Police Chief Ben Click recently presented his plan for reorganizing the Police Department. That plan anticipates the implementation of Coordinated Neighborhood Oriented Policing throughout the City over the next three years.
What does that mean for Lake Highlands?
In many respects, it will mean a return to the past, to a time when police officers were assigned to small geographic areas allowing opportunities for interaction with the citizens of that area.
Unfortunately, that direct contact has diminished in recent years, and the close relationships, so critical to effective community policing, have been lost.
The Police Department implemented Coordinated Neighborhood Oriented Policing (CNOP) in the Southeast Bureau in July 1991. A Neighborhood Liaison Officer (NLO), is assigned to each neighborhood and assists residents in organizing groups that become the basis for community activism.
The NLO promotes the development of community partnerships that are essential in dealing with crime in the area.
One program vital to the success of this effort is the VIP Program. Volunteers In Policing are trained by the Police Department to patrol and report suspicious activity in the area. Armed with nothing more than a cellular phone, these volunteers are making a tremendous impact on crime in their communities.
A second element of the program is the establishment of neighborhood alert systems. Homeowner’s associations, using voice mail, disseminate information about neighborhood burglaries and other suspicious activity to their members through a dedicated telephone answering machine. This system has been effective in providing leads to the police resulting in arrests and subsequent convictions.
The Dallas Police Department has applied to the U.S. Department of Justice for $3 million in grant funds to expand the CNOP Program. If received, these funds will be used to hire 67 additional police officers over the next three years. The new officers will expand the implementation of CNOP to all of the Operations Bureaus in the City.
We in Lake Highlands can look forward to this program in 1996.
