Wayne County Sheriff's Office
Community Policing Scope and Purpose
Plagiarizing from http://www.communitypolicing.org:
Effective community policing has a positive impact on reducing neighborhood crime, helping to reduce fear of crime and enhancing the quality of life in the community. It accomplishes these things by combining the efforts and resources of the police, local government and community members."
In short, police officers have become unapproachable due to the fact that work is done from air-conditioned or heated cars, and contact with the public for the most part is limited to those that call for assistance. This is in comparison to the days there was a regular “beat cop” on foot patrol.
Patrolling on foot removed the physical barrier to the public. If you are lucky enough to be a Mounted Patrol or K-9 officer it gives the public incentive to interact with you. It is then your responsibility to build on that contact to gain the public's trust and gather valuable information about the issues in their neighborhood.
Therefore, the focus of Community Policing in Wayne County should be to focus on densely populated areas that the Sheriff's Department serves that do not have their own police force. This includes communities such as Toschlog and Woodlawn additions, Economy, Williamsburg, Pershing, etc. However, trailer parks have a high crime rate and cannot be ignored. Community policing should be done when it is likely that people will be outside their homes in order to more easily facilitate contact with the public. This could mean evenings, etc., but officers patrolling a community will have to learn the best times for a particular community. Officers should focus on making contact with the public as opposed to covering a specific area or focusing on enforcement tasks. Careful note should be taken of pertinent information from the public and the appropriate reports made for information or follow-up. Officers should gather enough information initially to facilitate effective follow-up, and reports should be complete enough to determine if follow-up is warranted.
Officers should be able to take adequate reports as not to burden road officers with incidents that otherwise might not have even been reported. Officers can also review recent calls in the area and perhaps use that as an excuse to make contact.
Links:
Structure:
- First class officers can work alone, but they should work with someone whenever possible. Second class officers must have another officer with them, preferably second class. However, a probationary or 3rd class officer can work with a first or second class.
- Officers will pick a community to work (consistently), and have a backup officer that should work with them if possible.
- Details will be created. Officers don't necessarily have to work the detail at the date and time specified, but it should be within several days or a week at most.
- A report for each detail worked should be entered into the notes section for each detail. The format for this report is not structured yet, but it should include the number of people talked to and what kind of issues came up.
Assignments:
- Alan: Green Meadows
- Alain: Garden City
- Brad: Woodlawn
- Chip: Toschlog
- Dillon: Williamsburg
Call Statistics from August 2017 to August 2018
| Area | Households | Calls | Calls/Household |
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| Green Meadows | 79 | 105 | 1.33 |
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| Garden City | 87 | 110 | 1.26 |
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| Williamsburg | 145 | 84 | 0.58 |
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| Economy | 132 | 43 | 0.33 |
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| Woodview | 46 | 37 | 0.80 |
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| Boston | 92 | 83 | 0.90 |
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| Abington | 38 | 16 | 0.42 |
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| Fairacres | 107 | 34 | 0.32 |
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| Woodlawn | 545 | 222 | 0.41 |
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| Toschlog | 343 | 135 | 0.39 |
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| Webster | 90 | 48 | 0.53 |
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| Lendale/Wise | 145 | 105 | 0.72 |
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