NEW KEENE POLICE CHIEF HAS BIG PLANS FOR CITY

KEENE - A career in law enforcement found Arthur Walker more than 30
years ago.

Walker, 53, was recently appointed Chief of Police in Keene, replacing
Barry Wante, who retired. Walker started on the Keene force in 1977.
He has served as a patrolman, in the traffic and juvenile bureaus, as
head of the investigations division, and, until for the last five
years, captain of the administration division.

"When I graduated high school in 1968, I went right into the Marines,"
he said. "Once I was out of the service, I was prodded by some friends
at college to take a look, and that's where I developed an interest in
law enforcement as a career."

Walker was originally hired to provide a visible police presence on
Main Street back in the '70s, when the drinking age was 18.

"We were having a fair number of problems," Walker said. "There were
no open container laws. It was legal for people to be standing outside
drinking, and there were places where they'd congregate.

"But the mere presence of police has a great effect," he added. "What
I'd do is drive up in the cruiser and start to write my reports. I
wouldn't look up or anything, but the place would be cleared out in
minutes. The car and the uniforms influence the way people behave."

Even though the drinking age has gone up and there are now open
container laws, Walker said alcohol is still the biggest substance
abuse problem in the Keene area.

"Alcohol almost overshadows everything else," Walker said. "We bring
in about 225, 230 people for protective custody every year, and it's
not nearly so many for marijuana. It's not just driving while
intoxicated. It's assaults, thefts, criminal mischief, all sorts of
offenses that may not have occurred if the people weren't
intoxicated."

Not that there aren't drugs in Keene, Walker noted: "There's marijuana
and cocaine here, and some heroin use, but that's not extensive."

One of the biggest problems Walker is facing, he said, is finding
enough qualified personnel.

"Recruiting quality people is a nationwide problem," Walker said.
"We've seen a tremendous dip in the number of people applying for
police jobs, nothing like the numbers we used to have. In Chicago, for
instance, the department used to get 25,000 applicants, and now it's
dropped to five or six thousand. I don't know why. Some people are
saying that the war on terror is taking the people who'd ordinarily
apply for police jobs, but this was a problem even before September
11."

Walker said the department was down four people at the
moment.

Keene's police department has garnered a measure of fame due to the
success of Detective James McLaughlin, who has excelled in tracking
down child pornography, and predators, on the Internet.

Walker said he has no plans to change or expand the way these cases
are investigated.

"I could put half the department on that, and they'd be busy," Walker
said. "But we have to be responsive to the needs of the community.
Child molestation is different from drug use; you can identify drug
users fairly easily. But molestation exists in every strata of
society. Years ago, you only had to worry about a guy lurking at a
playground and luring a kid into the woods. Now, the victims tend to
be someone the kids know closely, or meet anonymously over the Internet."

Walker outlined some of the long-term goals he has for the department,
one of which is moving the police department into a new city
government complex. The city is renovating a former Supervalu
warehouse on Marlborough Street for use by the department of public
works, the fire department, and the police department.

"We'll start planning for the move later this year," he said.
"Hopefully, we can move in sometime in 2004."

Other plans include achieving national accreditation.