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Neighborhood Directed Policing - An Introduction
The term Neighborhood Directed Policing is the name chosen by the Kokomo Police Department for its strategy to provide police services to, on behalf of and in cooperation with the citizens of our community. The name may be new but Neighborhood Directed Policing is not a revolutionary new policing concept for the department. Instead it is the logical next step in the evolutionary development of policing strategies that the Kokomo Police Department has successfully been doing for many years. You may be more familiar with the term Community Oriented Policing, which is the general concept from which our strategy has evolved. Basically this is a "grass roots" approach to policing that will enable the line officer, who has the most direct contact with citizens, to use their skills to determine how police and citizens can share a responsibility to police the community. Hopefully this will continue to demonstrate to the community the departments willingness to assume a leadership role in developing a viable strategy for addressing police related problem-solving issues. An important part of this effort is the desire to further move the agency from merely responding to one incident after another without evaluating such incidents, to being responsive to fundamental, unattended problems and concerns faced by the community. Additionally the implementation of Neighborhood Directed Policing is motivated by a desire to promote a recognition that we have a shared responsibility with the citizens of our community. We each have a role in identifying problems and concerns and a responsibility to resolve them where possible. The entire city has been divided into sixteen geographical areas, defined by identifiable geographical boundaries and labeled by specific neighborhood titles. A group of line officers will be assigned responsibility for each such neighborhood. As the designated neighborhood officer, his/her responsibility is to evaluate relevant neighborhood information, to identify and analyze problems and then assist in problem-solving by directing appropriate referrals as needed. The neighborhood officer will be assisted by the entire department. Those officers not assigned responsibility for a specific neighborhood have been provided with formal crime prevention training to be available as a qualified consultant and advisor to the neighborhood officers. The neighborhood officers will have the flexibility to expose themselves to the citizens of our community outside the traditional restraints of working on a prescribed watch and time period. A new communications system is also being developed to allow citizens to contact their respective neighborhood officer and to allow the officer to receive timely information about his or her neighborhood. As with any such undertaking we expect that changes and revisions may be necessary. The department will remain flexible in this effort so as to better serve the changing needs of the community and the officers.
Many types of problems impact the citizens of our community on a day to day basis and not all of them involve crime. Although a junk car may not be seen as much of a problem to some, if it were parked across from your house it may be a problem to you. A barking dog in the neighborhood may be a problem to someone that has to get up for work early. A broken sidewalk in front of a house may not look to you as if it were a big problem unless your 80 year old mother happens to live there and you were afraid that she might fall. The television image of the police usually deals with big time macho crime however, thankfully this is not the type of problem that we all face in everyday life. Certainly the department is worried about this type of problem but more often than not it is the loud music call, the speeding motorist in a neighborhood with children, or the domestic dispute that takes up the major part of the officers time on the street. The department has been training it's officers to recognize the vast array of organizations that may be able to help with any problem that the public may have and to direct the solving of that problem to the particular agency that would be the most effective in its resolution. This training has been facilitated by The United Way and I.U.K.
It is known that a community will tend to have the level of crime that it will tolerate, the amount of trash strewn about that it will overlook and the level of kindness and decency that it is willing to exhibit. We all need to make a conscious effort to keep our city the kind of place that we can all be proud of and the Kokomo Police Department will be there to help.
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