Havre police chief talks drugs, pursuits, retention and more

Havre Police Chief Gabe Matosich spoke about multiple issues facing Havre law enforcement at a town hall meeting Monday including issues he said are driven by drug use.

Matosich said crime in the state is generally going up and the Havre area saw some upticks in violent crime since 2020.

He said in 2021 his department saw one homicide, up from none the year before, 14 rapes, up from 10, and 41 aggravated assaults, up from 23.

However, non-violent crime appears to dropped a bit with the department seeing two robberies in 2021, down from four the year before, 260 larceny thefts down from 276, 31 motor vehicle thefts, down from 39, and 29 burglaries, down from 41.

Arson stayed the same at four in 2020 and 2021, and DUIs saw only a slight increase going from 103 to 105.

Overall, Matosich said officers created 1,143 offense reports in 2021, up from 1,079 in 2020 and the dispatch center's calls increased from 20,649 to 21,856.

He attributed the rising crime in the state, in part, to the increasing pervasiveness of drugs and lenience on the part of the Montana Department of Justice.

Since the legalization of recreational marijuana, he said, the community has seen an increase in drug-related DUIs, but when asked how many marijuana related DUIs there had been he said he didn't know.

Matosich said drug-related DUIs take much more time to deal with than alcohol-related DUIs because it takes time to get warrants for blood and to take suspects to the hospital to have the procedures done, and during a time of difficult staffing this is taking up a great deal of police officers' time, with drug-related DUIs taking hours longer to process than alcohol-related ones.

An audience member asked Matosich if there are technological solutions to the problem, and he said other states that have legalized recreational marijuana have since obtained instruments that can detect whether someone is over the legal limit which considerably expedites the process.

However, he said, the state has yet to recognize these instruments and actually getting them can take time, though he does see them being useful in the future.

"The instruments are out there; it's just a matter of acquiring them," he said.

Matosich also said the perpetrators of DUIs they've been seeing lately tend to be over the legal limit of whatever substance they took by a higher degree.

Matosich said the biggest problem the state and community are facing right now is drugs like methamphetamine, heroine, opioids and especially fentanyl.

Fentanyl, typically a drug for cancer patients, is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine and is extremely easy to overdose on, Matosich said.

He said the area has seen a significant increase drug overdoses, in part because fentanyl is often mixed with other drugs and people who purchase drugs off the black market don't really know what they're getting.

He said most of these substances originate from over the southern border, though the northern border does occasionally see drug smuggling, with fentanyl being mostly manufactured, rather than over-prescribed like many opioids were.

Matosich said the drug is also extremely expensive and when people get addicted they often turn to criminal activity to pay for that addiction.

As for the methamphetamine, he said, they are seeing is much more pure than it used to be, often almost 100 percent pure where it used to be 30 percent pure on average after getting cut with other substances multiple times. The higher purity makes it easier to overdose on as well.

He said in all of 2021 Northern Montana Health Care and local emergency services had to use Narcan, a drug that treats overdoses in emergency situations, 38 times. Since the beginning of this year they've already reached 38 times.

Havre Fire Department Assistant Fire Chief Nathan Courtnage said their department has already had to use the drug more since January than in all of last year.

Matosich said Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation is also seeing this problem.

He said his department is signed up with the Washington/Baltimore High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Overdose Map, a near-real-time nationwide map tracking overdoses across the U.S.

He said it's a great piece of technology that helps inform multiple law enforcement agencies of incidents all at once quickly and improves response times.

Matosich said he's trying to get law enforcement agencies across the Hi-Line to sign up with the program as well.

Along with drug trafficking, he said, Montana and the area is also seeing human trafficking and sexual exploitation becoming an increasingly serious problems as well, particularly exploitation of children.

He said drug cartels engage in these kinds of criminal activity as well so the problems do appear to be linked.

Matosich touted a media safety program by End Expatiation Montana called the Parent Empowerment Speakers Series which teaches about keeping children safe online and will be running online Tuesdays at noon for the rest of this month at http://MediaSafety.org/speakers .

High-speed pursuits

Matosich also talked about his department's concerns over high-speed pursuits, which he said are extremely dangerous for officers, perpetrators and bystanders alike.

He said police around the state are pushing the Legislature to make fleeing from officers a felony instead of a misdemeanor which he said will act as a deterrent and cut down on pursuits, which he said happen in part because perpetrators know its only a misdemeanor.

He said these pursuits are often the result of stolen vehicles, which he said often happen when people leave their keys in the car, leaving them running for the few minutes they spend getting something from a store, only to find their vehicles gone.

Cats, dogs and deer

Matosich also talked about issues regarding animals in the area, from stray cats and dogs to the deer.

He said from April 4 of last year to April 4 of this year the department has gotten 60 deer-related calls, most of them since January, and in most circumstances Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks considers it the city's problem to deal with.

He said local FWP will send help if they have someone in the area, and if the department specifically asks for their help they provide it, but for the most part it's become the city's responsibility.

Havre Mayor Doug Kaercher said FWP will be the main speaker at May's town hall and said if people have questions they can ask them directly next month.

Matosich also provided some statistics on the work of the Havre Animal Shelter, which he said took in 607 dogs last year, along with 107 cats.

He said 31 dogs and 69 cats were adopted, and 197 animals were returned to owners after getting out.

He said 40 animals in total were euthanized, many of them due to having serious injuries.

Recruitment and retention remain challenges

Matosich said the biggest problem his department and the dispatch center are facing right now is staff recruitment and retention, which he said is hardly exclusive to Havre or police work, but is becoming a serious problem.

"In the last 28 years I've never seen it like this before," he said.

He said the department has only two officers on per shift, which is their minimum, and this has caused the department to become reactive instead of proactive which they would like to be.

One casualty of this lack of staffing is their detective position, which would help them deal with things like sifting through the enormous amount of data on confiscated phones for evidence while officers remain on duty in the community.

Matosich said one potential officer is in the academy and another just got out and is doing field training. He said they've also extended conditional offers to two other potential officers, but they're going to see more resignations in the coming weeks, so staffing will remain a problem.

He said they are trying to recruit from schools and colleges, including ones outside the Havre area, but younger generations seem to have less interest in police work these days. He said students going into criminal justice tend to be more interested in social work and things like that.

When asked why officers leave, Matosich said they get a lot of reasons for it, but money seems to be a big one.

He said dispatch is also having trouble keeping people around. He said last year the dispatch center got 6,281 911 calls and the average pickup time is 2.6 seconds with 98 percent of calls being picked up within 10 seconds and 100 percent being picked up within 20 seconds, so they are still very busy.

He said younger people tend not to stick around as long, usually staying for two to three years before moving on.

Ongoing projects and yearly events

Despite their current difficulties, Matosich said, the department is working on a number of projects including improvements to their emergency operations center, getting new portable radios as well as new laptops that can be installed in police vehicles that will allow them to view recorders and connect to state systems.

He said they are also working on a new garage that will hopefully help them deal with their increasingly large stockpile of records which have yet to be digitized.

He also said the department got a new K9 unit through a state grant, which became necessary now that the legalization of marijuana made many drug-detecting dogs obsolete.

Matosich said the department is also continuing its yearly events like Shop with a Cop, the National Night Out, and the Havre Police Protective Association Concert as well as the Citizens Police Academy.

He said the academy, an eight- to nine-week course teaching people about police work that usually runs in fall, hasn't been run since the pandemic began and he want to get it going again this year.