POLICE CHIEF REFLECTS ON FIRST YEAR

When his first anniversary on the job came Jan. 13, the head of the Cape Girardeau Police Department did not mark the occasion with any self-congratulatory celebration.

Instead, Chief Rick Hetzel spent the day at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va., as a part of a two-week development seminar for law enforcement executives.

Even when he returned to his office following the Martin Luther King holiday, Hetzel was reluctant to speak about his own accomplishments since coming to Cape Girardeau, preferring to talk about the department as a whole.

"Before I came here, I made the assumption that all police officers were alike. I was wrong. The officers here are among the best in terms of compassion and loyalty," Hetzel said.

"We're very fortunate here that we don't have a number of the problems that other cities have in terms of corruption or officers fighting the city," he said.

Most important, he pointed out, was the work ethic and pride of the officers who work around him.

He recalled a wintery morning in December when the temperature was below freezing. When he came in at 7 a.m., he found two officers washing their patrol cars in the freezing weather to get ready for their shifts.

"When I retold the story at the FBI training, people were amazed," he said.

He estimated that the police in Cape Girardeau make a quarter million contacts with citizens every year, most in negative situations like arrests, accidents or traffic violations.

But even with a quarter million contacts, the department receives less than 100 complaints a year, each of which is thoroughly investigated.

An important component in keeping the department running smoothly is team-managed approach which he has brought to the department, Hetzel said.

"The traditional way of doing things in a police department was to have an autocratic chief who micromanaged everything. But we learned that the policy of the chief was not always the policy used out on the street, and that really hinders progress," he said.

Instead, the department has developed teams -- open to anyone in the department -- that work on different concerns from strategic planning and physical fitness to uniforms and equipment.

The teams then make their recommendations to him, which he, as chief, is free to accept or reject, though, he added he hadn't rejected one team recommendation yet.

Research done by the uniform and equipment team resulted in an additional patrol car for the department, Hetzel said. It was that type of creative input that he had hoped to secure from the teams.

"We want every employee to provide good ideas," he said.

In fact, good communication has become something of a theme in the department since Hetzel's arrival.

"If there's one thing I feel I've accomplished in the first year is that I've opened up communication," Hetzel said.

He has encouraged the communication through his open-door policy, e-mail availability, monthly personnel meetings and something he refers to as MBWA -- management by walking around.

Communication is also something which Hetzel has encouraged between the department and the community at large. Since his arrival, the department has placed a school resource officer in the Cape Girardeau public schools, helped implement CrimeStoppers, begun Operation Safe Streets to bring a more visible police presence to the city and started the Chief's Club at Schulz Middle School and "Behind the Badge," a program which airs on the local cable-access station.

The programs are all a part of the proactive approach which Hetzel takes toward law enforcement.

"That means getting out and solving problems and not waiting for problems to manifest themselves," he said.

He compared it to standing in front of a dam, trying to stick fingers in a hole and realizing that it is time to rebuild the foundation.

"The traditional approach has always been reactive, where police only react to problems. Certainly we cannot get out of the reactive mode. We always take the calls," he said.

But, he added that the proactive approach gets the department into the community to solve problems before they start.

The methamphetamine problem will continue to be a top priority, the chief said.

"Recently, there has been a downward trend in crime in the United States. Sometimes the American public has an out-of-sight out-of-mind idea and thinks that a problem has been fixed," he said.

But, problems are on the horizon and the police need to be continually agressive in their fight against crime, Hetzel said. In particular, he pointed out the growing problem of methamphetamine in the Cape Girardeau area.

"It is not time to stick our heads in the sand," Hetzel said.