Todd Bettison is getting his start as chief of the Detroit Police Department with an eye toward transparency. 

The veteran officer, former assistant chief and deputy mayor spent years building bridges with communities in Detroit and helping to craft the neighborhood-based violence intervention effort “ShotStopper.” Bettison said those relationships remain at the forefront as he plans for the future of the department.

Weeks after being confirmed as chief, Bettison said he’s building off the work of his predecessor and working on several initiatives aimed at boosting community confidence in police services. 

Bettison’s priorities are wide-ranging and include overhauling policies and procedures, rolling out a new missing person alert system, improving communication with families of homicide and nonfatal shooting victims, adding personnel to close out cold cases and cracking down on gas stations that sell tobacco products to minors. 

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan appointed Bettison as Detroit’s interim chief in October after the department’s former chief James White stepped down to lead the Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network. In February, following a national search, Duggan selected Bettison for the role full time and the City Council confirmed his appointment.

Bettison inherits a well-staffed department as crime in the city is trending down. BridgeDetroit met with Bettison for a one-on-one discussion about challenges facing the city and his priorities. 

Editor’s note: This transcript was lightly edited for length and clarity

BridgeDetroit: What is your vision for the department? Do you have new initiatives in mind for this year? Are there any big budget asks in that regard moving into the next fiscal year? 

Bettison: I’m going to be fiscally responsible.

Some of the things that you will see is reorganization within the department. I’m going to go from two assistant chiefs to three assistant chiefs. 

Also, when it comes to entities within the department … I am standing up a Transformation Management Bureau. So, transformational management looks at how we’re doing things, they do the research and come up with how to run the department better and benchmark it and create things that don’t exist so that others can look toward the department (as a model) as well. 

One of the things that I’m very proud of is my strong community background. I’ve worked with Detroit 300, New Era Detroit, and Force Detroit when I was assistant chief. When I went to the mayor’s office (as deputy mayor), I continued that as far as supporting DPD. As it relates to community violence intervention, I really architected the ShotStoppers program, working with getting those groups contracts, selecting the right groups, creating the metrics system of the three to four square miles that we call “CVI Zones” that they all have. It was all based on data. Those zones are historically the hot spots. We look back five years and look at homicides and non-fatal shootings, where people got shot and didn’t die, those were real hot spots. 

By putting those groups there, giving them contracts, and with them working on the preventative aspect, we saw that violent crime; homicides and nonfatal shootings, really fell off in those particular areas. Detroit Friends and Family (one of the CVI groups), in their previous quarter, had an 83% reduction in homicides and nonfatal shootings compared to the same quarter and time last year. 

It’s working and I attribute that to the ‘and’ approach. A-N-D, my favorite word. We’re going to do this and that and that until we get it. So with the introduction of community violence intervention and utilizing technology, whether it’s license plate readers, our Green Light Program, which (since its inception) went from eight gas stations to over a thousand businesses, and, with ShotSpotter which I advocated for in the deputy mayor’s office and city council … passed it. All of that’s working. 

When we’re all working and pushing in the same direction for public safety, things happen. Our crime is steadily going down. Last year was a historic low for crime. As of today, we are 18% lower in homicides. If you go to another category, nonfatal shootings are 34% lower than we were last year at this time, carjackings are 36% lower. 

We’re having some things that we haven’t seen here before. I was sitting here with my senior management team a couple of weekends ago, we actually went a whole weekend with zero (homicides and nonfatal shootings). And we’re all looking like — that hasn’t happened before. 

BridgeDetroit: The summer crime strategy was big under James White’s leadership. How is that going to change under your leadership and what is planned? 

Bettison: Chief White did a fantastic job when it came to being ahead of it. When I became chief, I inherited a department where I had a fully functioning team and crime was trending down. My biggest challenge is making sure that it continues to trend down. Since I’ve been here, I have done that. I have the right people in leadership. I’ll tweak a few things here and there but when it comes to things that are important to the community – drag racing, drifting, traffic enforcement, that’s a big concern.

If you go back years we had a problem where that was a common issue and the community was complaining about it but a drag racing detail was put in place. I’m gonna continue that.

For traffic enforcement, we’ll usually have summer detail numbers in place for the park detail (enforcing curfews and hours of operation). 

We want to set the tone early. So, the things that you typically see in the summer, we’re going to start about three weeks earlier.

BridgeDetroit: Block parties were a big issue last year. How will those be handled going forward? 

Bettison: The block party detail is still in effect. When we implemented the block party detail, that’s when we saw the violence associated with those incidents start to really curtail. We know that we had that horrific mass shooting this past summer. We did arrest an individual associated with that and he’s been charged. 

What we’ve learned is when you have a lot of young people at night on the block, music playing, alcohol, other drugs, it’s just a recipe for violence and it doesn’t take long and the community complains about it. 

If somebody takes over your neighborhood it’s not safe for the children. It’s not safe for really anybody there and we will be out in full-force, disrupting. I shouldn’t even call it block parties. They’re really illegal street parties.

BridgeDetroit: Let’s dig into some of the things you want to do with the department such as the missing persons and cold case units and tobacco product sales to minors.

Bettison: When it comes to missings, there’s something we will roll out shortly where the community will get updates as far as a new missing alert system. I don’t want to get ahead of anyone with that, but missings are a top priority. I’m adding additional officers to the Missing Persons Unit. I’m looking at the entire department to align staffing and personnel with what’s really important to the community so I can maximize value. 

I’ve already added about five officers to the Vice Unit because they deal with human trafficking. They deal with the enforcement of bars, liquor licensing, and some of the other things. They also do a lot of undercover inspections when it comes to places that sell tobacco and we’ve got a real problem in this city. Not only here, but across Michigan and across the country as well where our youth are getting vapes and tobacco products. It’s really destroying their lungs and it’s a bigger problem when they get suspended from school when they have these products. When I have kids getting suspended from school and you trace back where they got it (tobacco and nicotine products) from and they say they got it from the gas station across the street from the school, I’m taking a hard-line stance on that. 

I’ve met with some gas station operators to have a conversation so they can help me get the message out. Our stance is going to be: I send an undercover in and you sell a minor a tobacco product, first time, ticket. The second time, I’m working with the Law Department to shut the business down for a period of time to really hit them in the pocketbook to get their attention because that’s how serious I take it. We have shut some down (at least five) and we will continue but I want their input to help me solve the problem.

BridgeDetroit: How about the Family Advocate and Manager Liaison for Engagement (FAMLE) Unit? Can you talk about your plans to expand the unit to support the community and improve communication about pending cases? 

Bettison: I have weekly meetings with (the) homicide (division) and the FAMLE Unit to really get to — how do I take the FAMLE Unit to being the best in the country? 

Chief White’s established the FAMLE Unit because of the outcry from family members who’ve lost loved ones, mothers who’ve lost their sons and daughters, and if the case is still open, it becomes a cold case.  

They (the unit) are tracking every phone call they’re making. They are also a liaison to the family and also our homicide detectives. Phone calls are being made, everything is being tracked but there’s still more work to do. I won’t be satisfied until the families and the mothers, the aunties, etc., say that they really feel the difference. At this point, there’s something still off because it’s somewhat better, but it’s not where I need it to be yet. I will continue through my assessment and add the appropriate resources. 

I’m already in conversations to hire retired homicide detectives and I can do it part-time and full-time but staffing up and increasing the number of individuals working on cold cases. 

Another thing we have to do, we have to utilize the media better. Last year we had roughly four cold cases that were solved but nobody knows about it. I said ‘Well, was this highlighted in the media? Why didn’t we get that out?’ The response I got from my team was like ‘No.’ If people don’t see it, they can’t value it and then it doesn’t give families hope that we’re actually working on these cases and getting them closed. 

BridgeDetroit: Runaway and missing teens are a big concern we’ve heard from the community, especially since the Na’Ziyah Harris case. What is the department doing in that regard? What should the community and parents know about runaway teens? 

Bettison: One of the things is the Detroit PD used to do a great job utilizing the traditional media, Channel 2, Channel 4, Channel 7. We would, for almost every teen, make sure we got it on television. It’s not an Amber Alert but it’s making sure their face was put on TV and folks know that we’re looking for them. 

Where we did a horrible job was when they came home and we recovered the missings, nobody knew. So if you’re at home and all you see every day is another missing teen, missing teen, missing teen, where our suburban partners weren’t putting them on television like that. It looked like the teens just go missing and never come back to the city of Detroit. The vast majority do come back and we recover them. But if we don’t let you know the end of the story, you’re left hanging and it creates a tremendous amount of fear. 

So now, on our social media page, we have a missing page and you can see the number that ran away and the number recovered. The outstanding number is very, very low. And with this (soon-to-be-announced initiative) that’s going to be a situation where we’re pushing it out, everyone will know, and we’ll have all hands on deck, actually looking for them. 

We believe that by all of us working together we’re going to be able to really protect our youth. That’s going to be a tremendous benefit right there and I’m looking forward to it.