Relationships key to fighting youth crime, chief says

By Keith Purtell

Developing relationships with the youth of Muskogee has contributed to the drop in the number of crimes youth commit, the city’s top law officer says.

Muskogee Police Department Chief Rex Eskridge said there are multiple reasons law enforcement in the county has been successful, using Muskogee as an example.

“We have made significant inroads in relationships with young kids through our Police Athletic League,” he said. “Being able to develop relationships on a different level and not just strictly the authoritarian type. It’s more of a relationship where we can visit with these kids and develop the relationship to where they can trust us.”

Muskogee County’s drop in the rate of violent crime arrests is measured annually in the Kids Count Factbook, which ranks all 50 states using data from each state.

The numbers are based on youth ages 10 to 17 and are measured per 100,000. The 2007 and 2008 Kids Count factbooks show a drop in the rate from 203.3 to 196.2 in Muskogee County. The 2009 Factbook shows the rate dropped again to 191.8.

Eskridge said other factors that have affected the drop range from aggressive prosecution by the District Attorney’s office to the tactics and procedures used in the police department.

“It’s also the relationships with other agencies we’ve made, particularly the U.S. Attorney’s office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and working with all those agencies to develop an overall strategy and specific tactics that deal with violent crime,” he said.

Eskridge said that when he took the job as chief, his boss emphasized the importance of reducing then-high crime rates.

“At that time we were ranked the second or third city in terms of crime per capita,” he said. “And what we’ve done over the last 15 or so years at the individual supervisory level is give them more authority and ability to deal with specific issues that come up. I think that our officers have really responded well, and a lot of the credit goes to the individual officers for their ability to respond to specific issues. Whatever the specific problems are, the men and women out there in the field are coming up with solutions to attack those particular problems.”

The District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office have greatly assisted the police department, Eskridge said.

“They’ve been really supportive of helping us to develop these task forces and don’t just leave things hanging out there,” he said. “If we have a warrant and we go try to serve it, a lot of times in the past that’s all you would do; you’d take one shot at it and maybe you’d get it or maybe you wouldn’t. But now, with these different task forces we’ve come up with, we aggressively go after these people on warrants and things like that.”

Eskridge said a lot of the success goes back to what he said about developing a relationship with young people in the community.

“I can’t say enough about how important that is, to where that they don’t view us as the enemy, rather we are someone who they can come and talk to,” he said.

Reach Keith Purtell at 684-2925 or kpurtell@muskogeephoenix.com.

Text Only