INFORMING THE PUBLIC

Your police department is trying to be much more than a traditional law enforcement agency. As part of our community oriented policing commitment we want the residents and business owners to know some of the things that your police department has been doing over the past year or so to improve the level of services provided to the community.

COMMUNICATIONS

It became clear very soon after the start of the police department that communications services provided by Miami-Dade county were less than satisfactory and were responsible for avoidable delays in providing police services. With the approval of the council, departmental personnel designed and acquired a new communications system consisting of two electronic dispatching consoles along with a three-channel UHF radio system and related portable and mobile radios. This new system is working great and has greatly improved the ability of our officers to communicate with each other and the dispatcher.

As another part of reducing the time delay required to respond to emergencies, the department, developed bid specification and purchased a state-of-the-art E-91 I system that has recently taken over receipt of all emergency calls affecting Pinecrest residents.

We are currently in the process of acquiring a computer aided dispatch and records management system to improve the efficiency of the delivery of your police services. Next year we will be requesting approval of computers in all of our police vehicles so that dispatching of units can be done more efficiently and officers will have access to the information they need from criminal justice information networks.

TRAINING

We have developed an in-service training system that has greatly improved the ability of our officers in delivering police services. Some examples of the courses given were the use of chemical munitions and verbal judo, both designed to reduce injuries to citizens and officers, radar certification so our officers could better respond to speeding complaints and community oriented policing concepts so that officers would be better prepared to solve community problems.

YOUTH RELATED ACTIVITIES

Preventing delinquency before it happens makes much more sense than reacting after it has become a problem. One of our main emphasis areas has been the youth of our community and we have developed the following programs for our youth.

• The department implemented a School Resource Officer program currently staffed by three police officers.

• We developed a Police Explorer program that involves Pinecrest children.

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