Policing in Mankato a community effort

By Dan Nienaber, The Free Press

MANKATO, Minn. (AP) - As a small but colorful piece of green space in the heart of Mankato, Jackson Square has become a popular daytime spot for workers looking for an escape from the office or customers who want a place to rest while doing business downtown.

Earlier this summer it also became the hangout for a handful of people who spent hours in the small park. They sipped from bottles of booze or cans of malt liquor wrapped in paper bags, and took long naps in the shade.

Their activities were keeping others away. It didn't take long for complaints to start flowing into the Mankato Department of Public Safety.

Police officers were used to getting complaints about the square at night, especially when the nearby downtown bars are busy. But this daytime problem wasn't going away with frequent patrols and a few harsh suggestions to move along.

This solution required help from city workers who don't wear a police uniform and citizens who wanted the park back. It also turned out to be a training tool for the city's growing focus on community policing.

"It's a small park, but we had multiple complaints about drinking and intoxicated individuals," said Cmdr. Debbie McDermott of the Department of Public Safety. "It basically was becoming a park that wasn't being used by the people it was designed for."

Alcohol without a city permit is now banned from the square. Parks employees have trimmed the bottoms of the pine trees in the park so they're more difficult to hide behind. Employees at businesses in the area have agreed to call police if they see a problem.

City codes also have been adjusted so someone who doesn't follow the rules can be banned from the park for 30 days, then arrested for trespassing if they don't stay away. Repeated offenses can result in a 60-day ban. It's basically the same ordinance that's been used to keep people out of private businesses, such as a mall, when they don't follow the rules.

What happened in Jackson Square fit a community policing technique Public Safety Director Todd Miller refers to as S.A.R.A., which stands for scanning, analysis, response and assessment. The cause of a problem is identified and analyzed from several perspectives before a plan is put in place to deal with it. Once the plan is enacted, those involved check back repeatedly to decide whether the problem has been solved or the plan has to be adjusted.

By making the square a place where the people it was designed for feel safe and comfortable, the people causing problems were displaced, said Matt Westermayer, deputy director. And, if the new rules weren't being followed, citizens knew the response would be quick if they called police.

"You don't have to be a vigilante, but you do have to be vigilant by taking ownership," he said. "So, if there's a problem and we're not there, call us."

McDermott used the park as an example while participating in a recent round of training on community policing techniques. Every public safety employee, many other city employees and a variety of Mankato citizens will be participating in one of three sets of training sessions between August and November.

There were about 40 people, including McDermott, in the August training sessions. They were each required to identify five problems in the city, three related to crime and two related to quality of life. The larger group was then broken down into five groups that each had to pick a problem to solve. McDermott's group picked Jackson Square.

"At the end of this training, we'll have 15 problems we've started working on," Miller said. "The training is actually jump starting us on dealing with issues facing the community."

Once the training sessions are done, Miller also plans to break the city down into policing districts. Each district already has a public safety commander, many of which live in the district they represent. Those districts will eventually be broken down into neighborhoods that will each be assigned a police officer.

Those officers will document the problems in their neighborhoods and how they worked with residents, and others with an interest, to solve them. Miller said that will create a library of data that other officers can tap into when they are facing a similar problem in another neighborhood.

That information also will be shared with other communities.

"This is something we've always done, but we're taking it to the next level," Westermayer said. "When you're constantly responding to the same issue over and over, it's nice to step back and be able to address the problem so it's taken care of once and for all."

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)