Red and blue lights flashed across the neighborhood for 20 minutes. Sgt. Dustin Blaker was inside one of the houses, helping other first responders attend to a medical emergency.
Family members of the injured person walked in and out of the house as they talked with dispatchers. Paramedics rushed in with their equipment and firefighters arrived to assist. After nearly half an hour, Blaker emerged from the house, relieved to see the ambulance on its way to the hospital. This was the first call of the night.
Tuesday nights are typically quiet nights for patrols — especially compared to weekends. Blaker did not respond to any more emergencies. He drove through town, keeping an eye out for people who needed help or problems that needed to be solved.
“Once we go through all of the calls (from the previous shift), we get that done, generally the way our shift runs and the way we do our shifts is you then answer any calls to service that you get,” Blaker said. “In the meantime, with calls, if you don’t have reports to write, we want our guys out of the station, so they’ll be out here driving around, being visible.”
Officers focus on areas where crime or traffic infractions have been reported more often, he said. They communicate to the public when they will be focusing on a specific issue — like running stop lights or DUIs — with the Idaho State Police Department, Blaker said.
A lot has changed since Blaker joined the force in March 2000, he said.
The department responds to fewer calls than it used to. Parties are smaller, as officers would respond to parties of 500 to 600 people in the early 2000s, he said. Unfortunately, Blaker said there has been an increase in heroin use among both permanent residents and the student population of Moscow.
Blaker said the police patrol to help community members feel safe. He said his favorite part of patrol is interacting with people from the community.
He said he likes working in a small town because officers have time to talk with community members who need someone to lean on. While police officers are not trained mental health professionals, Blaker said Moscow officers have undergone a variety of trainings to help them respond to mental health crises and people struggling with drug addictions.
“A lot of these real big cities are having issues with homelessness, not because of economic issues but more because of mental health and drug issues,” Blaker said. “It’s harder for us to deal with because we’re not mental health professionals, but it seems like more and more we have to be. We have to be able to recognize, ‘Is this individual a drug addict? Or are they having some sort of an addiction, mental health issue or a combination that we need to be dealing with rather than the other issue at hand?”’ Blaker said.
Moscow’s police cars are well-equipped to help the force serve the community. Most cars have computers that link back to the station and help patrol officers communicate with dispatchers.
In addition, cars are equipped with video cameras on the dash board that record from the time the officer starts the car to when they turn the car off as they return to the station. A microphone on the officer’s uniform begins recording as soon as an officer turns on their lights or hits a button in the car.
“It’s getting better,” Blaker said. “We have trainings out there now … It’s a much bigger issue that we have to deal with rather than just, ‘Hey, this guy’s breaking the law, we need to take him to jail.’”
Lex Miller can be reached at [email protected]