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GPD Adopts New Motto, "POLICE," in Spirit of Community Outreach

Part of Ongoing Effort to Connect GPD With Citizens

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Glasgow Police Department was forced to limit in person contact with members of the community. Now, efforts are underway to reverse this trend.

"Basically, there was no contact with anyone in person," said Tyler Edwards, GPD Interim Chief. "We used the telephone. That is absolutely the opposite of community policing."

There is a department-wide push for the adoption of Community Oriented Police (COP), which intends to open up lines of communication between officers and the public.

To that end, GPD has adopted a new Motto – "POLICE." It stands for Public, Officers Linked In Community Enforcement.

The motto was adopted after an attempt to solicit alternative ideas from city residents. Unfortunately, there wasn't much public input, Edwards said.

There were three alternatives considered, he said, including "Committed to Community," the motto under former Chief Bruce Barstad, and COP.

GPD chose POLICE because it is the best of both worlds, Edwards said, adding it was inspired during COP training all GPD officers have now completed.

"POLICE is really unique and really cool, kind of a look back on the reason why we do things the way we do," Edwards said. "I was the first one to go through Community oriented Police training, and I looked at it and came up with my own thing. Obviously, 'COPS' has been used, so I thought, 'what about POLICE? What about community? How do we tie those two things together?' At first it was kind of tough to figure out that concept."

POLICE does just that nicely, Edwards said.

"The overall message is to get officers out into the community so the community can tell us what they need. But also, we have to go back on our training. The community is the pulse, and will tell you what you need. That is the general consensus."

Part of the effort to mingle with city residents is for some of the officers to conduct foot patrols, a tried and true method putting officers in direct contact with those they serve.

"We've got a few officers out and about already, and there are things that have come up we could never have imagined being an issue. They didn't appear to be issues to us, but they are issues to our community. Now, they are our issues."

The foot patrols allow for communication without a person needing to come to the police department, which can be intimidating for the average citizen.

"Most of them won't come," Edwards said. "Myself included, before I was a police officer."

Edwards encourages citizens to maintain constant dialogue with officers, saying GPD is molded by their wants and needs.

"The police are what [the community] wants them to be," he said. "It is their voices that need to be heard. They need to talk with the cops and tell them what they want. Yeah, they do have issues on the street here and are not comfortable talking about in your office, but they will tell you right now. We will then take action off of that."

The overall long term goal is for officers to be approachable, Edwards said.

"That is community policing in a nutshell. It tells the history of policing and basically where the failures were throughout the decades, how they were corrected and how they can be bettered in each area. History is bound to repeat itself if you don't know it."

 

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