The
decision to get involved in the community policing philosophy has been the popular trend
in American policing during the past few years. With
the inception of the New Jersey Regional Community Policing Institute in 1997, the Maywood
Police Department "tested the waters" by sending a few seasoned officers to
various training modules being offered. Immediately upon returning from the training, the
feedback was positive and the often-time cynical "old salts" seemed to be
enthused about the training modules they had attended. The training modules being
presented by the Institute offered new concepts and creative approaches to the age-old
problems that we had been encountering.
As the Chief
of Police, the decision to jump into the community policing mode was an easy one. Our
officers were cooperative and flexible in their scheduling. We set a goal of having each
of our twenty-four officers attend all ten modules offered by the Institute. Over the
course of the past three years we were able to have all of our members attend the
Institute's training modules and then follow-up on their training by participating in a
capstone project. Collectively our officers attended in excess of 2000 hours of Institute
training. Our Agency accomplished this without overtime. The capstone projects allowed our
officers to apply contemporary community policing theories to every-day situations within
our community. The end result was twelve creative capstone projects that were implemented
by our officers. Feedback revealed that each capstone project had a positive impact on
police community relations within the Borough of Maywood. Each capstone project served in
one fashion or another to solve a problem or helped to close the gap between police and
the community we serve.
We are extremely proud of the recognition that
we recently received from the New Jersey Regional Community Policing Institute. I wish to
commend the members of the Maywood Police Department for their hard work and dedication
towards this goal. I also wish to acknowledge the staff and instructors of the NJRCPL, for
their refreshing instruction and creative presentations of the community policing related
materials.
The New Jersey Regional Community Policing Instituterecognizes Agencies who send more than 80% of their
sworn officers through all ten training modules and complete individual capstone projects.
On December l4, 2000, at the fifth graduation of the New Jersey Regional Community
Policing Institute, the Maywood Police Department became the first police agency in New
Jersey to be certified as a "Community Policing Agency ".
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