Rooting out crime

Mayor Alan Unger said he was disappointed when Roberts left the Redmond police post last year.

“Lane did a great job when he came here,” Unger said. “Our department was smaller, and the town was small, 10,000 population, and we needed to grow professionally.”

With the town growing and in need of more city services, including police protection, Roberts established a method that helped administrators know when more police officers were needed, Unger said.

Roberts also taught the officers within the department to correct factors that lead to crime as quickly as they could.

“He came here and reoriented our police officers to work at the root causes of the problems, like family violence, rather than treating the symptoms every Friday night,” Unger said.

Roberts took the department’s professionalism up a notch by incorporating accreditation, something that the Joplin Police Department is undergoing.

“He worked on bringing Redmond up to a higher bar,” Unger said. “He instilled a greater sense of professionalism and accountability in our police officers.”

Police accreditation is something that Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr started pursuing after two Joplin police officers came under fire for arresting an 11-year-old boy at a school after the boy was involved in a flap with the son of one of the officers.

The Joplin Police Department has been working since that incident on accreditation through the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

Keenan Cortez, co-chairman of the Joplin Police Department’s Civilian Advisory Committee, said he hopes the issue involving the boy is a thing of the past.

“I hope as a city and a department, we’ve moved on from that,” he said. “We’ve learned. We’re going to do things that won’t allow that kind of situation to happen again.”

Department diversity

Cortez said he has spoken with Roberts about the future of the department. Cortez said he hopes that in addition to accreditation and a focus on customer service, the department can start hiring more officers shortly after collection of a half-cent sales tax for public safety starts in April.

“I think citizens are really looking for the added force on the streets, the added police cars,” that the tax will bring, Cortez said.