Police in Northwest Arkansas say they are working to build community relationships prior to emergency calls.
What that looks like is different in each community. Rogers started the year by sending day shift officers out to talk to local businesses. Bentonville is reviewing call data to make sure officers are in the right place at the right time. Springdale set up neighborhood zones last summer so residents could get to know officers patrolling their area. Fayetteville, hit hard by recent retirements, has not launched a new initiative this year.
Policing with justice, transparency, giving residents a voice and treating all with dignity and respect are core pillars of community policing, according to the The President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The report's recommendations include assigning officers to a geographic area on a consistent basis, building positive relationships with community members and programs for at-risk youth.
There's a simple way to define community policing, said Lt. Derek Wright, Springdale police spokesman.
"It's talking to people when they haven't called us first," Wright said.
That could be chatting with residents, maybe organizing a trash pickup day or talking to a landlord about fixing something that is broken or explaining a question of law -- whatever is going to make the neighborhood better, Wright said.
Last summer Springdale officers tested dividing the city up into four main zones and 12 sub-zones. That lets neighbors get to know their officer, Wright said. Officers have the ability to partner with a nonprofit agency or a city department to get things done for their assigned community.
Community involvement and positive interaction have value, said Hayes Minor, Rogers police chief.
This year Rogers police launched an initiative where day shift officers visit two businesses each day where they would not normally be called to.
"I'd very much call it a listening tour," Minor said.
The concept is geared to businesses that don't usually call police, but it could extend to property owner association visits, Minor said. It shouldn't take a special meeting for a person to call an officer, he said. Maybe businesses have a problem with mail theft or cars speeding past, he said. Maybe they have a question about building security.
The stress of an emergency call isn't there when officers drop by, Minor said
"It gives people a chance to talk with us without any level of fear," Minor said. "Our hope is we make some new friends."
Rosa Vega, manager of Taqueria Vega, has called Rogers police twice: once to walk her and another woman out when they were closing and the one time she left money in the till and the shop was burglarized. The Michoacan-style Mexican restaurant has been at 1553 W. Hudson Road for 16 years, Vega said.
She was surprised when an officer walked in a couple weeks ago and asked if it was OK if they patrol the parking lot, Vega said. The strip shopping center has a grocery, the restaurant, a salon and a tire shop.
People sometimes park in the small lot overnight, Vega said. She welcomes an extra police presence. She hasn't seen anyone patrolling in the lot yet.
"That's good," Vega said. "You don't feel like only when you call they're going to be here."
An officer was parked in the lot outside Somewhere in Time, 717 W. Walnut St., on Thursday afternoon. Inside the shop owner Mike Meyers said that when an officer dropped by recently he encouraged night patrols as there are some displays set up outside the shop.
Thieves are looking for quick cash and his shop isn't a common target, he said.
"They're not looking for this kind of thing," Meyers said, gesturing toward a shop filled with booths of antiques and decor.
A routine patrol is good, but not if it's going to cost more for taxpayers, Meyers said.
Police pointed to school resource officers, bike patrols and community involvement as ways they can interact with the community.
Fayetteville has a community policing division that usually handles community presentations and installation of child safety seats, but many of those officers have retired in the last year. The idea, however, isn't dead, said Sgt. Craig Stout, department spokesman.
"You can't have one officer responsible for community policing. It's a department-wide philosophy," Stout said.
He pointed to bike patrols on Dickson Street as a good example of officers accessible to the public and on hand when needed.
Bike patrols let officers say "hello" without the barrier of a car, Wright said.
Bentonville has bike patrol and a citizens' academy, said Gene Page, community officer.
The city has started a new process that will map emergency calls and the amount of time officers are on those calls in different neighborhoods. Page, who started working on the project about three weeks ago, said that the number of hours officers are needed isn't set by demographics or economics but by the density of the housing. Officers spend more time on calls near apartments or a hotel than most neighborhoods of single-family housing.
The number of calls and geography played into sub-zones set up in Springdale, Wright said.
Page is trying to set a baseline that will allow the department to predict about how many officers are needed and when.
Bentonville residents trust the police department so the charge isn't to win trust, but not lose it, Page said. The best gift to residents will be to maintain a low crime level as the city grows, he said.
That could mean foot patrols in downtown in the future as more people fill the streets, Page said. Or it could be how many officers they need to police a planned housing development efficiently.
An officer working the same streets knows addresses they're called to routinely.
"That comes with experience," Page said.
Data collected by the department's computer system can provide that same level of detail and the data can be used for schedules and budgets, he said.
While knowing the community through data won't be as visible as officers joining in a basketball game, it will write a playbook for them, similar to the way businesses use data strategically, Page said.
NW News on 02/01/2016