Some crime statistics may be rising in Coeur d’Alene, and that’s a good thing.

A spike in the number of certain types of crimes could be the byproduct of Police Chief Lee White’s ongoing efforts to strengthen his officers’ relationships with the citizens they serve while deploying police department resources to more effectively target crimes.

White, who took command of the department in September, said the agency historically operated from a more reactive standpoint. Officers would wait for someone to call and report a crime, and then they would go deal with it.

“We’ve said all along that random patrols equals random results, so instead what we’re doing is focusing our efforts in the areas where we’re seeing crime spikes, where we’re having problems in specific neighborhoods,” White said. “We’re going to put more resources in those areas to try and combat our crime trends.”

He said the department is relying more heavily on crime analysis data to spot those trends.

The goal, he said, is to prevent crimes from occurring, while positioning officers so they may occasionally catch criminals in the act. That could be the factor that drives up the number of certain types of crimes, White said.

He explained that some people won’t report a stolen bicycle to police. But if an officer is driving through a neighborhood and he sees someone steal a bike from a garage, White said the officer is going to go after the person and possibly arrest the individual for theft.

 “That was a crime that may have been historically unreported, but now it’s going to show up as a blip on our theft screen,” White said.

But that’s just one piece of a bigger picture.

White has also brought a philosophical change to the department’s patrol methods. He has asked patrol officers to focus on having more positive educational interactions with citizens.

“That’s getting out of their cars, and meeting the business owners, and talking with the people walking through the parks and talking with people walking on the sidewalks — just the positive citizen contacts where you establish relationships,” White said.

Patrol officers are taking advantage of opportunities to educate and inform citizens, rather than simply writing tickets for very minor infractions, he said.

“By that same token, they are finding felons and arresting them, putting them in jail for the serious crimes,” White said. “I can’t tell you how many crime sprees I’ve heard of that have been solved by a single arrest, a single officer or a group of officers working together; they identify the person responsible for a trend before it balloons out of control, they arrest him, they throw him in jail and they solve sometimes dozens of crimes.”

Capt. Steve Childers, commander of the department’s patrol division, said he thinks the new emphasis is making a difference.

“Where those high-crime areas are, we’re actually getting out and talking to individuals there… they know we’re out there,” Childers said. “We’re being more visible up on Appleway or down on Sherman Avenue, depending on where the higher crime rates are.”

Another new initiative will be unveiled at the end of the school year. School Resource Officers will be redeployed for the summer as members of a Community Action Team.

Each of these officers will spend part of the day patrolling Sherman Avenue, the parks and the beach, making those “positive contacts,” White said.

These officers will also focus on solving crime trends as they emerge.

“Whatever problem we have, that week, that day, they’re going to be solving it for us,” White said. “Let’s say we have drug dealing on Sherman Avenue — they’re going to tackle that. If we have a burglary ring at the base of Tubbs Hill — they’re going to tackle that. Whatever it is, they’re our problem-solving unit. They’re going to go out and handle that issue.”

Then, in the evenings, the SROs will head downtown to assist the patrol officers who are dealing with what White calls “some of the problems associated with having a very vibrant downtown area.”

He expects the officers to spend a lot of time downtown discouraging drinking and driving, fights, and some of the behavior that comes with over-service of liquor — and taking the necessary action to curb that behavior.

White said he is planning to hold a one-hour community meeting sometime in the near future. He plans to invite citizens to identify their top priorities for the department.

“What do we, as a community, want the police department to look like and feel like, and how do we expect them to act, and how quick should they respond — all the things that affect our community members,” White said.

The results of these discussions will be revisited later, White said, to see if they are adequately addressing the issues that are identified.

The dates and times of these community meetings will be announced sometime later this spring.