New Keene police chief plans no major changes, pledges respect for community

Sep. 22—Keene's new police chief said Wednesday he doesn't envision making significant changes to the department, but hopes to continue partnerships with other community institutions to help address issues like drug abuse and homelessness while continuing to chip away at difficult internal challenges like transparency and recruitment.

Steven Stewart took the helm of the Keene Police Department this week after former police chief Steven Russo, who spent 23 years with the department including five as chief, retired from the position at the end of last month.

During an interview at the police station Wednesday, Stewart, an 18-year veteran of the department who served as captain of field operations for seven years before his promotion, discussed his plans for leading the 44-officer police force. He was the only candidate to apply to be chief during an internal search and will have an annual salary of $133,517, City Manager Elizabeth Dragon said last week when his appointment was announced.

"We have a great team," Stewart said of the department, which also includes 11 full-time and 13 part-time civilian personnel. "We have a lot of really talented people that do a lot of really good things. We have a basic framework and blueprint that has already been provided. I don't need to reinvent the wheel."

Asked about his approach to policing, Stewart pointed to the department's mission statement: "The Keene Police Department will protect life and property, maintain order in the city, while ensuring fair and respectful treatment of everyone."

"It doesn't really get any easier than that," he said. "Do your job and treat people with respect. I like to tell our new officers when they first get hired, you should always be treating people the way that you want your family to be treated, the way that you want to be treated."

The Keene Police Department has a current annual budget of $8.2 million, most of which is devoted to personnel costs, Stewart said. The department aims to hire the finest officers, provide them with the best training and equipment, and hold them to high standards of professionalism, he said.

Much of the police force is dedicated to patrol duty, answering calls for service that include anything from shoplifting to domestic violence and assaults, the police chief said. Meanwhile, the department's detectives devote a significant amount of time to investigating sexual assaults and drug distribution, he said.

"Right now, if we're talking about the community, we have substance-abuse issues, we have homelessness issues," Stewart said, when asked about the challenges Keene faces. "We play a small role in each of those."

On the enforcement end, the police department can only do so much to mitigate drug use in the community, the chief said, and even less that the police can do to address homelessness.

Still, the department partners with other organizations in the community — such as Monadnock Family Services, Southwestern Community Services and The Doorway at Cheshire Medical Center — to help people find substance-use treatment or housing, he said.

"Enforcement alone is not going to take care of our substance-abuse issue; it's really about prevention, education and treatment, not just enforcement," Stewart said.

He noted that a variety of underlying causes contribute to people struggling to find housing in the city that fall outside of the department's purview, including substance-use and a lack of affordable homes and transitional housing.

When the police have been called to deal with people experiencing with homelessness — such as when people living in encampments behind the Hannaford and behind Kohl's in Keene were told earlier this year they had to leave — the department makes sure they are aware of available services, he said.

"We didn't show up out there the first day and say 'OK, everybody out in five minutes.' It was a process and there was time allotted, time allotted to allow them to make other arrangements, to get their affairs in order," Stewart said. "But by the same token, you have to be respectful of the property owners' rights as well. It is a balancing act. We try to be reasonable with all parties."

When it comes to drugs, the chief said the department's enforcement actions center on distributors who come from out of state and often have criminal records. In recent months, the department has worked closely with Homeland Security Investigations, which has provided additional surveillance resources to investigate drug distribution in the area, he said.

"I don't know that it's making a huge difference on the user end, but it does make a difference when you arrest six or seven felons who've proved to be violent felons, don't have any ties to this community except to sell crack and heroin, crack and fentanyl and meth," Stewart said. "It's a safer place when they're not doing that."

He said he considers lower-level drug arrests, such as those for possession or more minor sales, as a type of intervention, noting that the court can compel people to attend treatment, seek help through drug court, or help them realize that they've hit rock bottom.

Still, the chief said, he is keeping his eye on how other communities throughout the state are working to address problems with substance-use, noting the Prevention, Enforcement and Treatment Program out of Laconia. The program connects people experiencing addiction with resources to address their dependency while also connecting their families and children to trauma and mental health services, according to reporting by The Union Leader.

One of the biggest changes in law enforcement in recent years, Stewart said, has been around issues of transparency and racial justice, particularly in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man at the hands of Minneapolis, Minn., police in 2020.

"We're on the verge of body cameras, which is going to be a huge shift for us and a huge benefit, really," he said. "It will make some people in the community feel more comfortable; it will certainly help our officers with regard to claims against them, and it will certainly help us prosecute cases because we'll have better evidence."

Details on the funding of Keene's body-camera program, the installation of the technology and the policies and procedures that it will entail are still being sorted out, the chief said, so there is not yet a timeline for when the cameras may be deployed.

Among the greatest challenges for police departments today is recruitment and retention, Stewart said, noting that Keene currently has four openings for officers and expects several current officers to retire in the next year.

"It's not easy; it's not fast," he said. "We don't get the same amount of applicants that we got 20 years ago for these spots and why that is is sort of a mystery — or there's a lot of theories. I know that it's probably a little bit of everything."

Government jobs that provide stability don't have the same allure they once did to young people, who value their free time and are drawn to the flexibility that other jobs can offer, Stewart said. And most young people aren't interested in working nights, weekends and holidays, he said.

"Then there's a huge effect every time something like Ferguson, Missouri happens, or Philando Castile or George Floyd," the chief said, referring to high-profile police killings of Black men. "We're here in New Hampshire, sort of just doing our thing ... and it affects us here and it affects people personally because sort of the whole profession is put on trial and condemned for the foolish actions of one person halfway across the country."

Asked about how he plans to encourage diversity in the recruitment and hiring process, Stewart said he believes diversity already exists within the department, described diversity as a "city-wide issue" and said there are no historically Black colleges in the region to recruit from.

"Certainly we welcome and appreciate diversity but we really just need people that can do their job regardless of what they look like," he said.

Overall, Stewart said, he does not plan to make any many changes at the department as chief. In the coming weeks, there will be a shakeup in personnel, though, he said, as officers are promoted to fill vacancies.

"It's an honor to be chosen to lead the department," the chief said. "It's a great city; we have a great team here and I'm excited about the opportunity."

Ryan Spencer can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1412, or rspencer@keenesentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter at @rspencerKS