Engagement is critical in police-community relations to foster collaboration and improve quality of life issues in our neighborhoods. Engagement occurs when focused interaction and dialogue are initiated and sustained between two or more different individuals or groups. Engagement involves proactively seeking opportunities to interact for the purpose of building a relationship or addressing concerns that are mutually impactful to all.
I believe wholeheartedly in community engagement. While at Rochester, I put together a “Blueprint for Engagement” document that housed initiatives I developed for engagement between the Rochester Police Department and their community. These initiatives were a result of data gathered from the community through various means, such as town halls, open forums, surveys, and stakeholder meetings.
I believe these initiatives can be implemented in any community to help with police-community relations.
Here is a snippet of some of those initiatives broken into two groups: Police/Community Engagement Initiatives and Youth Engagement Strategies.
I developed this idea in the hopes that it would dispel some of the misconceptions surrounding police work and help build trust. The idea is to seat a body of community members that represent the broadest spectrum of opinions of the police. I specifically looked for our harshest critics, strongest advocates, and everyone in between. We would provide this group with all of our training literature and written policies and ask them to act as our voices in the community when questions about our procedures come up. They would also make recommendations on initiatives the community felt we should undertake.
I developed this idea to bring the community closer to our industry and build understanding. The idea is to bring key community stakeholders to the police academy to observe the experience firsthand, meet recruits, and become familiar with the hiring and training process.
I developed this idea as a direct pipeline by using community members as recruiters. The idea is born from a community desire to have candidates selected from the community the agency serves. We heard directly that this was something the residents of Rochester felt was very important for future hires of the department.
Big Brothers and Big Sisters for police and area children. This initiative is already in effect within the Big Brother Big Sister Organization, and I fully support it as it develops lifelong relationships between officers and citizens.
This idea is a variation of the Police Athletic League of old, using modern activities like gaming and local venues. I recognized that our youth are not engaged in sports but have various interests, so this program provided an avenue to explore those interests.
This idea can be done as part of the formation of the PAL program. The City’s R-Center would offer officer and youth engagement programs, such as fitness training, tutoring, or a league like sports, chess, or video games.
Similar to Bigs in Blue, this idea is for officers to adopt an entire class and develop relationships that would continue to grow and strengthen through the school year.
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