Norm Haubert was sworn in to be Westminster’s next police chief on March 20, after a four-month national search.
Born in Broomfield, Haubert joined his hometown’s police department in 1995. Then he moved to Westminster in 1999 and has served in their police department ever since.
As an officer in Westminster’s police department for about 24 years, he knows what the department does best.
“Service is probably the best thing that we do in treating victims, trying to solve the crimes and trying to do right by the victims and make sure people are held accountable,” he said.
In the past few years, low staffing has frustrated the department, he said, because it took away from that service aspect. It prevented officers from staying proactive in the community.
“We need to get back out there (to be) proactive, engaging the community so they know us and so the residents of the city feel safe,” he said.
Staffing the department remains a priority for Haubert, and he noted a difference between now and when he was hired.
“There was a line out the door of people that wanted to be officers. I think that's no longer the case,” he said.
To tackle the problem, he sees two things the department can improve. One of them is promotion around the profession: he wants to educate people about serving as a police officer, showing its value to the community.
A specific group he wants to educate is college athletes. To do so, employees who were former college athletes will go to their alma maters and reach out to those teams.
“Less than 1% of those kids are going to go on to be professional athletes, but they understand what it means to have commitment and dedication and understand what it means to be in a team environment,” he said.
He also wants to form programs for kids to explore the police department as a possible future profession. Although someone can’t be an officer until the age of 21, he wants the idea brewing in their mind so that after they attend junior college or college, they want to start working as an officer.
Primary goals
A focus for his leadership team will be engaging with his employees and fostering an environment people want to work in.
“If we have employees that are fulfilled and have self-fulfillment from working here, they're going to be our best recruiters,” he said.
He also wants the department to engage with the community more and establish personal connections. Building trust is the key.
“Where they have that personal connection and that engagement, to me, it builds trust,” Haubert said.
That relationship with the community is paramount, Haubert said, in preventing crime. If the community doesn’t trust the police department, they won’t call them. In turn, officers won’t know what’s going on in the community and that makes the department less effective.
“We're not going to be able to solve any problems by ourselves,” he said.
That applies to motor vehicle thefts.
The Common Sense Institute, a Greenwood Village-based non-profit focused on economic research, found Colorado to be the top state in America for auto thefts in a study published Sept. 8, and four Colorado cities rank in the top ten in the United States. Those cities are Denver, Aurora, Westminster and Pueblo.
Bringing those crimes down involves both the community and the police force, Haubert said. Residents need to pay attention to things like locking their doors to decrease the opportunities for crime through their actions.
The other piece of the puzzle comes from law enforcement, he said. At the state level, Haubert said he helped work to change the law so that a motor vehicle theft is a felony, despite the value of the car. He also said his officers recently have been more proactive about the crime by increasing patrols in hard-hit areas.
Haubert is excited to get to work.
“I look forward to working with the community, listening to their concerns (and) their problems (and) making sure that we are providing a service,” he said. “When people call 9-1-1, they don’t have the option of getting a different service.”
