Chief of Police Eric Payne Wants To Be Known For Building Relationships
Grand Rapids Chief of Police Eric Payne was recently installed in his new position at a ceremony held on July 22, 2019. In this interview with the GR Times, he discusses his biggest challenges, diversity within the police department, police and community relations and more.
GRT: How will the new strategic plan for the City of Grand Rapids make a difference for the police department?
Chief Payne: City Manager Mark Washington instituted the strategic planning. It is a collaborative effort among all of the city's departments, including the police department. It lists goals to accomplish over the next three years. The police department is instrumental in the public safety side of the plan. The one goal that I am very glad to see in the plan is all city employees having some kind of cultural competency training so that we better understand people living in our community. I am very much in favor of it. That's just one pare. There are several different parts of the plan the GRPD hopes to address over the next three years.
GRT: Does the strategic plan provide any clarity in areas like community policing, for example?
Chief Payne: One of the main points of the strategic plan and also the goal of the police department is keeping the city safe. My number one priority is the police department doing our part in helping to keep this city safe. With that said, the community policing model fits right into that.
What I want to do is to get officers out into the community where they are relating to people in a non - enforcement contact building relationships.
It is mentioned in the strategic plan, but one of the issues we've had and need to do better with.
It goes both ways — with the police department and the community — in building relationships that will hopefully lead to better trust. I think that it all goes towards making the city a better place to live.
GRT: What can the community expect from police officers that will be different under your leadership?
Chief Payne: I think that we have done a good job in the department with holding our officers accountable and we will continue to do that. When they do something right, I would like to see us celebrate that more, where it is not just the negative things that occur and that just happens during the course of policing.
I would like to be able to celebrate some of those positive things more, keeping in mind that I will hold the department's officers accountable, but I also want to hold the community accountable because we can't do this alone.
I want the community to step up so that we can build a relationship where the community realizes that they are as much a part of keeping this city safe as the police department is.
I am also going to look at transparency. We are going to try to get better information about what is going on within the city. We are going to take the good that we are doing and expand upon that; but if there are things that we can do better then, we have to take a hard look at that, too.
GRT: What do you see as your biggest challenge as the new Chief of Police?
Chief Payne: Well, we've had a recent spike in violent crime; and, unfortunately, we recognize this. People ask me how our numbers are looking and I have commented that one is too many. My personal goal is zero.
We are not a huge city, but we are a large city and we have big city issues. I understand that.
Unfortunately, there will be violence in the city; but one of my biggest challenge is getting a handle on this violence, specifically gun violence involving young people and affecting our neighborhoods. I am reaching out to the community and asking them to be as much a part of the solution.
Our jails are packed and I don't see that as a solution.
We need to come up with better ways of reaching these young people, especially the ones who are involved in this gun violence and show them a different way.
Our officers still need to be engaged but looking at different ways to impacting this gun violence is one of the biggest challenges that we have. We are looking at the cure violence model that has been proven to reduce gun violence, so we have to take a hard look at that and nontraditional ways of impacting that.
GRT: What is the biggest challenge that the department itself is facing?
Chief Payne: Basically, it is hiring.
We are going through a lot of attrition right now. I know that a lot has been said about the reductions that we have had over the years, but the city manager and commission have authorized us to get back up to the numbers that we were, which is 400. That can't happen over night, just as the reductions didn't happen over night.
We have both civilian and sworn police added to our numbers, but it is going to be a challenge over the next few years with our attrition rate — those eligible to retire and then replacing those officers and then looking forward and looking at being fiscally responsible in increasing our sworn and non - sworn positions within the police department.
We've had a number of studies done, like the staffing and deployment study. How do we best implement some of the recommendations on many of those studies and how can we run as efficiently as we can with the number of people we have? Those are some of the challenges that we face, and I look forward to meeting them with my command staff and implementing some of those recommendations.
GRT: Why do we not see officers of color patrolling neighborhoods of color?
Chief Payne: We are always looking to have a police force that represents our community and with that said, diversity is the other big part of the whole hiring process. I want the best candidates to be police officers in the city of Grand Rapids.
Sometimes people get hung up on my saying the best candidates.
I want people with life experiences, who have dealt with different cultures, that are good citizens. We find them occasionally, but we need more.
Again, I will ask for the help of the community to send people our way who have an interest. I am constantly trying to recruit to have a more diverse department. We have our community engagement group and that is one of the their priorities. If you are a good candidate, then we want you to take a look at the Grand Rapids Police Department and see whether or not you fit. We also sponsor people to go to the police academy who can't afford to go through the academy.
What it allows us to do is to be more selective over the people we hire.
GRT: When you are finished being the Chief of Police and looking at retirement, what do you want to be known for?
Chief Payne: I think that the biggest thing that I have done throughout my whole career is building relationships. I really think that having a good relationship with the community is key. We may not agree sometimes, but we still need to have conversations and from that I think comes trust.
At the end of my time, whenever that may be, I would hope that I look back and can say that during my time at the GR Police Department that I built a level of trust that is unequal in law enforcement. I want us to be the model where other agencies from around the country come, look at us and say this is what Grand Rapids did, and we want to emulate that.
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