Increased Patrols in Downtown Omaha

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You've heard for the past week aboutsome trouble down in the Geen Lahey Mall.
Whether it turns warmer people get downthere, the beautiful place that's so
much too many hundreds of millions ofdollars went into revamping that in the riverfront,
and here comes some young rowdies causingtrouble at least two nights and we're
coming off another weekend. I wantto get an update, and Officer Pad

(00:23):
Dempsey's with us from Omaha Police Department, incoming president of the Omaha Police Officers
Association. Pad, good morning,Good morning, thanks for having me you
back. Good to have you on. Was it a relatively quiet weekend?
It was. I spoke with acouple of members who were down there this
weekend. They had a bunch ofextra resources as far as officers and extra
security, but no major incidents likewe did the weekend before. What's it

(00:47):
going to take, in your viewas a professional, how many officers,
particularly on weekends, and how doesthat impact what's already a staffing issue.
I don't think we can put afinite number of officers to stop the problem.
You know, you can't control onehundred juveniles who out running roughshod around

(01:08):
the enormous park like that. Itis going to take mecha to step up
and put a curfew in place,or put some kind of policy in place
so that those miners who are downthere have to be accompanied at all time
by a parent or an adult.If that's not the case, and we
need to maybe look at city councilto change some kind of city ordinance to

(01:29):
enforce something like that. Yeah,are you a fan of curfews in general?
I think curfews can work in certainincidents. I don't think they should
be applied across the city. Butwhen citizens don't feel safe to enjoy such
a beautiful park, like Jean Leahymall and I think it needs to be
explored. Well, I mean,the fact of the matter is bat you

(01:51):
know, I mean, people arenot If this keeps happening, people goes
I'm not going down there. Igo down there and you know, early
afternoon or something, but I'm notgoing to be going down there. And
if you kill that off, that'sa tremendous deficit to our city. It
really is. That's extremely, extremelyunfortunate. You know, that park is

(02:13):
so beautiful. There's a lot ofsmall businesses down there. I mean,
I take my family down there.So it's extremely disappointing that these juveniles have
ruined for a short period of time, such a beautiful place. What happened?
Did you witness any of it aweek or so ago? How would
you characterize these gang members or what? I wouldn't say they're gang members,

(02:34):
They're just un a company kids whohave no responsibility. Nobody's down there to
hold them accountable for their actions.No one's down there to to stop,
and it kind of becomes a mobmentality when you have that large number of
kids. What were they doing runningaround disobeying orders? Several fights broke out,
and those fights escalated outside the parkand was just unable to be controlled.

(02:59):
They would not leave when to relieve, and I believe pepperballs had to
be deployed. I think you describedthat as chaos for the officers. Yes,
extremely chaos of those officers working thatnight. Were their weapons involved?
Not that I'm aware of now,Yeah, I mean this has to be
by the way, what's your take, because you're the incoming Tony Connor has

(03:21):
been to President O POA for severalyears, you're the incoming president. What's
your view now the staffing situation withOPD. We've talked with the mayor,
We've talked with Chief Smater, andI know we're short. How short are
we last time? I last timeI heard, we were down about one
hundred and thirteen officers authorized strength aroundnine oh four, So it's it's going

(03:43):
to be stretching resources then. Iknow the officers feel it, but they're
still continuing to put that uniform onevery day and go to work. Yeah,
which we're very grateful for. AndI know we got the city council
and I stepped up at the Mayor'sb aston and and increased the pay.
Has that help? Can you tellthat yet? I believe it has helped.
I don't hear from the members asmuch as I did at that time.

(04:08):
Anytime you do have a pay increaselike that, it's helpful to all
of our members and hopefully it helpsget some new boots in the door.
Yeah. How's the recruiting? Isthat still difficult or has that pay increase
helped? I think it helped.According to our backgrounds, individuals who help
with the hiring, they said theydid see an increase in applicants, But

(04:30):
I don't think it's back to thenumbers we've seen, you know, prior
to twenty twenty. Yeah, wehave people pad of all different ages and
backgrounds listening for somebody who's interested ina career, a younger person. What
kind of person do you look foras the ideal applicant to become a police
officer? And we always look forsomeone that has that kind of type A

(04:54):
personality, wanted to take challenges headon, you willing to run into gunfire,
but willing to to but also willingto do shift work and sacrifice their
time and their resources for the bettermentof the city. Someone looking to serve
first. I assume with with aheart heart for service and also type A

(05:15):
in terms of an action type personwhen the situation calls for it. Absolutely,
you know, this job is everchanging. You can go from sitting
in your car enjoying your coffee toa hundred mile an hour pursuit blink of
an eye. So you have tohave someone that's willing to take on those
challenges head on, but also someonewho has that passion to serve. I

(05:36):
think Robert Barone and everybody loves Raymond. He played a cop in New York.
He said hours of boredom punctuated bya few minutes of sheer terror,
that is, police want to oneright there. Yeah, well then we
had an officer in Chicago right yesterdaykilled on his way home. Yes,
we did horrible. Thanks, well, we'll talk again. I'm sure.

(05:59):
I appreciate you coming on this morning. Thank you for having me. I
have a great day, police officer. I'm a police officer. Pat Dempsey,
incoming President of the Police Officers Association. Vital Community Intel for you every
day. Gary Sadelemeyer and kfab's morningnews