Fresh from vacation in Aruba, Lt. Leo Bombalicki (pictured, left) updated members of the Whalley-Edgewood Beaver Hill Management Team Tuesday evening on his efforts to implement Chief James Lewis’s post- community policing philosophy, which will no longer allow the “community” to “direct” law enforcement by “screaming.”
Bombalicki is WEB’s fourth district manager in a year. Despite that turnover, and a rocky start, he assured neighbors Tuesday that the district is on track.
“We’ve made some progress in the neighborhood, with two substantial drug arrests already,” he said.
Bombalicki said there are currently “several operations going on in the neighborhood right now” that he is “not at liberty to speak of,” and that following a meeting with Lewis Wednesday he plans to begin “enhanced motor vehicle enforcement” on Whalley Avenue.
“At that time, I’ll be available, I’ll be around,” he said. “I have no other vacations planned at this point.”
A proposal to shift a portion of WEB/ District 10 below Dickerman Street to District 6, he said, would likely be approved soon.
“When it’s going to go down officially I’m not sure,” he said.
He also asked any interested members of the WEB Management Team to apply to the upcoming class of the Citizens’ Academy.
Bombalicki said the team’s relationship to the police department needs to change with the times. Responding to questions about the effects of the department’s new policing approach (read about that here), he said Lewis still believes in letting the community speak, but that enforcing the law must come first.
“Community policing will be around as you know it,” he said, “but as far as the community directing the police, I don’t think that will be happening too much anymore.”
In the past, he said, the department has been too easily swayed by community “screaming.” In the future community groups should simply provide police with information, he said.
“I think the management team as a whole should bring to my attention to what the problems are and then let the chief decide and myself decide what problems we’re going to tackle first and how we’re going to do it. That’s how the chief is,” Bombalicki said. “He’s a California cop.”