Safe Neighborhoods

Featured Projects: Community Policing and the School Resource Officer Program

Description
Implemented in 1995, Community Policing is a collaborative policing philosophy that brings patrol officers into neighborhoods and business areas. Community Policing differs from the traditional model of policing in that police officers are more directly involved with neighborhoods and their resident associations in an effort to address problems of crime, neighborhood decay, gangs, and drugs. Officers attend neighborhood association meetings and are involved in neighborhood activities such as National Night Out, clean-ups and peace marches. Officers direct enforcement activities based upon the priorities mutually identified by the people living in the neighborhood area and their officers.

In Tucson Police Department's School Resource Officer (SRO) Program, officers are assigned on a full time basis to a middle school and the associated feeder elementary schools. The officers act as role models for the children, spending time in classrooms teaching gang resistance skills, safety awareness, civic responsibility, and reinforcing self-esteem. A key component in the curriculum is the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) program, a national anti-gang program.

Key Features
With Community Policing:

• The primary focus of service is at the neighborhood level.
• Each neighborhood has a small group of officers who patrol the neighbhood and interact with the residents when not responding to calls.
• Officers work with neighborhood associations and Citizen and Neighborhood Services to address neighborhood issues.

The SRO program:

• Assigns police officers to middle and elementary schools
• Has officers teach students in their classrooms
• Includes GREAT as part of the curriculum

Partners
Neighborhood Enhancement Teams (NET Teams), city departments, neighborhood associations, outside government agencies, parents, local businesses, churches, and local school districts.

Impact
With Community Policing, neighborhoods participate both in the identification and solution to the underlying problems of crime - empowering the residents and shifting control back to the neighborhood.

The SRO program is a prevention program that allows police officers to connect with kids on a daily basis in an effort to help them practice socially acceptable behavior, realize their full potential, and become model citizens.

For more information about Community Policing and SRO, contact Capt. John Leavitt, 791-4440, jleavit1@ci.tucson.az.us

• Neighborhood and Business Watch Programs
• Graffiti Abatement Team ï Safe By Design Planning Standards
• Property Abatement Program

Goal Indicator definition for this project.