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THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – Friday, June 26, 2020 Page 11 ASKS | from page 10 a few offi cers of Hispanic descent, one offi cer of Cambodian descent – Brazilian – Portuguese, but no African American. Q: But I guess if there is no interest in it, there’s not much you can do about it. A: We’re a Civil Service community. You take the test and show up on the list, and whoever’s there is there. I have been involved in the hiring process over the course of the last eight years; I really don’t recall many applicants. I’m not really sure what the percentage of African American in Saugus is – maybe four percent – but maybe someday we will have African Americans in the department; hopefully, someday soon. Q: This is a question I’m dying to ask. I am not sure if you looked at the crime trends during the pandemic. Is there anything interesting you can say about the statistics? I would think the DUI [driving under the infl uence]’s are way down because the bars are shut down, but are there any observations you can share? A: Yes. So overall, especially at the beginning, the call volume as a whole went down, but what did go up were domestic disputes – because I think more people were stuck home with each other for more time than they wanted to spend with each other – and dealing with psychologically impaired people. They have a routine and when that routine is disrupted, they have problems. The stay-at-home order with the COVID – they didn’t cope with that very well. So a rise in those two areas were defi nitely noticeable. As far as the drop in DUIs, that was noticeable, too. And the traffi c, especially at the beginning of the shutdown, the volume was way down during the rush hour. Q: But the traffi c – even with fewer cars – there were more idiots on the road, especially at night, going 90 miles an hour or way over the speed limit. A: Word got out – I don’t know if it’s necessarily true or not – that the police officers don’t want to engage you because they’re afraid of catching the Coronavirus, so what we found was that people were just fl ying around, so we, along with the State Police, had to kind of reestablish that those people who are doing signifi cant amounts above the speed limit are still going to get stopped and issued tickets. During the fi rst month when we didn’t really know how contagious it was, overall, I think police offi cers across the state took a step back, but after about a month, we started to realize we needed to get back into what we were originally doing, because people were going just a little bit too crazy, and they could get away with everything. Q: Did your staff or anyone in the Saugus Police Department have any close encounters with COVID-19? A: Yes. We had a couple of offi cers that actually caught it, but we had a system in place… Q: So you had offi cers quarantined? A: Yes. Nobody really got too sick. One had very mild symptoms; the other had flu-like symptoms, but their families were also infected. Q: So, were these cases traced to arrests? A: No. I’m not going to say that. We weren’t really able to determine. Obviously, our biggest worry during this whole thing was having somebody bring it in here and let it rip through the department – and then we’d have manpower issues, but (knock on wood) that hasn’t happened. We’ve had just a couple of people aff ected, and they quarantined, and that kept the rest of us safe. And we’ve taken other steps. I don’t know if you noticed, but the front door [to the public safety building] is locked, so we’re trying to deal with things over the phone, as opposed to having them come into the front desk and fi ll out a report. We have kind of limited the amount of people who come in here. I think that has helped, too, even with the offi cers. We normally have roll call within a room; we have been holding it out in the garage where people can observe the six-foot rule. We’ve defi nitely taken a lot of good steps to try to prevent things. Hopefully, we’re coming out of this. Q: As far as local concerns, what do you see as your top challenges as you look ahead? A: Obviously, I just got sworn in yesterday, but the perception is a big issue. We hope to continue to build up the partnership we have with the people of Saugus. I think we’ve done a good job over the years, but I think it’s more important now than ever. We have to sell ourselves. You can turn on the TV every night and fi nd negative stories about us. But the men and women of this department are doing a lot of good things out there. And one of the things I talked about – being more involved on social media. I think that kind of tears down the wall. If we put out there, “Hey, we’re doing this” – I’m not talking about arrests, but just helping people out in diff erent ways. Policing LOOKING AHEAD: Saugus Police Chief Michael Ricciardelli talks about his department priorities one day after being appointed by Town Manager Scott C. Crabtree to lead the 60-offi cer Police Department. has changed in my 25 years. It’s more about helping people out with quality-of-life issues as opposed to who is breaking the law and what not and making arrests and all of that stuff . Our role is changing. People have been saying we need to hire more social workers than police offi cers. Well, I think police have been acting more like social workers over the last 10 to 15 years, because I’ve seen that change. Q: Have you seen an uptick in the scam crimes recently – particularly Internet-type stuff – since the outbreak of COVID-19? A: This year, specifically, we’ve seen a lot of the identity theft having to do with the IRS. In other words: somebody taking your social security number and name and fi ling for a refund. So we’ve had a lot of people come in and say, “Hey, I didn’t even do my taxes yet and somebody stole my identity and is trying to get a refund.” A lot of it has been caught because of the correspondence that the IRS has been sending them. Q: About how many of those cases have you had? A: Identity theft over the last fi ve to 10 years has gone through the roof, but recently, during the COVID, it seems to be this specifi c IRS scam. Q: How many? A dozen people? A: Oh, more than that; probably a couple of dozen at least. Q: And then you probably had some of that stuff with the fake Comcast emails where these scam artists are doing phishing to get people to give out personal information, like their passwords and credit card numbers. A: Yeah. And that’s another thing we can use our Facebook page for: to try to educate people on the scams. We defi nitely want to get more involved in that. Q: Like the recent scam “We’re changing your email … please respond.” A: Yes. Unfortunately, some people get scammed like that. Q: I’ve gotten about a hundred of those fake emails this year. At least, I have referred that many to the Comcast abuse line [abuse@comcast. net]. Some of these look like they’re from Comcast, but they’re not. A: Yes, you got to be very careful. Q: Okay, so outreach, the image of the department; those are like your main challenges. A: Yes. And also there are going to be some changes in training coming down from the state because of the incidents that happened out in Minneapolis and down in Atlanta. We’ll be making some adjustments. But to be honest with you, I think we are out ahead of the curve with Massachusetts being a pretty liberal state to begin with. Some of the changes they’ve talked about have already happened here. Some of the training they’ve talked about, we’ve already had here. As far as dealing with the mentally ill, police legitimacy, community outreach and things like that – there’s going to be change, but I think we’re ready for it. I don’t think it’s going to be as signifi cant here as other places where they are kind of behind. A lot of the training we have gotten over the last few years is directly related to what’s going on. It probably started back with Ferguson [a 2014 police incident in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, where an 18-yearold Black man was fatally shot by a white Ferguson police offi - cer, sparking months of unrest in the city, which led to police reforms]. And that’s the reason they put it into eff ect, so it has been addressed over the years, and I’m sure we will continue to address it. Q: Did you watch the video of the Minneapolis case involving the killing of George Floyd? A: I did, but obviously, what’s missing is the officer’s body videocam. I watched the start of it and the end of it, but the middle of it is missing or not released yet. I’m interested in that. I’ll say this: Nothing is going to change my mind. I think those guys, at the end of the video, were dead wrong. I’m not defending them. I’m just curious to see the middle of that: how he ended up on the ground like that. Again, there is no excuse. They should not have kept him down on the ground that long, kneeling on his neck. They did a lot of things wrong. And I think in this state you are going to see some changes, where an offi cer who is not the primary offi cer, sees that things have gone too far, he’s going to have an obligation to say, “Hey, enough is enough.” That is one of the things that I think Cambridge already put into their policy. And I think it’s probably headed this way. I’ve been here 25 years, and we don’t allow chokes. I know it doesn’t look like a choke, but it is. When you put pressure on the outside of somebody’s neck, it cuts the blood fl ow and amounts to a choke. We don’t allow those, and we never have for the whole time that I’ve been here. I think we are a pretty progressive state, ASKS | SEE PAGE 12

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