Effective community policing has a positive impact on keeping our campus safe and enhancing the quality of life in the UMassD community.
Partnerships
Effective community policing has a positive impact on keeping our campus safe and enhancing the quality of life in the UMassD community. We strive to accomplish our community policing goals through our high visibility patrol procedures, educational programming and by forming key relationships with members of the UMassD community.
The Right Philosophy
Community policing is a philosophy and an organizational strategy that promotes a partnership between people in a community and their police department. It’s based on the premise that the police and the community must work together. Community policing offers a way for law enforcement to help re-energize all citizens to be stakeholders in their own communities. Our department is dedicated to the community policing philosophy and to delivering the best possible police and security services to the UMassD community.
Problem Solving
Community policing empowers campus community members to have an input to solving public safety problems. By operating as an open department, and being “out in the community” we form relationships with different segments of the UMassD community. Each time there is interaction; there is an opportunity to solve a problem. Proactive problem solving is the key to effective community policing.
Hiring Strategy
The UMassD Police focus on hiring officers who will understand their role on campus. The goal is to hire officers who understand service, problem solving, and community engagement versus simply having police experience. Following the hiring, recruit officers must complete the Municipal Police Training Committee’s full-time police academy. These recruit officers, and experienced officers who have already completed the required police academy, participate in an extensive field training program that emphasizes the community policing philosophy, therefore influencing the UMassD service product.
Strong Emphasis on Crime Prevention
The UMassD Police always looks to enhance its tough stance on crime. Doing so requires a constant focus on planning and development of crime prevention strategies.
Having an intimate knowledge of the community is paramount. Policing concepts of the past tended to isolate officers from the community whereas today our objectives are to integrate patrol officers into the fabric of the community so that students, faculty and staff can come to the police for help before serious problems arise, not after the fact.