Community Service

Introduction

Over the past several years the concept of "Community Policing" has become the accepted philosophy of policing in almost every community. Community policing involves the interaction and cooperation between the police and the citizens of the community to solve community problems. This new relationship between the police and the community allows its citizens to take an active role in improving the overall quality of life in their community. Because of this new emphasis on community policing, there have been drastic increases in funding to the Community Service Division here in Brookline.

The Brookline Police Department¹s Community Service Division is charged with facilitating a spirit of cooperation between the public and the Department that helps to enhance the quality of life for all of its citizens. This unit serves in an advisory capacity to not only the Chief of Police, but to Citizen¹s groups. It advises over ten (10) Neighborhood Watch Associations by providing information on crime occurring in their neighborhoods. It is responsible for providing training for al members of the department. The department strives to insure the success of many programs such as Citizens Police Academy, Diversionary Program, Walk and Talk, D.A.R.E., and the B.E.S.T. Program.

The Commanding Officer of the Community Service Division, Captain John O'Leary, serves as a liaison between the department and the total community. He provides for a proper relationship between the Police Department and all groups and social agencies in this ethnically diverse community of Brookline.

General Duties and Responsibilities

It is the duty and responsibility of the Commanding Officer of the Community Service Division to:

• Organize programs that promote unity and a spirit cooperation among all segments of the community and the Police Department.
• Arrange for the participation of the Division in the programs of as many social agencies as possible. This includes the use of the resources of the total community as well as the availability of all contributions of the Division.
• Maintain an initiative departmental campaign for improvement of the community.
• Educate the public and members of the Department so as to make them conscious of the need for close Police-Community relations.
• Establish programs to improve the image of the Department in the community.
• Serve as the departmental liaison to and member of the Human Relations Youth Resource Commission.
• Supervise and implement programs in the crime prevention field.
• Supervise the activities of such programs as the Walk and Talk Unit, the D.A.R.E. Program, and the Bicycle Unit.
• Supervise the activities of the Safety/Crime Prevention Officer.
• Serve as Public Information Officer for the Department. Also supervises the activities of the Press Officer and all media related issues arising from the Brookline Police Department.
• Supervise and review, along with the Chief of Police and the Training Lieutenant, all in-service training of Brookline Police Department personnel.

The Brookline Police Department and Community Policing

The mission of the Brookline Police Department is to insure that community policing is a philosophy that permeates our entire department and is not just a program involving a few officers.

Already we have taken several steps in achieving this goal:

1. In 1991 we established a walk and talk program which to this day has wide approval from the general community. In September of 1995 this program was expanded to cover seven nights a week.
2. In November 1994, the 136 sworn officers of our department were given sixteen (16) hours of in-service training in community policing philosophy.
3. We have assigned officers to permanent beat assignments to insure a sense of ownership, commitment, and continuity between the officers and the community. This allows complex problems to be addressed in a consistent manner.
4. We have made, and are continuing to make changes in our policies and procedures that promote decentralization which allows the police officer at the delivery point of service and problem solving, to have the authority to design a strategy for aggressively attacking identified problems.
5. Neighborhood Crime Watch Groups are one of the many partnerships that are developed with the citizens of our community. We are now intensifying our efforts to further implement community policing both as a philosophy and as a strategy for involving the community in the identification and solving of problems.

Like almost every other police department in the United States, in the past, the Brookline Police Department was a reactive, depersonalized, order-oriented organization. As a result of this traditional style of policing, we had minimal personal contact with the citizens that we were sworn to serve. In effect, our only contact with the community was when we were dealing with people during both stressful and adversarial situations. Under these circumstances we identified the problems and dictated the solutions without seeking input from the community. This meant that we had little opportunity to develop relationships with the town¹s people, and in many instances provided little to no citizen satisfaction. Because of this, our greatest problem is to expand our present process of collaborating with citizens, business groups, government agencies, and other law enforcement entities, mobilizing them as partners in identifying community wide problems and developing comprehensive strategies to address these problems.

Our ultimate goal in community policing is to improve the quality of life in the community by maintaining neighborhoods without fear, by developing partnerships with the community members, and by identifying and solving problems that plague our neighborhoods in a proactive manner rather than reactivity dealing with the symptoms of a problem.

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Citizen Police Academy

This is a free, ten week educational program designed to offer local residents and business owners an opportunity to learn about the Brookline Police Department's practices and services. Topics covered include: defensive tactics, patrol procedures, domestic violence, criminal/forensic investigation and crime prevention. Students will also participate in a ride-along, mock trial and firearms training simulation. For more information, please call Officer Prentice Pilot at (617) 730-2787, or download an application at www.brooklinepolice.com.

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