By Eric J.S. Townsend, Greensboro News & Record (North Carolina)
GREENSBORO, N.C. - It’s the answer top Greensboro police officials often give for crime-related questions: “TSET.”
Why did the homicide rate decline last year? In part because of TSET, short for Tactical Special Enforcement Teams.
Why have fewer complaints been lodged about drug activity? TSET.
Where do we want to focus future resources? Again, TSET.
As elected leaders begin debating the city’s annual budget, police Chief David Wray has made clear he wants to expand not only the unit’s size, but also its mission.
Doing so requires 16 additional officers, included among the 40 new sworn positions sought by the agency in the coming year. TSET’s expansion is the centerpiece of Wray’s request to City Council.
“What we have found, both from the community and the department, is increased demand for the kind of things they can do,” Wray said. “We’d probably get more bang for our buck.”
TSET consists of four separate eight-man teams. Unlike patrol officers who cover distinct areas, TSET teams work in neighborhoods across the city.
The unit mostly handles drug issues. In December, it lent assistance to detectives investigating robberies.
Expanding TSET would allow Wray to integrate the department’s Special Response Team -- Greensboro’s equivalent to SWAT -- into one unit under the TSET name. This would prevent pulling patrol officers from their assigned tasks during crises.
As it operates now, the response team is a part-time, voluntary group of officers from around the department.
Wray also wants TSET to incorporate some of the responsibilities from what used to be called “Crime Abatement Teams,” instituted under former police Chief Robert White and dismantled when Wray assumed command.
CAT teams worked surveillance in plainclothes as part of White’s fight against property crimes. Wray sees TSET as a tool with which his department can conduct similar operations -- just not all the time.
Wray credits TSET for recent decreases in Greensboro’s homicide rate and for the reduction of open-air drug dealing. The two, he said, are not unrelated. When drug dealing leaves public spaces, violence diminishes.
The number of homicides last year was less than half what detectives investigated in 2003, and police seized $25 million in illegal drugs by year’s end, Wray said. That’s a fivefold increase from just two years earlier.
Such success bolsters the chief’s case to City Council for more manpower.
“Will we get everything we ask for, like a kid on Santa’s knee? I’m hoping,” Wray said. “But we’ll take what we can get.”
TSET still stands to benefit from any significant increase in personnel. If City Council approves fewer than the 40 new sworn positions, police units such as the traffic division or community resource team shouldn’t expect to see much growth.
“There’s no magic to this,” Wray said. “We look at the numbers, we make some tough calls. If you take one approach, you have challenges from others who see things differently.”
One such person is officer Eddy Summers, president of the Greensboro Police Officer’s Association. Summers wants new officers devoted to regular patrol squads.
After all, he said, when the department requested more positions from City Council last year, Wray bolstered his case using sluggish response times from an overextended department.
The council granted 32 new positions that have since been earmarked for patrol.
“I would like to see more officers committed to call answering and prevention through high-visibility patrol,” Summers said. “High visibility in a car helps prevent crime.
“If a bad guy’s in the neighborhood looking to break in, and he sees a marked police car driving up and down the road, he’s going to think twice about doing that.”
Outside agencies still praise TSET’s role in reducing city crime.
One local agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said patrol units are more reactive and TSET proactive at fighting crime - but you need both for either to work.
“TSET, they investigate and glean intel from patrol,” said Roarke Wright, resident agent in charge of the ATF’s Greensboro office. “Patrol units and TSET work hand-in-hand.
“As a result, you can put together a better approach to correcting the problem completely as opposed to having patrol units just monitor activity.”