King City Police set to engage with community at National Night Out

It was June of this year when KION reported a major drop in drive-by incidents, homicides and burglaries in King City.

King City Police Chief Robert Masterson says that improvement is thanks to a multi-agency effort to reduce crime in the city.

With that drop-off in crime, Chief Masterson hopes now to build a positive relationship with community members and the police force.

“We’re continuing to improve it. The biggest thing we’ve done is broken our city into 5 districts,” says Chief Masterson. “They’re aligned with our council districts. Each district has two officers and a supervisor assigned to it.”

Those five districts Masterson refers to meets twice a year to discuss what could be improved on in the city’s neighborhoods.

“It’s a chance for a little more intimate setting where you can talk about things specific to your neighborhood as opposed to the city in general,” the King City police chief says. “It’s a good example of a town hall but just on a smaller scale.”

And besides the annual National Night Out–which is meant to improve community and police officer relationships–the 17 sworn King City police officers are doing what they can to engage with community members throughout the year.

Despite that, Chief Masterson says he and his officers would never pass up on an opportunity to give back during this year’s night out with the community.

“Through the idea of one of our staff members we thought it’d be nice to give away some bikes. So we gathered 13 bikes and will be giving those away on a raffle basis to the younger generation that.”

King City’s version of National Night Out will take place at the city police station on 415 Bassett Street.

It begins at 5:30 pm and will end around 7:30 on August 7th.