Doug Blake likes puzzles. As a father, a coworker, and a manager he enjoys the challenge of crafting the best working solution to any given problem. Doug has applied that skill throughout his entire career, the 16 years he’s been an officer with the Roseville Police Department.
He’s the Lieutenant with the RPD Professional Standards Unit. This unit writes the department policies, trains officers, establishes standards, and helps provide accountability within the Police Department.
Additionally, he fulfills other roles within the department. Doug is both the SWAT and tactical commander. “When we have SWAT incidents, my job is to go out there and to help develop a tactical plan,” Doug said, “I move the different tactical resources around the problem to get some resolution.”
Our police officers are routinely called upon to intercede in situations that involve ‘less than socially acceptable behavior’ – vandalism, domestic violence, theft, and a host of other activities. While the PD does an outstanding job of providing a resolution to these conflicts and events, Doug believes this type of response is only part of a broader, long-term solution.
“As First Responders, we interact with these issues day-in and day-out. The question becomes – what else can we do?” Doug asked. “If we’re going to strike at the root of how we deal with crime, and the effect it has on the community, we need to look at kids and their early development. This means we have to look at the nuclear family, how they function, the health of that environment, their physical health, the oral health of the child, and the maternal health of the mother – all those things that relate to the early years in a child’s life. We focus on the children and families believing that the impacts we make on kids of that age prepare them, as far as a trajectory is concerned, into healthier and more successful lives as they get older.”
Success breeds success
Outside of his job at the PD, Doug fulfills the role of Commissioner for
First Five Placer. This Placer County organization works to help identify the needs of children, prenatal through age-five in our area.
As in a game of chess, First Five Placer creates a strategy, then deploys resources between many different community groups. The funds they disperse are generated by the State’s tobacco tax. First Five Placer is part of the larger, state-run organization First Five.
Ken Bodine (Public Affairs & Communications) interviews Doug for this article.
Doug tells us that by addressing the developmental needs of a young child, society can help break the chain of violence later in these children’s lives. This is the central challenge that he and his team embrace as they work to shatter this crippling cycle through empowerment.
“Our chief goal is protecting children,” Lt. Blake stated. “We found that by having these conversations with parents and providing them with the tools they need to interact with children, we found that those efforts significantly reduced the number of calls for service where we were going out to the same families that were getting in arguments, having vandalism, and kids were running away. We were reducing those service calls and improving the quality of life in those families, and consequently improving the quality of life in those communities.” Doug sees a tremendous benefit in establishing a solid relationship with these families.
Lt. Blake understands that the myriad of variables in this puzzle is complicated. It takes an entire community to craft a stable, functioning society. In an extreme situation, he may need to coordinate the tactical application of his teams, but he greatly prefers teaching a child how to use a toothbrush. He knows that in a broader sense, both of these actions are directly related to the development of society.
In the few, precious hours he has away from both the City and the County, Doug spends his time with his family; he’s married with four children. In those quiet hours, he’s been known to pick up a guitar or play the piano.