Monterey police launches new community policing plan

UPDATE 6/6/2016 10:15 PM:The Monterey Police Department is reaching out to the community in hopes of creating a safer city. On Monday, the department introduced a new community policing initiative that will assign an officer to a specific area of the city.

“I remember Monterey back in the 70’s when we had an officer just walk the streets,” said Rick Johnson the executive director of the Old Monterey Business Association.

The Monterey Community Policing Initiative will be run by the Community Action Team. It’s a special assignment of four officers. Each one will work directly with the businesses and residents in their area.

“I think it’s a matter of the merchants having a certain feeling of trust but it’s also the police trusting the merchants because they are your eyes and ears right on the street all the time,” said Johnson.

Monterey is already broken up into three beats that patrol officers are assigned to everyday but the department said this is different.

“It’s designed to help supplement the patrol officers and tackle problems that they may not be able to address in one day,” said Monterey Police Sgt. Ethan Andrews.

The department said officers will work as a liaison between the department and the community. They will attend neighborhood meetings and focus on long term quality of life issues.

“They will be able to find resources very quickly because they’ll have a lot of experience having worked in that area over a period of time as opposed to officers who are constantly rotating into different areas,” said Andrews.

Johnson said he’s happy to hear an officer will be assigned to the busy downtown and he already has some ideas.

“We have a lot of international guests that may not always get that that’s a one-way they are getting on and so we really need to stress the whole idea of hospitality, after all, that’s what Monterey is known for,” said Johnson.

PREVIOUS: The Monterey Police Department has come up with a new program to reach out to the community. It’s called the Community Policing Initiative. The department will assign an officer to a specific area in the city where they will address problems pertaining to that area.

We’ll have more on the plan coming up on News Channel 5 at 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.