YEAR-END REPORT Public Safety, 1998

The safety of everyone in the Northern Marians Community relies upon adequate law enforcement officers and resources to keep peace a daily reality for both residents and visitors alike.

Although it is one of three most important government agencies, it isn’t immune to austerity measures imposed by the administration under the year in review.

The Department of Public Safety started out the year with the appointment of Charles W. Ingram, Jr. as commissioner. He appointed his lieutenants to aid in improving the image of the department that often instantly sinks in the quick sand of critics in the community whose views are easier said than done or have watched too many FBI movies.

Ingram’s goal was to motivate everyone to turn a good department into a better, more efficient law enforcement agency by leadership and training.

He drafted a mission statement for DPS which is “to serve the needs and protect all of the people within (our) jurisdiction. This is to be done with respect, fairness and sensitivity to the needs of our community.”

Now, after months into office, has the department achieved its goals and fulfilled its promise as trumpeted in its mission statement?

“We’ve made some major reorganization within the upper management of DPS. We’ve put personnel who are very competent and qualified to lead the various divisions, sections and units. We’ve achieved and exceeded everything that we’ve planned,” said Acting Commissioner Claudio K. Norita.

Norita said the department decentralized its chain of command or the decision making.

“The directors of each division have a lot to say now with respect to their area of responsibility. It used to be that decisions are solely the commissioner’s, but we hire these personnel to be directors of fire, corrections and police. I’m sure the administration hired them based on their competence and their level of expertise in their field so we should put the trust and responsibility on them,” he said.

Improvements on each division

The new set of officials worked together to improve both the department’s operations and administration.

Since the government is experiencing a budgetary crunch, Norita said the first thing DPS did was to cut overtime. It used to pay up to $160,000 per pay period but it has trimmed it down to $50,000.

The Fire Division, where the biggest overtime pay is recorded made the biggest reduction the result of a new working schedule for its staff.

“There’s always a minimum of 40 hours overtime for everybody every pay day so what we worked with OPM to meet FLSA requirement and changed the schedule to 106 instead of 80 hours. We were averaging close to $50,000 for both EMS and Fire for overtime per pay day but now they’re averaging not more than $5,000 because of the new hours,” Norita emphasized. Other divisions saw improved fiscal discipline.

Lack of manpower

The department’s greatest concern is still the lack of manpower.

For the police division to operate more effectively, it needs more personnel, Norita said, adding, the department only uses whatever available officers now on the force.

“We need to maintain a minimum of 8 patrol cars on the streets at any given time because population wise, our ratio is 1 to 1,000,” Norita explained.

There are times that officers called in sick and the officers from the previous shift takes over and work on the next shift. DPS has about 140 police officers, 30 correction officers and 80 firefighters.

Norita said only two officers are assigned to investigate burglary and theft when it should be a minimum of six due to the load of complaints.

“We prioritize uniform officers on the streets because they’re the first response. They’re the people who respond to emergency needs. When you call 911, it’s not the detective that comes over, it’s the uniformed officers, so we must ensure that uniformed officers out on the street is covered,” Norita said.

Likewise, the Boating Safety section has five officers who need to go out everyday for marine enforcement.

“If we don’t have enforcement unit out in the water, people do violate the law, they drink and operate boats, they speed on the no speeding zone and they don’t carry the proper safety permit on the water, so we must ensure that they do. Their job is enforcement and prevention,” he added.

The role of DPS has expanded over the years. It now looks forward for the construction of substations in Kagman and San Roque. And although public confidence may be low, Norita assures that his department is giving it its best to ensure peace and order in the community as much as possible.

Plans for 1999

Hopefully, Norita envisions securing funding to build the new corrections facility and renovate the existing one.

“I’m happy that the administration has been able to acknowledge that there’s a concern at DOC and that they’re saying it’s a priority and they’re going to find the resources to fix it,” he said.

The CNMI Prison Task Force has been meeting with the CIP Task Force and soon a bid will be put out for a prison consultant whose job is to design a prison that meets the need of the CNMI.

“We want a prison that meets immigration, public safety and juvenile detention needs. If we could incorporate that into one big plan, that would be good,” Norita said.

He added that DPS is closely working with the Commission Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) to get accreditation.

“Once you’re accredited by CALEA and you meet standards set forth by US law enforcement agencies, it helps us in networking, federal grant assistance and across-the-board transfer or relationship with other departments nationwide,” Norita said.

“We’ve turned in the applications and we’re working to sort things out. It takes maybe a year because they have to come out here to do evaluations and give us standards that we must meet, work on those things so it will take time, but it’s something that we’re looking forward to,” he added.