Policing With You- Community Engagement

Basseterre, St. Kitts, October 17, 2019 (ZIZ News): The Police Force is taking steps to improve relationships with the public by increasing their interactions with the communities the officers serve.

Officials from the Police Force’s Criminal Investigations Department visited ZIZ studios on Thursday for the program “Policing with You” where the topic of discussion was community engagement.

Joining host Inspector James Francis were, Sergeant Elvin Browne, Corporal Andrea Battice and Sergeant Valon Hodge, supervisors at the Criminal Investigations Department who have assisted with community engagements in Basseterre.

Sergeant Browne first explained what is meant by community engagement.

“Community engagement actually speaks for itself, we do community engagement when we go out and we meet with the community, we meet with the residents of the community. It’s important because when we look at crime, crime starts from time immemorial and we as police officers we can’t do it alone so we need community involvement to actually help us to solve some of these crimes and meeting with the community developing a confidence with the community, I think that is very important for our desired outcome.”

Corporal Battice explained that the Criminal Investigations Department has adopted areas which have an upsurge in burglaries as part of their community engagement efforts.

“Our office which is the Criminal Investigations Department, we have adopted Greenlands, but we have also branched out to other areas where we might be seeing an increase in break-ins and burglaries and in doing so we go out and we speak to the residents and we find out what are the problems they might be having, if they’re seeing any unusual faces in the area, any vehicles and we try to work with them and we do a lot of patrols in those areas.”

Sergeant Hodge explained that despite the busy schedule of police officers it is very important to incorporate community engagement within their schedule.

“Policing with You” airs every Thursday morning at 9:15am to 9:45am during the “Morning Show” on ZIZ radio.