Former High Point Chief Quijas Reflects On Crime-Reduction Program That Became A National Model

Long before the national calls to “defund the police” and shift some of their responsibilities to other care professionals, the city of High Point started a program that earned national recognition for doing just that. The Violent Crimes Task Force emphasized cooperation between the police and the social organizations that served the community. 

Starting in 1997, Louis Quijas spent five years as police chief in High Point, refining the program before leaving for posts in the FBI and federal Department of Homeland Security. He's now a consultant in Nashville. Quijas spoke with WFDD's Paul Garber about the program and what police departments today can learn from it. 

Interview Highlights

On what one of his first High Point meetings taught him about listening: 

I remember talking to a group in the basement of one of the churches there in High Point, and I was ready to really tell them all the great stuff that we were doing. But what they really wanted is they wanted me to listen. I learned very quickly that the job of the police chief was to listen to the community.

I didn't necessarily agree with everything they said, but I was supposed to make that connection in the best way to make those relationships, because it's really based on relationships. It's listening to people and we listen to them. And basically what they were asking for was being a part of the process. And that's why we started fleshing out how can we best include all segments of our community. Not just the minority community, but the academic community, the business community, the faith community, and it all gelled at that time. 

I don't mean to make it sound simple, but I get more calls now than I ever have about the High Point initiative, because now ... people are going back and looking at success stories and saying, 'What did you guys do in High Point that we could be doing now?' And I've been sharing that story, so I've been giving it recently more than I have the last 15, 16 years.

On targeting the city's most violent repeat offenders: 

One of the first things I asked when I got to High Point after I got my feet on the ground and we decided to start looking at what the issues were, we identified, obviously guns, drugs, and gangs. We got it down to about 60 people that were actually the most violent criminals in the city. And we realized if we could take those people off the street, then we probably would see a decrease in crime.

On how the community approach reflects calls for change today: 

I think the big piece for us is we leverage the resources and expertise from people in the community, because I wasn't a social worker, I wasn't a person that could give people jobs. I wasn't a person who could open up the community college to somebody who just says, 'Boy, if I had a college education, I wouldn't be doing this.' 

The initiative depended on people's willingness to bring resources, talent, expertise to the table. There wasn't a lot of people that were doing what we were doing in High Point. And I was always very proud when we were getting people like from Chicago Police Department, L.A., and all these people that were coming to little High Point. ...and they would actually see from the ground, not some guy sitting in a nice office down there at police headquarters, but people, the troops that were actually out there driving the results from the strategy.

On the future of policing and the calls for defunding the police:

It's a very small segment of our population that is pushing some of this. I think there needs to be change. I think there always should be accountability. But before we just buy lock, stock, and barrel into some of this stuff, I say let's sit down and let's really have a conversation about it. And I hope cooler heads prevail before you have any defunding or any of that kind of stuff. It may come to that, but I'd like to think that it's thought out.

*Editor's Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.