Charles Crane/MDN Interim Minot Police Chief Capt. Dale Plessas delivers an update on policing in the community at the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 4 coffee at the Ward County Administration Building on Wednesday.

The Interim Minot Police Chief explored avenues his department is using to address fentanyl distribution in the community through the adoption of a community service officer model.

Capt. Dale Plessas spoke at the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 4 coffee on Wednesdays and said the Minot community continues to contend with the realities of the fentanyl epidemic. Plessas said fentanyl has caused a concerning amount of overdoses and overdose deaths in recent years beginning in 2020, which was the year he started commanding the MPD’s Investigations Unit.

“We immediately started seeing a lot of overdoses and overdose deaths. It was a surprise to me, because we didn’t used to see a lot of overdose deaths. We didn’t even track overdose deaths before that because you didn’t see that many of them,” Plessas said. “In 2020, we ended up with 20 overdose deaths. These weren’t just your typical drug users. These were people who were children, and parents for that matter. People from all walks of life that are dying from overdoses of fentanyl. It was kind of shocking.”

Plessas said the answer to the question of how to mitigate overdose deaths came in the form of NARCAN or naloxone, a medicine which rapidly reverses opioid overdose. Plessas described NARCAN as a bandaid, as the availability of the treatment did contribute to a significant reduction in the following years, the distribution and use of fentanyl has not diminished.

“It’s preventing people from dying, but it’s not preventing people from being addicted to fentanyl or from wanting fentanyl,” Plessas said. “Last year we had 57 suspected overdoses that were not fatal. What that means is we probably aren’t getting all the calls on most of these. There’s a lot to be done, but we aren’t seeing a reduction in the availability of fentanyl at this time.”

Plessas said the Ward County Narcotics Task Force was the lead agency in addressing the distribution of dangerous narcotics like fentanyl. The task force is made up of members of a number of agencies, including four slots for Minot Police officers. Plessas said unfortunately at this time, the MPD only has two of the slots filled due to staffing issues.

“That’s not acceptable. We need to get to the point where we have all of them, especially with the drug issue in Minot,” Plessas said.

Plessas said the MPD roster is currently short 15 officers, an issue he discussed at the Minot City Council meeting on Monday. One of the plans for supporting the sworn officers in the department was through embracing a community service officer model. Plessas said his department had a large number of civilian applicants, but were seeing less sworn officer applicants. Sworn applicants must have at least a two year degree or four years of equivalent military experience.

“The idea is to move civilians into positions where they can provide us with assistance by doing things that sworn officers are responsible for but don’t need to do. For example, a traffic accident investigation,” Plessas said. “The point is, there’s a lot of tasks that civilians could be doing to take the pressure off our sworn officers to allow them to be more proactive, allowing them to do the things we need them to do. Stop cars. Find drugs. Prevent overdoses.”

Plessas introduced intelligence analyst Jill Wheeling to those in attendance, singling out her role as a great example of how the community service officer model has already been implemented. Wheeling’s role is involved in reviewing seized communications, analyzing digital evidence, and building documents tying the data and information together to be shared by officers throughout the department. Plessas said Wheeling helped make all Minot Police officers more effective at what they do, by building bridges between ground level patrol officers and investigators working discrete cases.

Plessas said the community service model would allow sworn officers to be committed to proactive enforcement, while civilian officers would be free to perform reactive enforcement in addressing calls out for things like slashed tires. Plessas said the model would be evaluated in the future to determine if it has been successful, but that he thought it was a good first step.