The city of Dayton is preparing to install a new police chief.
On May 7, Eric Henderson will lay down the title of deputy chief and put on the title chief of the Dayton police department.
Earlier, the 47-year-old spoke with WYSO’s Kathryn Mobley about his vision for the force.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Deputy Chief Eric Henderson: I'm excited for this opportunity to serve this department, to serve this community. I know there's going to be challenges along the way. I want to be open and honest. I'm not going to tell people what they want to hear. I want to tell them what I think is based upon my 27 years in law enforcement, my 40-plus years of life experience and the training that I've gone through, leadership training, FBI, National Academy, everything.
WYSO Kathryn Mobley: The city of Dayton Police Department currently has 345 officers, by mid June that number will grow to 371. Plus, 42 professional staff. What are your goals, priorities?
Henderson: My three priorities are building trust and transparency, making sure that we're focused on violent crime reduction and then developing in our people, our staff. We'll start with the building of trust and transparency. After critical incidents, I think we do a decent job of getting out there, sharing body cam, sharing information about facts that we know. I want to make sure we continue that and look for ways to even potentially improve that. Being visible in the community, myself, command staff and officers, in between calls or service as time allows. Making sure they're being out listening, listening to understand, not listening to respond and taking that information back and seeing how we can utilize that to improve the way we serve the community.
Looking at our information from back to early 2000s, we've seen double digit declines in property crimes, which is good. But for our violent crimes, such as aggravated assaults where there's a deadly weapon, a gun, knife, et cetera, or homicides, we seen the same or increasing numbers over those years.
Last year, we had 92 non-fatal shootings and 32 homicides. That's just way too many for our population. Those are impacting families for generations to come. So being focused on that, working with our local state federal partners, working with our neighborhoods, working with our business community, and then also utilizing evidence-based strategies to look for ways to reduce it.
It is good there's a community based group called Felons with a Future that is working in the North Riverdale area to help connect people and try to show people they can change the decisions they're making so we can reduce some of these violent crimes.
Mobley: How important is it for the community to partner with Dayton officers to solve crimes?
Henderson: There's nearly 140,000 residents, the vast majority of those residents are law-abiding citizens. There's a small number of us working in this community. So we cannot be in every street corner, 24-7. So it really takes the eyes and ears of the community to relay that information to us. And for us to do due diligence and follow up on it to ensure that we're able to investigate and to hold someone accountable.
Mobley: You have 27 years of experience, joining the city of Dayton police department in 1999. What inspired you to choose law enforcement as a career?
Henderson: I was working at Elder-Beerman Department Store at Philadelphia and Siebenthaler. I started working there in high school, so I worked there my junior and senior year in high school, and then I transitioned to loss prevention, I was going to Wright State full-time, but while I was working loss prevention I met a lot of officers that worked for Dayton off-duty, and they started talking to me about the Dayton Police Department and how it's a great career. Went out on a ride-along. And here I am. So I started when I was 20 in the Academy.
Mobley: You mentioned transparency, which I think everyone would agree is important, regardless of your industry. Dayton city council members and the current mayor instructed the city manager to do a broad, national search for the next police chief. But that didn't happen. Do you feel that may cause some people pause, not so much questioning your talents or your abilities, but just wondering, why did a broader net was not cast?
Henderson: All I can say is I serve at the pleasure of the city manager.
Mobley: Deputy Chief Henderson, I know you, you've probably seen various communities taking a stance regarding federal ICE officials coming into their community space and arresting undocumented immigrants. What is the policy of the Dayton Police Department?
Henderson: So our policy has been since late 2000, if there's someone in our community that's a victim of crime, we want them to feel comfortable calling us. Our officers do not ask immigration status for crime victims, witnesses. So we want to make sure that we're seen again as a trusted resource. So that's been our policy. So I understand those challenges, but we're focused on local law enforcement and protecting and serving the people that are within our community, regardless of their immigration status.
Mobley: Are Dayton police officers to directly work with federal ICE officials?
Henderson: No, we do not. You're referring to the 287-G, and we are not. There's very few agencies in Ohio that have that, and we're definitely not one of those.
Mobley: Yours is a very stressful job. How do you relax, unwind?
Henderson: I'm a big UD fire basketball fan, an Ohio State football fan. I've had a smoker you know, pork and other meats and stuff. I started that probably 10 plus years ago, during COVID, I kind of perfected it a little bit. Least I like to think I have. So that's something that I do, there's a lot that's going on. It's nice just to sit there and let something kind of just marinate and take care and enjoy it you know afterwards. Also Dayton has a great performing arts community. There's a lot that goes on at Schuster Center, a lot of great restaurants. A lot of things that I do outside of work that I think help relieve the stress in the fast pace of the job.
Mobley: What do you want your officers to understand when they hit the streets?
Henderson: It's important that they're out there building trust listening to folks. We do play a role in that we need to make sure that the community sees us as a trustful resource to them. So that's why I think it's important that we're showing up just not in crisis type situations that we are showing up when there's you know something fun going on a barbecue or a pick up basketball game or just interacting, sitting on someone's front porch. So I think it's important about building those relationships before something bad happens so that they feel more comfortable about calling.
