Crookston Police Chief Paul Biermaier sat down with KROX to discuss the Crookston Police Department’s training and policies for crisis intervention and the use of force. Biermaier said the top goal of the Crookston Police Department is to peacefully resolve every situation. “I think our guys do a great job of finding some kind of resolution with every situation they go on that needs a resolution by use,” said Biermaier. “Let me clarify that a little bit, not all the time do we have to come up with the solution. Sometimes people just want us to know things or they have a problem with the neighbor or something else and we maybe won’t mediate that or interact. A lot of what we do comes down to active listening, hearing what people have to say, and then maybe reframing or rephrasing it.”
Biermaier said a lot of what he feels officers do is crisis intervention with significant growth in mental health calls. “A lot of what I think we do is crisis intervention,” said Biermaier. “I’ve been doing this 30 years and it seems like over the last 30 years the role of law enforcement has changed. Mental health calls are way up for us and it takes a lot of intervention. And it’s taken law enforcement some time to come to a good response, an appropriate response, and that includes taking our time. We have time on a lot of these calls, and we’ll take whatever time we need. It can involve distance. Creating more distance between us and the person that is maybe a little dangerous. And calling people, now we’ve got on-call mental health professionals that will come out to us on the scene. We didn’t have that 30 years ago.”
Biermaier said training includes awareness of biases both implicit and explicit, cultural awareness, and active scenario training. Biermaier said the two-day actor and scenario-based course goes beyond learning the right way to handle situations in a classroom. “The other big thing that we’ve been doing for a long time here is trying to send all of our people to a two-day actor and scenario-based course that deals with a lot of the topics we just talked about,” said Biermaier. “You can sit in a classroom and learn all you want, take it in and listen. But when you have to turn around and apply that in a scenario, in a real-life situation, that’s where it really comes out. That’s where you really get your feet wet so to speak and learn what works and what doesn’t work.”
Biermaier also addressed how does the Crookston Police Department attempt to go about ensuring that they are getting good people to be police officers in the Crookston Community. The department is currently in the process of hiring two officers and Biermaier said it includes deep background checks and psychological screenings. “We start a background process and it’s in-depth,” said Biermaier. “We go all the way back. I’ve gone back and talked to high school teachers. We check with utility companies to make sure people are paying their bills. I’ve gone and knocked on the doors of neighbors where our candidates live. We dig in and we dig in deep to vet out who wouldn’t be a good fit with Crookston or for law enforcement in general. Part of that process also is our candidates by law have to sit down and go through a psychological evaluation with a licensed psychologist. And that includes up to three different kinds of tests. I believe one of our guys recently did three different kinds of multiple-choice or written tests. It took a good 3-4 hours including the interview. And we work with the psychologist and tell them what we’re looking for and what we’re wary of. So, they have that in their mind as they are interviewing our candidates to find out if they are going to be that good fit.”
The full interview with Chief Biermaier is below –
Audio Player
