2. Community Engagement and Partnerships

Strategic Direction
Goal Goal
2: Community Engagement and Partnerships

Fostering trust with fellow members of this community is a vital step towards creating sustained crime reductions. Community engagement is working with stakeholders to collaborate and build trusting relationships, to reduce crime and improve the health of the community. Every employee must understand and commit to work beyond the norms of traditional law enforcement. As a Police Department, we are only one part of the equation to reduce crime and sustain reductions over time. It is imperative that the Department engage its citizens, volunteers, businesses, religious institutions, and a host of others in this diverse community to develop strategies for the economic revitalization of crime ridden/unhealthy neighborhoods. Police can help to eradicate the criminal elements in neighborhoods, but the community must be an active part of maintaining it once we disrupt or eradicate the criminal elements. Continuous community involvement creates sustainable crime reductions, so absent a strong partnership between the Department and the community we cannot achieve our goal of becoming the safest large city in America.