Dewayne White – 30 seconds

Editor’s note: This is a longer version of the interview that appears in the print edition of 225.

Dewayne White has become the City of Baton Rouge’s top crime fighter at a time when murders continue to frighten and frustrate residents.

White left a top post at State Police to become police chief. Just a few months into the job, he’s making significant changes he says will make our streets safer and the department more effective.

Tell us about your first month on the job.

… To make sure our manpower allocation is where it needs to be to service the calls of the community, I’ve been meeting each Friday with the men and women in the field. I’m now taking the opportunity to actually go into the field to speak to these officers without their supervisors present. I’m getting a lot of candid feedback that I would not otherwise know.

How are you eliminating redundancies and refining procedures?

I’ve found that we have positions that can be civilianized, and I’ve done so. Then, I’ve moved the lieutenants we had in those positions to the field. Plus, we’ve had operations that sometimes overlap into different disciplines. Case in point: the detective office. … I’ve looked at the table of organization there and found that there were too many specialized units; I wanted them to generalize more. So, the commander of the Detective Bureau made several recommendations with which I’ve concurred. These include moving auto theft and impound together. Also, we are moving forgery and felony theft together to make it a financial crimes unit. You can see the redundancies there because if you have a forgery, you oftentimes have a felony theft, and now we have one unit that is looking at two criminal acts.

How can civilianizing positions help?

You have veteran, tenured, ranked officers that are managing venues, like extra duty and other duties within the operational services unit, where a civilian supervisor is fully capable of supervising the civilians that are assigned to perform those administrative tasks. That officer—who this department has invested a lot of time, money and effort into training as a police officer—is vested with the powers to make arrests and make this community safer. It is incumbent of me to use those resources in the most effective and most prudent manner possible.

Some officers complain they aren’t allowed to be aggressive enough to fight violent crime in Baton Rouge.

What I can tell you is that I’ve told my officers that when they are confronted with a situation that requires action, I expect them to act. But not every situation involves an incident where someone deserves a ticket, or where compassion can’t be exercised. When a situation dictates that we do our job, I expect them to do it. I expect them to perform their duties in a professional manner to ensure that we adhere to the policies of this department and that we ensure we protect each and every person’s individual rights and freedoms.

Tell us more about moving ranked officers out of headquarters.

After speaking to the rank and file, I find that morale is rather low, and that there’s a disconnect between them and their first and second line of supervisors. The main problems there are lack of communication, lack of leadership and lack of definitive guidance. I plan to address these problems at the command level by giving subordinates a clear understanding of expectations from their supervisors. I’m holding the commanders responsible for making sure that those lieutenants and sergeants convey orders that are concise and don’t conflict with one another. As it is now, the officers are sometimes frustrated because they’re getting conflicting orders from their supervisors. And of course, when an officer is frustrated, their productivity will tend to suffer and motivation begins to wane. I want esprit de corps, professionalism, accountability and discipline within the ranks. With morale increasing, productivity will increase. With that, you will see more of a willingness of officers to interact with the public. I’ve said from day one that our ability to win the public’s trust is paramount to our success. Without the public giving us the information we need, we will not be effective in solving crimes. This is a police-community partnership, which as chief, I aim to foster and nurture.

You’ve said you want to fill 70 vacant positions on the force. Is there funding for those positions so that’s it’s simply a matter of finding the right candidates? Is there a shortage of qualified candidates?

We have no shortage of qualified candidates. Actually, as we speak, we are going through the vetting process for a 25-man class that will commence in August. I will then ask for additional monetary resources in the 2012 budget for additional manpower. But I’m not so sure that additional manpower is as important as using the manpower we have now in a more effective manner. We can be more effective with what we have by simply identifying roles of people who have traditionally done a particular function and determining whether that function requires a fulltime officer or not. In many cases, upon review of several such positions, I’ve found that we did not. So, what I’ve done is placed those people in more responsive roles, and then made their prior job their ancillary responsibility. For instance, we had a lieutenant who was assigned to Explosives; however, the city police has absolutely no regulatory authority over Explosives at all. The Legislature has given that responsibility solely to state police. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t respond, but the number of calls that we received over the last calendar year for that service does not justify or warrant a fulltime person. So, I’ve transferred that person to a more responsible position where he can better serve this agency. Also, if the need arises, he can fall out and perform that Explosives function.

Some officers on the force told us they believed that under Chief LeDuff they were not allowed to be aggressive enough with felony suspects, especially in high-crime areas of town. Are you making any changes in how your officers can confront and/or deter street crimes?

I can’t elaborate on what Chief LeDuff did or did not do. I wasn’t here nor was I part of that regime—nor have we discussed that. What I can tell you is that I’ve told my officers that when they are confronted with a situation that requires action, I expect them to act. But not every situation involves an incident where someone deserves a ticket, or where compassion can’t be exercised. When a situation dictates that we do our job, I expect them to do it. I expect them to perform their duties in a professional manner to ensure that we adhere to the policies of this department and that we ensure we protect each and every person’s individual rights and freedoms.

What procedural or organizational approaches from your time with the State Police do you plan to implement here?

What has been obvious to me not too long into my tenure here is that we need a more definitive chain-of-command structure. We have captains supervising captains, and I do not believe that’s the most effective way of managing a police department. That’s why the 2010 legislative session authorized a municipality such as Baton Rouge to put into classified service the rank of deputy chief. I have subsequently asked the mayor to put that on the Metro Council docket for possible adoption. I would like three deputy chiefs: One over Patrol, one over Detectives and one over Support Services. I believe that’s important because I can hold those deputy chiefs responsible for their individual programs. Since those jobs are subject to review after three years, if a change needs to be made, I have the ability to do that. The law allows for the police chief to choose someone who will serve best in that capacity, and if they’re not meeting my expectations, they can be removed without cause.

Walk us through your typical day.

Most of my days are 12 to 15 hours long. Some days I start early, or I don’t get home until 9 p.m.—it just depends. My typical day is focused solely on the advancement of this department and meeting its stated goals and objectives. I’ve retired from state police with over 29 years of credible service, and I came here to make a difference. I intend to leave this agency better than I found it, and I intend to make Baton Rouge a safer place so people can feel safe in their communities and safe in their home.

As chief, every Sunday I am visiting different churches in the community. With the help of the pastors and ministers of this city working collectively with this department, I believe we can make Baton Rouge a much safer place. Ministers have influence on their congregation. When they see the chief making himself available to the congregation to hear the concerns of their membership and then taking those concerns and acting upon them, you not only win the trust of the pastor, you also win the trust of the congregation. That transcends to families throughout Baton Rouge and surrounding areas.

What is your take on the recent explosion of violent crime here in Baton Rouge?

Baton Rouge is the most populous parish in the state. Hurricane Katrina forced a lot of people to move from lower parts of Louisiana to Baton Rouge and the North Shore, so we’ve had a demographic change. But I don’t think we can say solely that Katrina and the people who moved from Katrina are the main source of our problem. We have a lot of homegrown problems here as well. When you have 800 [thousand] to a million people in a 20-, 30-mile radius of Baton Rouge who come into work each and every day, then criminals are opportunists. That’s why the criminal element is here, because the opportunity is here.

What can be done to combat this violence?

It all starts at home. Know where your children are, what they’re doing, who they’re seeing. It’s all about accountability and rearing your children right. I understand that there’s a breakdown in the family, and then children go astray. But we’re helping through outreach programs, like the initiatives we’re taking on in the Police Achievement League and our involvement with young children through the latchkey program and other programs where they see policemen in a different light. Instead of them seeing us solely in positions of taking people to jail for violation of law, now they see us as just regular human beings who are expressing concern for their well-being and mentoring those children.

There are also some initiatives I will be proposing in the 2012 budget that will call for additional overtime in order to saturate high-crime areas during peak hours of criminal activity to suppress crime. We may not be able to put all criminals in jail, but what we can do is make it so difficult for criminals to operate here in Baton Rouge that they will go elsewhere.

How has the community received you?

I am overwhelmingly humbled by their outpouring of support. I did not expect this amount of support, but I am certainly glad to have received it. From councilmembers to pastors to community and civic leaders, I am just humbled by the amount of support given to this office. People want to see their police department do well. They want to see us succeed.

Have the changes you’ve made so far had any effect?

Not yet. Sometimes these processes are held back by budgetary restraints or the requirement of Metro Council approval. But as these initiatives and plans evolve, I know the community will see a more responsive, more professional and more accountable police department. I vow to work tirelessly to make Baton Rouge a safer place for people to live and work, and I will take whatever steps necessary, within the constraints of this office, to ensure that happens.