HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson Police Chief Jeff Hooper says he will not add an officer to the Drug Enforcement Unit, saying that the technique of enforcement is obsolete. Hooper made that announcement during Tuesday’s City Council meeting. “I don’t like to play defense. I like to be proactive and want a proactive style of law enforcement,” Hooper said. “The idea is not to make a victim feel good that we’re taking a report and we’re going to do something after they’ve been a victim of a crime. The idea is to prevent them from being a victim of a crime in the first place.” 
Hooper says more community engagement has been working in reducing crime in the city. He wants to keep that practice, noting that crime numbers are dropping where community engagement is present. “It’s not about going out and arresting all the bad guys. What you have to do is engage with the community so when we see a crime trend popping up we don’t just all of a sudden throw a bunch of officers and say, ‘arrest everybody,'” Hooper said. “Go talk to the people in the neighborhood. Get out and make public contact.” Hooper says community engagement helps in two very different ways. “If I have officers going door to door, they’re going to contact one of two people,” Hooper said. “They’re going to talk to people in the community who are wonderful upstanding members that want crime reduced in their neighborhood or they’re going to knock on the door of the dope dealer’s house. They’re going to know that we’re there.”
Not all of the law enforcement community is with Hooper on the proactive approach. The Reno County Sheriff’s Department says it will stay with the DEU to help combat the drug activity. “I talked to the sheriff about our strategy . . . and the success we’re having and asked, ‘why don’t you put some detectives in our proactive unit to help us fight crime this way,’ but he doesn’t want to do that. He wants to stick with the DEU and that’s his right,” Hooper said. “I’ve talked with Mr. (John) Deardoff and talked with county staff a little bit and officially we’re going to be pulling out of the DEU because this is where I’m going to devote our resources and manpower because I know it’s an effective style of law enforcement and I have got the stats we’re tracking to prove it.”
Hooper says under the proactive approach he is seeing crime drop in the city. The 2019 crime rate is at 32% compared with the state average of 35%.