that police departments like yourselves have to kind of
battle against you and O isn't a good tool. But
I noticed that you are having a book. You've released
a book recently that is actually going to be utilized
as part of a course at UNO as well. Tell
(08:14):
me about the book and what you hope that some
people that are college age are going to be learning
about from the book that you've written.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Sure, thank you. The book is called Synergy of Influence,
and it's really designed as a textbook, but we've crafted
it for as a reader as well. Again, a lot
of audience from just the general population have read it
and just really liked the content of it. What really
was the genesis behind it was sitting in my job
(08:42):
as long as I have, I've noticed that there was
no college curriculum on police leadership in the media. And
you can have a law enforcement agency be as adept
and as skilled as you could be in investigating and
making arrest, but if you can't relate that appropriately to
the community, if you can't relay what has taken place,
(09:05):
then your police community relations is forever going to suffer
and always be behind. So the book, it really is
the first of its kind that was written in the
first it would be the first college course on this
in August of twenty twenty five in You and O.
And the interesting part about the book Memory is that
takes the biggest cases, the national cases that OMAHA has had,
(09:28):
really dives into those and gives the leadership perspective and
a little extra as to what took place behind the scenes,
and kind of walks everybody through all of that. And
that's what's made it's sort of an insightful read for everybody.
But the book also gets into race and policing. It
gets into the media dynamics that you hear so much
about across the country, especially during political times. And the goal,
(09:53):
the goal of this book is to really streamline the profession,
take the politics out of it, and demonstrate what needs
to be done under these formats. Because you are right
on one thing, law enforcement, the court systems, they really
should not have any political spend to them. And I
(10:13):
think the country has taken that and we have now
a spin on some of this and we got to
get out of that.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
One thing at a time. Obviously, for a lot of
people in this country trying to understand what can or
cannot be done to try to do this, and Omaha
is certainly a jewel in that regard to try to
be an example for the people around the country as
to how to handle a city of the size of
Omaha nearly five hundred thousand people. Well, Chief, I hope
(10:43):
that this is just the first of many conversations you
and I can have about things that are happening in
and around Omaha. Thank you so much for being a
part of our show and kind of talking to us today.
Have a merry Christmas and happy Holidays and we'll speak soon.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Hey, thanks Henry for having me on. My best to
your audience, and Merry Christmas everyone,
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