Chief Jim Wycoff writes about the Community Policing principles as the cornerstone for the Gallatin Police Department.
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By Jim Wycoff
When I was interviewed for the position of Chief of Police one of the goals that I expressed for my administration was to institute the Community Policing principles as the cornerstone for the Gallatin Police Department. We have been working hard to get the philosophies and programs associated with Community Policing established here and, I think, have been somewhat successful.
I made arrangements through the Regional Community Policing Institute at Missouri Western State College for a team of people to come to Gallatin to provide a workshop for community members that would help us initiate various concepts of community policing here. The Regional Community Policing Institute is a federally funded entity dedicated to providing support and training for police agencies in their efforts to embrace community policing. All the training and other support that the RCPI provides come at no cost to the community or police department.
As part of that effort an advance team made up of two of the instructors came here last Friday, March 10, to train us and do the necessary ground work for this workshop. A date has even been set for the actual workshop in April. What came out of our meeting was that the City of Gallatin was way ahead of the program in that we had recently initiated the Healthy Communities program with a two-day workshop. The program of team building and establishing goals and priorities for the community is a very large part of the COPS workshop we were going to have here in April.
What we decided was that the best way to handle our efforts in the area of community policing was to become a more active participant in the Healthy Communities workshops rather than trying to duplicate the excellent efforts already underway. The next meeting of this group is set for Wednesday, March 15, and we will be involved by hopefully incorporating this topic into any sub-group that is working on quality of life and safety concerns.
We will still be working with the RCPI at Missouri Western to get our police department more actively involved in community policing. We have a survey that was prepared by the RCPI and will be returned to them once it has been completed by as many members of the Gallatin community as possible for evaluation and analysis.
This short survey will be circulated soon to as many members of the community as we can reach. We ask that those who receive it complete and return it to us. Once we have the completed surveys back we will send them to Missouri Western for analysis.
The RCPI will return the results of the surveys to us in the form of a binder with helpful breakdowns of data from the surveys and conclusions and recommendations that we can utilize to get the most value out of the input from those citizens of Gallatin who return the completed surveys. We will take these binders to an upcoming Healthy Communities meeting and share them with the sub-group interested in Quality of Life and Safety related issues and work with those community members to develop plans and programs to address identified priorities for the community as expressed in these surveys.
We are in the process of preparing the surveys for distribution and we have made it our goal to get as many of these surveys into the hands of as many Gallatin citizens as possible. We are working on distribution points and methods, as well as how to get the completed surveys back, to forward to the RCPI at Missouri Western.
We will be delivering as many of these surveys in person as is practical, but we realize that we will need to use other methods as well to enhance our chances of reaching as many of you as possible. This will involve setting up several distribution and turn-in points in the community. We ask that anyone who does not receive a hand delivered survey try to get by a distribution point and pick one up. We know for sure that City Hall will be one distribution and turn-in point. The drop box for utility payments can also be used for convenience in returning the surveys after City Hall business hours.
Any police officer will be able to provide a blank survey to anyone asking and they can also be contacted for return of completed surveys. We will publish other distribution and turn-in locations as soon as we have identified businesses and others to host these locations.
I encourage all citizens of Gallatin who value efficient, community oriented police practices to obtain a survey and complete it for us. It is essential that we know what your views are on police and quality of life related subjects so that we can efficiently provide the police services necessary to advance the goals set by the community. Timely completion is also important so that we can get the surveys to the RCPI for analysis as soon as possible.
I want to thank you all in advance for your support in this effort and I am excited about hearing from you about what you feel are areas needing improvement and/or better formulated police programs to address community identified problems.
We don’t have a whole lot of personnel, even when fully staffed, so it is critical that we know specifically what the community feels is important in order to best utilize the limited personnel and other resources we have to address your concerns. We would really appreciate your participation and help.