PRENTISS SMITH
Contributing Columnist
Chief Wayne Smith has caught up with the car, now what does he do with it? In other words, he got the job. He is now the face of the Shreveport Police Department, something he has dreamed about for years. Chief Wayne Smith, a consummate professional who has devoted his life to law enforcement, now gets a chance to lead a department that he has been a part of his life for over 40 years.
Chief Smith is someone whom everyone knows and everyone likes, and now he finally gets an opportunity to help fix the broken communities that are beset with crime, poverty and lack of opportunity for their citizens. He understands these endemic problems and is ready to tackle them in a holistic and comprehensive way. The Perkins administration made the right decision to take the "interim" off of Chief Smith’s title.
Smith, who was appointed to the position on an interim basis by the mayor, is now the leader of the Shreveport Police Department. Everyone who knows Chief Smith knows that he is passionate about the city of Shreveport, and that speaks well for the city’s new top cop. Chief Smith has already put his mark on the department. Morale is higher, and the officers appear to like the fact that Chief Smith has an open-door policy.
The key for the new police chief is communication, which means honest and open communication with the mayor and his administration, communication with the citizens of Shreveport. He also must communicate with leaders of neighborhood organizations, which will allow him to build the trust needed to be successful.
Policing is hard, and being the leader of a police department is even harder than that. Shreveport is a moderate-sized city, with a fairly diverse population that has its own set of problems. One of the main problems today is the crime seen in some neighborhoods, especially predominantly black neighborhoods. Citizens want to have confidence that something is being done to bring down the crime in their neighborhoods.
Chief Smith applied for the job in the past and, for whatever reason, was never given the opportunity to lead the department. Well, now he has the job, and he has the opportunity to put his ideas into action and make his mark on the Shreveport Police Department.
The new chief, who I believe deserved to be given the job permanently, is a good man. He has been on the job for several months, and there is already some improvement in the overall crime numbers in Shreveport. In fact, overall crime is down by 16%, with the majority of that drop coming from a drop in aggravated assaults, burglaries and thefts.
That is a good start, but the chief wants everyone to know that it is just a start to what he believes will be a new beginning in the fight to have safe streets and communities in Shreveport. That new beginning will not be a reality until homicides decrease. Everything else can decrease, but people won’t feel safe in their homes until the number of homicides decrease.
Perception is reality, and the reality is that too many people, predominantly black people, are dying in these neighborhoods. That is the reality that has to be addressed by Chief Smith, or he will suffer the same fate as previous Shreveport police chiefs.
As Chief Smith recently said, “I have seen our city at its lowest time, and I have seen it at its best of times.” Today, Shreveport has been operating at one of its lowest times in the history of the city, with homicides on a record pace and aggravated assaults still very high. In other words, there is still a lot of hard work to be done to bring the crime numbers down, and Chief Smith has begun to implement his own plan.
He is in the process of implementing new initiatives to get his officers on the street, starting with hiring more officers and seeking better starting pay for those officers. Chief Smith is a realist, and he realizes that numbers and statistics don’t mean a thing if citizens don’t feel safe in their homes.
The new chief knows that there is still a lot of work to be done, but he believes he is up to the job, and time will tell if he can put his mark on this police department. He will be held accountable. The Perkins administration got this one right. And that is the way I see it. smithpren@aol.com.