Patrolling, protecting made personal

By Mike Trask

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The police in Boulder City know the first names of the crossing guards and babysitters. The chief hands out his personal cell phone number to residents when he greets them at monthly meetings in a coffee shop.

And to make the close relationship between police and citizens even tighter, Chief Thomas Finn has changed policing to make it resemble the old days when officers walked beats. Finn divided Boulder City into 22 areas, with an officer assigned to each.

Giving the patrolmen zones raises their stakes in the community, giving them direct responsibility for neighborhoods. “It’s like having a concierge service,” Finn said. “It’s someone who you’re on a first-name basis with.”

By all accounts, Boulder City has little crime. Many of its 15,000 residents leave their doors unlocked. Neighbors enter without knocking and the biggest threat to civic safety seems to be kids with skateboards.

But there are vandalism and the occasional marital squabble.

•••

Police Officer Chadd Richner grew up in Boulder City. And most likely he will retire there.

On one recent day, a man in a pickup truck pulled alongside Richner’s aging squad car — the one with 102,000 miles on it that sleeps in the officer’s driveway at night to expand the visibility of police across the city.

“Chadd, I’d like to make a complaint, but everything’s all quiet,” the pickup driver says.

And so goes life on another 12-hour shift. Police made a DUI arrest this morning and a renter had a squabble with his landlord over a mailbox. Other than that, it’s been slow. School’s out, so kids aren’t meandering through the alleyways near the middle school.

Richner, 24, likes it this way. He doesn’t crave the excitement. But he knows on rare occasions it will find him — or someone else on the police force. “It was only three years ago when we had a shooting right on the main street, Nevada Way,” he says.

Three years ago Richner was in the Marines. He did a pair of tours in Iraq, got out and applied for a job at one place — his hometown police department. Moving to another department in Clark County might mean an instant $10,000 raise. It also would mean leaving the comforts of home.

This may make him the ideal man to patrol two of the 22 community zones, although his rented residence, in the back of his parents’ house, isn’t in one of his assigned areas. His areas include a lot of people he knows, including his second-grade teacher.

Having grown up in Boulder City gives Richner a personal and well-informed view of the town. He knows which areas have problems. He also knows the little things, such as which hills are the best to coast down on your bicycle.

That’s not to say Richner doesn’t come across any bad guys. In October he pulled over a man driving 62 in a 45 mph zone. One thing led to another and the Boulder City Police Department stumbled upon 115 pounds of marijuana. It was the biggest drug find in memory for the 34-officer force.

“It makes you wonder how many are being smart and we’re not catching them,” he says.

Those are the days Richner remembers.

“Chadd’s the hometown boy,” said Jill Lagan, head of the local chamber of commerce. “He’s good walking door-to-door and shaking hands. That’s building a good bond.”

Richner has big plans, though. He’s compiling an e-mail list so he can hold small community meetings and communicate with his zones. The e-mail addresses and other contact information would give him instant access to his people. He can get e-mails in his squad car and the department’s dispatch team can transfer calls directly to his cell phone.

That may be the most tangible evidence the community police program is working. The officers have more neighborhood contacts, and that cannot be a bad thing.

“It seems like I’ve seen a little more presence,” resident Dick Ward said. “I’m one of those people who waves to the police. They seem to be waving back.”

It seems Richner already knows everyone, a result of a childhood spent roaming the streets and a family that owns a popular air-conditioning repair business. It’s across the street from the mayor’s hardware store.

With some more door-to-door work, Richner thinks he actually could know everyone — at least in his little zones.

“I need to figure out exactly how to organize it,” he says. “I’ll just have some meetings at the library or something like that. I think I might just start off doing it street by street.”