| ADVERTISEMENT |
Interview with George Gascón, City of Mesa Police Department Chief
Mesa, Arizona - BARRIOZONA: You have been the Mesa Police Chief
for two years. How would you describe this period in terms of goal
achievement?
GEORGE GASCÓN: There are several things that... these two years
have been very exciting for me. I think that they have provided a
tremendous amount of opportunity for us to grow as an
organization, as well as increase the level of services for our
community. We have experienced significant reductions in crime
overall in the last two years; approximately 15 percent of the serious
crimes have been reduced in the past two years. We have increased
our level of efficiency in many areas, and reduced some of the
operations costs. I think we have increased our ability to work with
the community; we created the community forums; we have also
created community police advisory boards in each of our police
stations. We have increased our interaction with the local schools in
order to provide intervention programs. So there’s a whole host of
things that we have done in order to improve our services. We have
also increased the training that is provided to our police officers, and
the organization is evolving. You know we are in difficult financial
times and we are trying to look for ways to reduce our operational
costs, and yet not to reduce the level of services for the
community.
BZ: What have you learned about the City of Mesa that you did not
know prior to your arrival?
GG: I think by and large I was pretty familiar with the city. I did a lot
of research prior to coming to the city. I understood the financial
problems that the city was facing. I also knew some of the social
problems that the city was encountering. So I think by and large I
had a very good idea where the department was, where the city
was. So there really hasn’t been many surprises.
BZ: In 2008, how is the City of Mesa a safer or more dangerous
place to live or to do business?
GG: I think the city is certainly safer. If we use crime reductions as a
benchmark of what Mesa city is, is a safer place to be. The crime in
the city overall is lower. In the areas where we had some issues we
have improved our ability to resolve those issues. Crime clearances
by detectives is higher, meaning that we have been able to
determine who the people were who committed a crime, and we
have been able to make the arrest on it. So overall Mesa is a safer
place today than [what] it was two years ago. Now, does it mean
that we are perfect? Obviously not. Do we need to continue to
improve our operations? Obviously we do.
BZ: Having worked in law enforcement for three decades, what do
you consider being the most significant differences on how police
work is done today?
GG: I think there’s a variety of things. I think number one there is
obviously technology is different than it used to be 30 years ago. I
think also the public expectation of what police services should be is
very different today. There is a greater demand on what police
needs to do. People expect a different level of services. The
complexity of the profession has increased tremendously in the last
three decades. It is much more difficult being a police officer today
than it was 30 years ago.
BZ: Does the use of new technology and statistical data make police
work more effective or more complex?
GG: I think both. I think it certainly made it more effective. I think if
we look especially at the crime reductions that have occurred
nationwide in the last 15 years, they’re very significant, and I think
that technology and statistical analysis was a tool that assists us in
getting to those reductions in many cases. Obviously the more tools
that you put in the bag, and the more technologically advanced that
those tools are, the more complicated the work has to be.
BZ: The City of Mesa has recently approved a new policy to allow
your department to ask all suspects about their legal status. What
could be the advantages and drawbacks of this move?
GG: This is a policy that has been developed over time. We have
worked with a lot of different stakeholders in order to develop this
policy. The policy provides an effective tool for police officers to crime
fight. I think that when people are committing crimes in our city
─regardless of whether they’re here legally or not─ we need to use
all the tools available to us in order to fight crime, and reduce…
improve public safety. If the person is here committing crimes and
also happens to be here without documents, we want to make sure
that our people can avail themselves with the tools that are
available in order to deal with people that are here illegally. I think
the drawback in this is really something that has to do more with
ourselves being able to educate the community. As soon as the
people understand that the police department is here to serve every
community, and if you are a law-abiding person, and the only activity
that you are engaged in is crossing the border without authority,
that that’s not going to be our primary focus for our department; that’
s really a federal question. On the other hand, if you are here, and
you are here without authority, and you are committing crimes,
certainly we are going to use those tools in order to deal with the
problem.
BZ: What are your thoughts on racial profiling?
GG: I think the issue of racial profiling is very complicated. There are
constitutional questions when it comes to police involved equal
protection under the law that are very complex for police to work
with. I think that many times also there is a public perception that
certain behavior by the police may be acceptable. You know, people
look at people and they say, well, wait a minute they look to me as
someone that has committed a crime, you know, the case of
immigration, if they’re brown, and they appear to be poor, they must
be here illegally, and therefore why don’t you just go ahead and
arrest them; and obviously we don’t get to do that. You know,
constitutionally, there are some safeguards against that. Conversely,
I think that sometimes people assume that because police officers
make a disproportionate number of stops of one particular group,
than that automatically translates that police officers must be racially
profiling people, and the problem is neither one is correct. You know,
sometimes officer’s activities are going to be based on many different
factors, and depending on the time of the day, and depending on the
part of the city, depending on the type of activity that that police
officer is engaging in, he or she could disproportionately be making
stops of one group that when you actually get to the bottom of all it
is very appropriate. On the other hand, just because somebody has
a certain physical appearance, or race, or gender, or something,
does not necessarily gives the police a carte blanche to just make
stops and going to a fishing expedition. So, it is complex, there are
many legal concerns that sometimes are not readily visible to many
people, and is an area that we have to continuously work with our
people, to train police officers, and we also need to continuously
work with the community to educate them in order to understand
what are the constrains, and what some of this legal requirements
really mean, and what are the parameters that we can work under.
BZ: In the context of undocumented immigration in the United
States, can routine police work by local police departments help
solve, reduce or worsen this issue?
GG: The illegal immigration question in our country today is much
larger than anything that local policing can do. I think that the illegal
immigration is driven by economics, is driven by political issues, is a
legislative problem; and I think until we have legislative solution to
illegal immigration that has to come at a federal level is going to be
very difficult to fix the problem. I think than anybody that believes
that policing at the local level ─or quite frankly even at the federal
level─ that policing can fix this, is not understanding the complexity
and the legislative questions that are at hand. If you have anywhere
from 12 to possibly as many as 20 million people that are here
without authority on a variety of different levels, some of them
crossing the border illegally and therefore committing a criminal act;
someone who having crossed originally legally but then overstaying
their visa and therefore committing a civil violation, and you start
looking at all the different components of this, I think that it would be
naïve to believe that is going to be resolved through any kind of
policing. Now, does police has a ruling into the question? Absolutely
that we do. Under the local level we have that rule when people that
are here without authority or without documents are also engaging
in other criminal activity. At the federal level certainly there’s other
avenues including border patrol and some of the work that ICE does.
But I think, overall, until we come up with a legislative solution to this
problem, this is not going to be fixed.
BZ: Opposing and emotional viewpoints surrounded the immigration
sweeps conducted by Maricopa County Sheriff Office in Mesa. What
was the real essential issue you were concerned with?
GG: You know, our focus has always been in providing for the safety
of the people that live, work in the city, and certainly the safety of
anyone that wanted to come in here and exercise their constitutional
rights to their freedom of expression. We focus on our public safety
mission; we let other agencies focus in their own missions.
BZ: When MCSO conducted immigration sweeps in the city of
Phoenix, the police department did not intervene. What was the
reasoning behind planning and personally supervising such an
impressive operation in Mesa?
GG: Well, we learned. Sometimes we learn from other folk’s
experiences, and one of the things we noticed that occurred during
the Phoenix event, as well as the one in Guadalupe, was that the
emotions were running so high that there were very close calls in
terms of people engaging in violent activity. You had demonstrators
and the counter-demonstrators; you had people that were carrying
weapons; people that were threatening one another. In the case of
Guadalupe, we know that the sheriff actually had to move his
command post after the first night of operation, because he publicly
stated that he felt that the safety of the command post was
jeopardized. We wanted to make sure again: we were focusing in
our mission in the city of Mesa, and that should about public safety;
we wanted to make sure that public safety in Mesa was going to be
protected to the extent that we could.
BZ: Would the criticism and praise about your department’s posture
toward the MCSO’s operation in Mesa change your approach and
methods to ensure public safety in potential volatile situations?
GG: Yeah, no, I mean really not because, again, we… I think is really
important for everyone to understand that we’re focusing on what
we need to do in order to meet our mission that is to provide a safe
environment in the city of Mesa. We really are not focusing in
anybody else’s activity; we’re only focusing our police department
here responsible for providing the safety of the people in the city,
what we need to do, and we basically ─based on our best
knowledge of the time and the information that we had, based on
my experience and that of others here─ we elected how we were
going to respond to that operation. But, again, and it is really
important to understand, we were focusing on our mission, not
anybody else’s mission.
BZ: What is your model on how law enforcement agencies should
work together, and what potential consequences can arise when
there’s a lack of inter-department’s cooperation?
GG: Well, I think, you know, it is critically important for policing to
communicate with one another. I think that there are a lot of things
that work well when you have good inter-agency communication,
and we have proven that over and over in Mesa. Here we have
worked with other East Valley agencies; we’re continuously working
with other federal agencies, ICE, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the
Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Drug Enforcement
Administration, the U.S. Marshal’s office. In working with other local
agencies, we have been able to enhance our ability to deal with
crime fighting, and we believe that a lot of the reductions in crime in
the city of Mesa have been a direct result of those partnerships.
Conversely, I think when there’s a lack of communication, I think that
we all become less efficient, and I think that sometimes we actually
get to jeopardize public safety if we don’t communicate well with one
another.
BZ: How is your relationship with other city police chiefs around
Maricopa County?
GG:I think [it] is very high, very good. Evidence of that is that we
have the Information Fusion Center that is being housed in the city
of Mesa, and every other agency in the East Valley is a participant.
We have a very active East Valley’s chiefs of police association. We
partner regularly in many operations, so I would say that the
relationship at the chief level is very good, and so is it at the working
in the operation level.
BZ: What has your overall experience being the police chief in Mesa
taught you until this day?
GG: It’s taught me a variety of things. I think that I came from a
much larger agency where you had a lot of resources available to
use, so I had to learn how to operate obviously in a smaller
environment but also not have some of the resources that I had
available to me. I think that also the level of experience within the
agency; I came from an agency that has been operating in a large
city for many, many years, so we have protocols to deal with large
city problems. The city of Mesa is a city that has grown very rapidly in
a very short period of time, and a lot of the protocols, and a lot of
the systems that are in place were designed to deal with a much
smaller environment than what we work on. So I’ve had to learn to
create sometimes systems and protocols that were not there in
place before. Now, clearly my experience from L.A. has helped me
greatly in order to achieve those, but I have had to learn to operate
at a different level than I was accustomed to.
BZ: Do you have any final remarks?
GG: Yeah, I think that is important to recognize that policing is
always evolving just like any other profession. Sometimes we are
going to do well; sometimes we are not going to do as well. I think is
important to learn from our mistakes and to move on, but I think if
you look overall where the Mesa Police Department is today in how
much has been accomplished in the last two years, you see a
tremendous amount of progress. Not only measured in terms of
reduction in crime, but also I think it is important to measure it in
terms of community service, the communication level with many
segments of the community that before felt apprehensive about
coming to the police department; the fact that we are looking for
ways to reduce our operational costs, and yet maintain a high level
of police performance; almost by every measure that you look at our
police department today we’re doing much better than what we
were before. Crime is down, our clearance rate in solving crimes has
increased significantly; we have reduced our overtime costs; we
have increased communication level many communities that before
were not communicating as well with the police department. So I
think it is important to look at all these things in total, and
understand that policing is an evolving process and that we are
hoping to get better every day.
for two years. How would you describe this period in terms of goal
achievement?
GEORGE GASCÓN: There are several things that... these two years
have been very exciting for me. I think that they have provided a
tremendous amount of opportunity for us to grow as an
organization, as well as increase the level of services for our
community. We have experienced significant reductions in crime
overall in the last two years; approximately 15 percent of the serious
crimes have been reduced in the past two years. We have increased
our level of efficiency in many areas, and reduced some of the
operations costs. I think we have increased our ability to work with
the community; we created the community forums; we have also
created community police advisory boards in each of our police
stations. We have increased our interaction with the local schools in
order to provide intervention programs. So there’s a whole host of
things that we have done in order to improve our services. We have
also increased the training that is provided to our police officers, and
the organization is evolving. You know we are in difficult financial
times and we are trying to look for ways to reduce our operational
costs, and yet not to reduce the level of services for the
community.
BZ: What have you learned about the City of Mesa that you did not
know prior to your arrival?
GG: I think by and large I was pretty familiar with the city. I did a lot
of research prior to coming to the city. I understood the financial
problems that the city was facing. I also knew some of the social
problems that the city was encountering. So I think by and large I
had a very good idea where the department was, where the city
was. So there really hasn’t been many surprises.
BZ: In 2008, how is the City of Mesa a safer or more dangerous
place to live or to do business?
GG: I think the city is certainly safer. If we use crime reductions as a
benchmark of what Mesa city is, is a safer place to be. The crime in
the city overall is lower. In the areas where we had some issues we
have improved our ability to resolve those issues. Crime clearances
by detectives is higher, meaning that we have been able to
determine who the people were who committed a crime, and we
have been able to make the arrest on it. So overall Mesa is a safer
place today than [what] it was two years ago. Now, does it mean
that we are perfect? Obviously not. Do we need to continue to
improve our operations? Obviously we do.
BZ: Having worked in law enforcement for three decades, what do
you consider being the most significant differences on how police
work is done today?
GG: I think there’s a variety of things. I think number one there is
obviously technology is different than it used to be 30 years ago. I
think also the public expectation of what police services should be is
very different today. There is a greater demand on what police
needs to do. People expect a different level of services. The
complexity of the profession has increased tremendously in the last
three decades. It is much more difficult being a police officer today
than it was 30 years ago.
BZ: Does the use of new technology and statistical data make police
work more effective or more complex?
GG: I think both. I think it certainly made it more effective. I think if
we look especially at the crime reductions that have occurred
nationwide in the last 15 years, they’re very significant, and I think
that technology and statistical analysis was a tool that assists us in
getting to those reductions in many cases. Obviously the more tools
that you put in the bag, and the more technologically advanced that
those tools are, the more complicated the work has to be.
BZ: The City of Mesa has recently approved a new policy to allow
your department to ask all suspects about their legal status. What
could be the advantages and drawbacks of this move?
GG: This is a policy that has been developed over time. We have
worked with a lot of different stakeholders in order to develop this
policy. The policy provides an effective tool for police officers to crime
fight. I think that when people are committing crimes in our city
─regardless of whether they’re here legally or not─ we need to use
all the tools available to us in order to fight crime, and reduce…
improve public safety. If the person is here committing crimes and
also happens to be here without documents, we want to make sure
that our people can avail themselves with the tools that are
available in order to deal with people that are here illegally. I think
the drawback in this is really something that has to do more with
ourselves being able to educate the community. As soon as the
people understand that the police department is here to serve every
community, and if you are a law-abiding person, and the only activity
that you are engaged in is crossing the border without authority,
that that’s not going to be our primary focus for our department; that’
s really a federal question. On the other hand, if you are here, and
you are here without authority, and you are committing crimes,
certainly we are going to use those tools in order to deal with the
problem.
BZ: What are your thoughts on racial profiling?
GG: I think the issue of racial profiling is very complicated. There are
constitutional questions when it comes to police involved equal
protection under the law that are very complex for police to work
with. I think that many times also there is a public perception that
certain behavior by the police may be acceptable. You know, people
look at people and they say, well, wait a minute they look to me as
someone that has committed a crime, you know, the case of
immigration, if they’re brown, and they appear to be poor, they must
be here illegally, and therefore why don’t you just go ahead and
arrest them; and obviously we don’t get to do that. You know,
constitutionally, there are some safeguards against that. Conversely,
I think that sometimes people assume that because police officers
make a disproportionate number of stops of one particular group,
than that automatically translates that police officers must be racially
profiling people, and the problem is neither one is correct. You know,
sometimes officer’s activities are going to be based on many different
factors, and depending on the time of the day, and depending on the
part of the city, depending on the type of activity that that police
officer is engaging in, he or she could disproportionately be making
stops of one group that when you actually get to the bottom of all it
is very appropriate. On the other hand, just because somebody has
a certain physical appearance, or race, or gender, or something,
does not necessarily gives the police a carte blanche to just make
stops and going to a fishing expedition. So, it is complex, there are
many legal concerns that sometimes are not readily visible to many
people, and is an area that we have to continuously work with our
people, to train police officers, and we also need to continuously
work with the community to educate them in order to understand
what are the constrains, and what some of this legal requirements
really mean, and what are the parameters that we can work under.
BZ: In the context of undocumented immigration in the United
States, can routine police work by local police departments help
solve, reduce or worsen this issue?
GG: The illegal immigration question in our country today is much
larger than anything that local policing can do. I think that the illegal
immigration is driven by economics, is driven by political issues, is a
legislative problem; and I think until we have legislative solution to
illegal immigration that has to come at a federal level is going to be
very difficult to fix the problem. I think than anybody that believes
that policing at the local level ─or quite frankly even at the federal
level─ that policing can fix this, is not understanding the complexity
and the legislative questions that are at hand. If you have anywhere
from 12 to possibly as many as 20 million people that are here
without authority on a variety of different levels, some of them
crossing the border illegally and therefore committing a criminal act;
someone who having crossed originally legally but then overstaying
their visa and therefore committing a civil violation, and you start
looking at all the different components of this, I think that it would be
naïve to believe that is going to be resolved through any kind of
policing. Now, does police has a ruling into the question? Absolutely
that we do. Under the local level we have that rule when people that
are here without authority or without documents are also engaging
in other criminal activity. At the federal level certainly there’s other
avenues including border patrol and some of the work that ICE does.
But I think, overall, until we come up with a legislative solution to this
problem, this is not going to be fixed.
BZ: Opposing and emotional viewpoints surrounded the immigration
sweeps conducted by Maricopa County Sheriff Office in Mesa. What
was the real essential issue you were concerned with?
GG: You know, our focus has always been in providing for the safety
of the people that live, work in the city, and certainly the safety of
anyone that wanted to come in here and exercise their constitutional
rights to their freedom of expression. We focus on our public safety
mission; we let other agencies focus in their own missions.
BZ: When MCSO conducted immigration sweeps in the city of
Phoenix, the police department did not intervene. What was the
reasoning behind planning and personally supervising such an
impressive operation in Mesa?
GG: Well, we learned. Sometimes we learn from other folk’s
experiences, and one of the things we noticed that occurred during
the Phoenix event, as well as the one in Guadalupe, was that the
emotions were running so high that there were very close calls in
terms of people engaging in violent activity. You had demonstrators
and the counter-demonstrators; you had people that were carrying
weapons; people that were threatening one another. In the case of
Guadalupe, we know that the sheriff actually had to move his
command post after the first night of operation, because he publicly
stated that he felt that the safety of the command post was
jeopardized. We wanted to make sure again: we were focusing in
our mission in the city of Mesa, and that should about public safety;
we wanted to make sure that public safety in Mesa was going to be
protected to the extent that we could.
BZ: Would the criticism and praise about your department’s posture
toward the MCSO’s operation in Mesa change your approach and
methods to ensure public safety in potential volatile situations?
GG: Yeah, no, I mean really not because, again, we… I think is really
important for everyone to understand that we’re focusing on what
we need to do in order to meet our mission that is to provide a safe
environment in the city of Mesa. We really are not focusing in
anybody else’s activity; we’re only focusing our police department
here responsible for providing the safety of the people in the city,
what we need to do, and we basically ─based on our best
knowledge of the time and the information that we had, based on
my experience and that of others here─ we elected how we were
going to respond to that operation. But, again, and it is really
important to understand, we were focusing on our mission, not
anybody else’s mission.
BZ: What is your model on how law enforcement agencies should
work together, and what potential consequences can arise when
there’s a lack of inter-department’s cooperation?
GG: Well, I think, you know, it is critically important for policing to
communicate with one another. I think that there are a lot of things
that work well when you have good inter-agency communication,
and we have proven that over and over in Mesa. Here we have
worked with other East Valley agencies; we’re continuously working
with other federal agencies, ICE, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the
Federal Bureau of Investigations, the Drug Enforcement
Administration, the U.S. Marshal’s office. In working with other local
agencies, we have been able to enhance our ability to deal with
crime fighting, and we believe that a lot of the reductions in crime in
the city of Mesa have been a direct result of those partnerships.
Conversely, I think when there’s a lack of communication, I think that
we all become less efficient, and I think that sometimes we actually
get to jeopardize public safety if we don’t communicate well with one
another.
BZ: How is your relationship with other city police chiefs around
Maricopa County?
GG:I think [it] is very high, very good. Evidence of that is that we
have the Information Fusion Center that is being housed in the city
of Mesa, and every other agency in the East Valley is a participant.
We have a very active East Valley’s chiefs of police association. We
partner regularly in many operations, so I would say that the
relationship at the chief level is very good, and so is it at the working
in the operation level.
BZ: What has your overall experience being the police chief in Mesa
taught you until this day?
GG: It’s taught me a variety of things. I think that I came from a
much larger agency where you had a lot of resources available to
use, so I had to learn how to operate obviously in a smaller
environment but also not have some of the resources that I had
available to me. I think that also the level of experience within the
agency; I came from an agency that has been operating in a large
city for many, many years, so we have protocols to deal with large
city problems. The city of Mesa is a city that has grown very rapidly in
a very short period of time, and a lot of the protocols, and a lot of
the systems that are in place were designed to deal with a much
smaller environment than what we work on. So I’ve had to learn to
create sometimes systems and protocols that were not there in
place before. Now, clearly my experience from L.A. has helped me
greatly in order to achieve those, but I have had to learn to operate
at a different level than I was accustomed to.
BZ: Do you have any final remarks?
GG: Yeah, I think that is important to recognize that policing is
always evolving just like any other profession. Sometimes we are
going to do well; sometimes we are not going to do as well. I think is
important to learn from our mistakes and to move on, but I think if
you look overall where the Mesa Police Department is today in how
much has been accomplished in the last two years, you see a
tremendous amount of progress. Not only measured in terms of
reduction in crime, but also I think it is important to measure it in
terms of community service, the communication level with many
segments of the community that before felt apprehensive about
coming to the police department; the fact that we are looking for
ways to reduce our operational costs, and yet maintain a high level
of police performance; almost by every measure that you look at our
police department today we’re doing much better than what we
were before. Crime is down, our clearance rate in solving crimes has
increased significantly; we have reduced our overtime costs; we
have increased communication level many communities that before
were not communicating as well with the police department. So I
think it is important to look at all these things in total, and
understand that policing is an evolving process and that we are
hoping to get better every day.
By Eduardo Barraza July 28, 2008
BARRIOZONA presents an exclusive interview with the
law-enforcement man who in the context of the highly controversial
MCSO's immigration sweeps in Maricopa County became the center
of the controversy itself. City of Mesa Police Chief George Gascón
answers for our readers questions about law enforcement in general,
the sheriff's operations, racial profiling, and his department's
challenges and accomplishments.
Photo by Eduardo Barraza | Barriozona
law-enforcement man who in the context of the highly controversial
MCSO's immigration sweeps in Maricopa County became the center
of the controversy itself. City of Mesa Police Chief George Gascón
answers for our readers questions about law enforcement in general,
the sheriff's operations, racial profiling, and his department's
challenges and accomplishments.
Photo by Eduardo Barraza | Barriozona
Related Links
| Featured Video: Interview with George Gascón |
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Eduardo Barraza is a journalist and writer,
Barriozona Magazine's editor, and director of
the Hispanic Insitute of Social Issues.
E-mail: editor@barriozona.com
Barriozona Magazine's editor, and director of
the Hispanic Insitute of Social Issues.
E-mail: editor@barriozona.com
