By Larry Bolinger
Alliance
I have lived in Alliance all my life (55 years), except for when I was in the military. I’ve seen the ups and downs of our city. Over the past few years, I’ve seen quite a few improvements. We have seen many new businesses such as Scooters, Runza, the new housing complex along the highway, the brewery, a section of the Heartland Highway completed, repairs on the tennis courts, ADA-compliant repairs on walkways, a BBQ restaurant, and the new store for Bomgaars. I see more programs where people from the community are working together to help make things better in Alliance, such as expanding on the arts program, street paint project, and community bike programs.
There has been a group that has made many complaints about our City Manager and former Police Chief, and the New Police Chief who hasn’t arrived yet. If we review the statistics of how our city is doing, we may have more insight into how the city is actually doing. From 2018 to 2024, we have seen an increase in population and a decrease in unemployment. Alliance had not seen an increase in population in over 40 years. In 1980 our population was at 9.9k and it steadily dropped every year and hit its lowest in 2016 at less than 8.1k. It did not start to increase until 2018 and has seen steady growth since. Unemployment is down to 2.2%. From 2020 to 2023, crime dropped by 30%. A 2016 study showed that Alliance was ranked #6 highest unemployment rate in Nebraska, Box Butte County had the highest unemployment rate in the region, and Alliance was ranked the worst city in Nebraska to live in because of the high crime rate and high unemployment rate.
I am well-educated in Political Science, Criminology, and Government Affairs. We had a large problem between 2010 and 2016 with our local government failing to address the citizen’s concerns. They ran things the way they wanted to rather than follow policies and procedures. In my studies, there were well over 20 civil rights violations, fraud, many state statute violations, and extortion. With my documentation of policy and procedure violations and the statistics shown, there was a need to create a massive change in how our government was run. Between 2016 to 2020, we end up with a new City Council, a new City Manager, a new City Clerk, and a new Police Chief. They were tasked with fixing the problems we have had for the past 40 years. Fixing a failing economy, a continued loss of population, and a high crime rate would take on a lot of restructuring. How a government runs and how it is supposed to run can be two different things. People in government learned the wrong way and they stayed working in our government for a long time and taught new people how to do things wrong. The revamping from 2016 to 2023 helped improve our system of governance and advanced our police department. It got people to work together to help our town progress. Continuing education programs in our government is a must-have or you fall into the 40-year rut we had.
In roughly 2019 or 2020 I was studying criminology to finish up my Bachelor of Science degree and I had conducted a research analysis on community policing. When the police chief announced his retirement I wrote to our City Council about what we should be looking for in a replacement to make sure we get someone who is updated on their education who could work on diversion programs, take us out of the failed 1980s era community policing and launch our police department into the 21st Century, and someone who is trained in both 21st Century Community Policing and Procedural Policing. The lack of structure has rated Nebraska as having the highest per capita prison overpopulation in the Nation and it shows that Nebraska’s recidivism rates went up while most other states went down. That is an indication of a failing system. States that utilize diversion programs are seeing a 60% reduction in recidivism.
For the past decade, many areas across the nation had been arguing police brutality, excessive force, arguing against community policing, profiling, stop and frisk, and general racism in the police department. Our town was not exempt from that argument. There were many complaints of profiling and targeting poor people and harassing Natives. The profiling issues were at their highest. From 2010 to 2016 profiling and the 1980s era community policing was highly supported by both the police chief and then city manager. In theory, community policing was created to target small crimes to prevent larger crimes, but in many cases, people just use it as a tool to support bullying tactics and racism. In Alliance, for many people, were treated like the City Manager and Police Chief claimed Martial Law. By implementing poorly constructed management, they created distrust between the citizens and the government.
In roughly 2015, the President started the promotion of police reform and the Task Force on 21st Century Community Policing. That was created to make a push for de-escalation tactics and to end both profiling and stop-and-frisk programs. In Alliance, we need to change from the failed 1980s-era community policy and bring us into the 21st Century. That meant major changes in policy philosophy to end discrimination tactics. Several people adjusted to the changes, and some refused and were let go. The change in community policing, change in policing philosophy, and the focus on diversion programs led to significant community support, a volunteer program to support the police, an award for volunteer support, an award for improved safety, 1.5 million dollars in grants, and a reduction in crime by 30%.
Over the past few years, we have had a lot of success, but there has been a group that has been working on getting our Police Chief and City Manager fired because they don’t like changes, or they may know someone who got fired that used to work for the City. They point fingers and play the blame game. A lot of people are very upset with the status of the Police Department. I started the push for reform in 2008 and made the recommendation for the changes when the old chief retired. If people need someone to blame, they can blame me.
Many people don’t like change or fear change. But the statistics show that we are far better off now than we were 10 years ago thanks to the leadership we have today and the community support.