[paypal_donation_button]FLINT, MI — A new Flint police Neighborhood Service Center is now open to serve as a north Flint hub for interaction between police and the community.

Neighborhood Service Officers Erik Willard (second from right) and Rudy Dawkins (right) talk about the job with J. Dallas Winegarden (left) of the Flint Police Foundation and Raquel Thueme, vice president of programs at the Ruth Mott Foundation.

Flint Police Chief Tim Johnson, Mayor Karen Weaver and others announced the opening of the center on Thursday, March 30, at the Neighborhood Engagement Hub, 3216 Martin Luther King Avenue in Flint’s 3rd Ward.

Residents can come to the center to talk to a police officer, a non-sworn neighborhood service officer or file a complaint on the center’s computer. The neighborhood service officers will handle basic civic and public safety services – such as providing crime prevention information, documenting blight complaints, or filing police reports – to free up sworn police officers for community policing efforts and law enforcement duties.

Flint resident Rudy Dawkins has been a neighborhood service officer for about four months, and is tasked with serving the very area in which he lives: the 3rd Ward.

To many in his neighborhood, he’s a familiar face and a trustworthy liaison between police and north Flint residents.

“The neighborhood service officers are important because they allow Flint police to facilitate the community outreach they (previously) couldn’t do,” Dawkins said. “And, we provide a resource for citizens to be able to communicate with the Flint Police Department.”

The Neighborhood Service Centers are part of the North End Community Crime Strategy, a three-year partnership between Flint police and the Flint Police Foundation that is funded by $1,087,207 from the Ruth Mott Foundation.

In addition to the service centers, the grant also funded the development of Flint community CompStat (“Computer Comparison Statistics”) methodology, which identifies crime patterns and clusters and provides accurate and timely intelligence for police. Other features of the strategy include Street Smart Software and increased community involvement through Citizens Radio Patrol and the service centers.

The increased use of technology is one way the Flint Police Department can improve its operational efficiency and effectiveness in the face of limited resources and a high-crime environment. Another way is with increased community involvement – facilitated by the opening of the Neighborhood Service Centers.

Residents can interact with police “face-to-face, in their own neighborhoods, without coming down to the police department,” Chief Johnson said of the centers. “The trust that the citizens had in us before, we want it back and we’re getting it back now. That’s why you see crime going down”
Safety is one of the Ruth Mott Foundation’s four priorities, as identified by residents during the Foundation’s strategic planning sessions in 2015-16. Residents indicated community policing would help make north Flint safe. The Flint community policing grant was one of the first issued under the Foundation’s north Flint strategy.

Neighborhood Service Officer Erik Willard, a 6th Ward resident who has been on the job over four months, said the work done by NSOs is already starting to benefit the police department.

“A lot of times it frees up police to tackle other areas,” he said. “Instead of police responding to those more minor complaints, it can be forwarded to us and it frees police up to take care of the larger areas.”

(Article courtesy of the Ruth Mott Foundation. For more information about the Ruth Mott Foundation click here.)