By Lisa Lucas Gardner, J.D. On June 30 at 12:24 PM
Hey, I have an idea to help save on gasoline consumption by the town police cruisers. How about residents suggesting radar and stop sign enforcement in their neighborhoods?
Our police department needs to take requests from the residents for enforcement on residential streets. That way the police officers can park their cruisers in our neighborhoods where there are also speeders, not just out on the busy roadways. How often do you see an officer sitting in a patrol vehicle in your neighborhood or getting out walking foot patrol? We need to have our officers get back into the habit of interacting with the residents in our neighborhoods. How many police officers do you know nowadays who take the time to stop, talk, and visit with residents?
Community policing was an innovative idea years ago. It needs to be implemented again by officers taking the time to stop and talk with residents to get us involved with crime prevention. Community policing goes a long way in the improvement of police/community relations. This can only be accomplished by having the officers actually spending time in the neighborhoods and not just by speeding through them. It seems that our police department has lost that personalized touch that the old time officers had in the good old days. Let's try to encourage our new police chief to work back to the time when there was personalized policing in our local communities. Officers should be required to park their cruisers in these neighborhoods and get out for foot patrol or bicycle patrol.
Radar enforcement/stop sign details in residential neighborhoods would accomplish several things:
1. Save our tax dollars on gasoline by not driving the high consumption, V-8 police vehicles, 24 hours a day.
2. Have resident's requests for enforcement actually followed up on. This would give the residents the opportunity to actually converse with officers on a regular basis.
3. The presence of police cruisers in residential neighborhoods would assist in bringing officers and the public in contact with one another. This would bring back the small town feeling of community policing plus it is a crime deterrent by being visible in these areas.
4. Our residential neighborhoods are where children, pets, and pedestrians are more likely to be harmed by speeding vehicles in the posted 25 mph zones.
5. Require officers get up, get out, and get off their backsides to maintain a more healthy lifestyle by walking foot patrol & bicycle patrol. There should always be one assigned to the shopping districts at North Franklin & Pepper's Ferry Road & more often in residential neighborhoods.
I think that one of the worst things that has happened to policing is to have lost the personalized contact that officers use to make day to day on routine patrol. Now is the time to bring back officers outside their cruisers and save thousands of dollars that is wasted on gasoline consumption.