They work for God. They’re not afraid to chase squirrels. And if they catch it, they clean it.

A band of monks living in the wilderness? Not quite.

Rather, those are all expressions that Lawrence Police officers used in the past month to describe their work to the people who took part in the department’s 17th annual Citizens’ Academy. The academy, which ended last week, is a series of courses designed to give ordinary citizens a glimpse of the department’s workings.

Here is a sampling of the topics covered:

‘You catch it, you clean it’

One thing LPD leaders say makes the department unique is that patrol officers are trained and expected to act as investigators. The department’s 17 detectives generally don’t work routine property crimes such as car thefts, which are left for officers on the street to handle.

Police have a phrase to describe the approach: “You catch it, you clean it.”

One advantage is that officers who arrive at the scene of a violent crime are equipped to start the investigation right away without waiting for detectives.

It can have drawbacks, though. One of the most common complaints the department gets, Capt. Dan Affalter said, is that an officer hasn’t called a person back to follow up on an investigation. Sometimes it’s a case of the ball being dropped, he said, but other times it’s just a matter of scheduling. If an officer is assigned to work the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift on weekends, he or she isn’t necessarily going to be available when the person wants to talk.

Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo

Working ‘for God’

Police Chief Ron Olin said another thing that makes the department unique is that it pours as many resources as needed into homicide investigations.

LPD detectives have adopted the motto “We work for God,” a quote from well-known New York City homicide expert Vernon Geberth.

“We believe that nobody deserves to die a violent death,” said Affalter, who supervises detectives. “Our philosophy is to throw as much as we possibly can at what we believe is the most serious crime a person can commit.”

As an example, after the fatal shooting in February outside the Granada, the department had used up 38 percent of its annual overtime allotment just two months into the year.

That’s unlike some large police departments, Olin said, where one detective may be working 30 unsolved killings.

“They work it until the next one happens, and then it goes into the stack,” he said.

On the recruiting trail

LPD officers work one of three shifts: from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. or 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. At any given time, there may be between 10 and 16 patrol officers on the street.

Lawrence resident Clyde May, right, gives his attention during a lecture on gangs along with Patti Winn, Lawrence, center, and Patrick Wong, Lawrence as the three participate in the 17th Citizen's Academy Tuesday night at the Lawrence Police Department's west side offices.

“We pride ourselves on the minute things we do, like a squirrel in your house. We’ll go do that,” said Capt. Ed Brunt, a patrol supervisor.

The department is down 11 officers from its authorized strength of 138. It’s preparing to hire 12 more officers in an upcoming academy, with the expectation that some will not make it through.

The department continues to have difficulty hiring women, despite a series of open houses aimed at recruiting them. Just five of the department’s officers – one sergeant, one detective and three officers – are female. Olin said he thought part of the problem was that the department faced competition from federal law enforcement agencies in recruiting women.

Overall, it’s hard to find qualified police applicants, Olin said. Many college graduates can’t write well enough to do the report writing required of officers, and some have “ethical issues.” For example, recently the department had a recruit who helped himself to bullets while undergoing training at the Kansas Law Enforcement Center in Hutchinson.

He didn’t see it as theft, Olin said.

“Clearly we did, and we separated,” he said.

Officer safety

A recurring theme during the academy was that police do many of the things they do because of safety concerns. For example, officers park their cars at a slight angle during traffic stops to provide a buffer in case a passing driver comes too close.

When passersby see two or more squad cars at a traffic stop, “it’s not that we’re trying to harass or intimidate somebody,” Det. Troy Squire said. Rather, police routinely call for backup when they stop a car with multiple people inside or if they need to search the car.

Citizen's Academy participants from left sitting, Bruce Liese, Lecompton, and Lawrence residents, Patrick Wong, Patti Winn and Clyde May, right listen to a slideshow lecture from detective Mike McAtee, front left, on gangs Tuesday night at the Lawrence Police Departments Training Center.

“It’s an officer safety issue,” Squire said.

Squire showed video footage taken in another state of a man who starts to be combative with an officer and ends up being subdued with a Taser, a tool that’s not in the LPD arsenal.

“I can think of several cases where I would have loved to have had one,” Squire said. “There are times when nightsticks and mace just don’t work.”

‘It’s not enough’Policing in Lawrence has plenty of challenges, Olin said. One is what he called “The culture of ‘it’s not enough'”: the fact that no matter what police do, someone will be unhappy.

He said many young people came here from other cities with negative preconceptions about police, expecting to experience abuse from officers. Also, the homeless population downtown, he said, is “very expensive to maintain” in terms of its effect on the department’s resources.

Olin said the department conducted the Citizens’ Academy as one way to build a better relationship with the public.

“When we are charged by society to take someone’s freedom, that is an awesome responsibility, and with it comes controversy,” Olin said.