Brooklyn Park Police Dept. Building New Intervention Team
LaTreasure Dickson started in her new role in the Brooklyn Park Police Department this summer, and already she knows her Community Intervention office will do things differently.
Brooklyn Park police hired LaTreasure Dickson earlier this year to head up the new Community Intervention office.
“We are building something that the nation has not seen yet, as far as we know,” Dickson said. “We are focused on intentionally touching the lives of the youth of Brooklyn Park by focusing specifically on the top 20 percent of those who are committing crimes in Brooklyn Park, trying to lead them to a different pathway.”
The workflow seems simple enough: work with officers to identify those in the Brooklyn Park community who tend to frequent areas police are most often needed, and see if there are ways the Community Intervention team, with its case workers and data analysts, can connect them and their families with more resources.
“Our police officers are having the most interaction with ‘frequent fliers’ as you would say in our community,” said Dickson. “We want to make sure that we’re touching those lives as positively as possible.”
This is on the heels of the city trying several different models of outsourcing violence interruption teams to try to stem crime before it happens.
“It’s different than violence interruption because we’re not focused only on violence. We would love to be a part of the positivity in community. We would love to place our team in places where they are seeing violent crime and crime in general, but then that’s changing around into something positive that they’re seeing,” she said. “We love that our team is going to have the expectation of not only being able to respond to a crime scene but also just be a part of neighborhood activities and events. We want to be very dynamic in this space.”
Several openings need to be filled on the team, which Dickson said will have its own vehicles and put members out in the community every single day.
“Brooklyn Park is so innovative, just in the way they think and they want to be something first and forward, and to be part of something that is so positive for the community and I’m excited to see where it goes for sure,” Dickson said.
