Tulsa police want to measure how safe people feel downtown, and they’re increasing patrol numbers to do it.
Starting March 9, the department will have a task force of officers aimed at improving how the public feels about the safety of the downtown area.
Police Maj. Mark Ohnesorge said the area will have 15-25 officers per day within Veterans Park and the four highways that surround downtown. TPD’s routine patrol typically incorporated officers from north Tulsa on an as-needed basis.
Ohnesorge said over the past several years visitors and stakeholders in downtown have expressed they don’t feel safe in the area. He specifically said they want to see unhoused people and people experiencing mental health crises get help.
Ohnesorge did not specify how long the task force would operate, other than “several weeks.” He said this is because TPD administrators want to assess the effectiveness of the task force.
“We really want all Tulsans and everyone visiting downtown to feel safe whenever they’re going downtown to eat at a restaurant, to catch a ballgame, anything like that. So really, what we’re going for is really hard to measure, because we’re going for the peace of mind of the people downtown,” he said.
At a downtown public safety meeting last week, former mayoral Chief of Staff and City Councilor Blake Ewing asked how TPD would measure success.
“If we’re talking about measuring data to determine if something continues, how do you measure if something did not occur? How do you measure peace of mind? What are we going to evaluate to say, ‘This actually works’?” Ewing said.
“On the back end of this task force, there will likely be a survey that goes out to our downtown Tulsa partners to ask them if they noticed anything, if they saw a difference, and to kind of see where that might take us,” Ohnesorge said.
In addition to enforcing laws and having presence in the area, Ohnesorge said officers will refer some calls to special units like the Community Response Team. These units aim to offer alternatives to incarceration.
Ohnesorge also said officers will educate downtown patrons about the rights of people they respond to. He said officers have seen people who are “down on their luck” commit crimes in the downtown area, but he also said it’s sometimes a perception issue.
“We sometimes have to tell people, you know, it’s not a crime to be homeless in the city of Tulsa. It’s not a crime to have a mental health episode in the city of Tulsa. Those aren’t things that we’re going to resolve by making an arrest. We might be able to resolve by connecting that person to a resource, or getting that person connected to help in the moment,” he said.
