Including Police Station Upgrade—

Police Department Charts Five-Year Strategic Plan

By Andrew Gorosko

Police Commission members have endorsed a strategic five-year plan for the police department, specifying the organization’s focus on law enforcement and public safety through the year 2011, including the possibility of a renovated police station or a new police station.

Following a review, commission members approved the strategic plan at a February 6 session. Police Captain Joe Rios, who is second-in-command at the police department, presented the nine-page document.

Police revise the plan every five years to set a general course for the organization, which is currently authorized to have 45 sworn police officers. Police are seeking to increase the number of sworn officers to 47 in their 2007-08 budget proposal.

Police used the results from a recent public opinion poll and an internal poll of police department members for aid in formulating the planning document.

The organization’s broad goals include: achieving the public’s voluntary compliance with law; protecting life and property against crime; facilitating safe and rapid vehicular and pedestrian traffic; and improving the local quality of life by reducing crime and the fear of crime.

The group’s stated mission is to improve residents’ quality of life by working in partnership with them. Also, police pledge to work constantly to maintain a safe and secure town while treating the public with dignity and respect. Additionally, police plan to objectively search for ways to improve the police department in order to improve their service to the town.

In the strategic plan, police set seven major goals for the organization.

These include to continue to provide high-quality training for all agency personnel.

Also, police will seek to maintain quality police services through the adoption of an acceptable workload for police officers.

Additionally, police plan to create a specialized traffic unit within the patrol division in response to public calls for increased traffic law enforcement.

Among their goals, police seek to replace or upgrade their current computer-aided dispatch system and police record management system.

Police also plan to develop a comprehensive police vehicle replacement and maintenance program.

They also are seeking to reorganize their administrative and support services bureau.

Also, to address longstanding police complaints about the inadequacy of the police station in Town Hall South at 3 Main Street, police want to research renovating the existing police station or constructing a new police station.

More than 25 years ago, the town purchased that building, which formerly had been an agricultural equipment dealership, and converted it into Town Hall South, a facility with a police station on the upper level and town offices on the lower level

Renovating the police station or constructing a new police station would require funding approvals in the town’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP).

If such a CIP approval is eventually made, police would form a planning team to review the police department’s needs. A consultant would be hired to conduct a comprehensive building space needs study. An architect would later be hired to produce drawings and provide cost estimates for of a renovated police station or new police station, which would serve town police needs for up to 30 years.

Besides a new or renovated police station, the town is facing other municipal construction proposals including a new town hall and an expansion of Newtown High School.

“The Newtown Police Department will continue to provide a high level of police services and respectfully work with its residents to maintain a safe and secure community … We will continue to evaluate our level of services rendered over the next five-year period. We will strive to adapt and change our policing strategies in order to meet the demands of our growing community,” according to the strategic plan.