Goal 3 - Citizen Responsibility

Youth Commonwealth is an example of the kinds of partnerships that the department will embrace to help young people photo by Youth Commonwealth

Citizens have the ultimate responsibility for the safety and well-being of their neighborhoods.

It is you, the citizens of Grand Rapids, who have the most to gain or lose from this plan. This is why we have solicited your input, your advice, and your commitment to work with us. The police can never do the job alone. We value and respect your willingness to become partners with us, and we want you to help us identify, prioritize, and solve problems in your neighborhoods. Together we can work to make our city a better and safer place in which to live and work and raise our children.

Objective 1 - The department will promote and support initiatives that require everyone, especially parents and youth, to fulfill their responsibilities for enhancing the quality of life in the community.

• Strategy 1 - The police department will work with Youth Commonwealth and others to expand educational programs that stress parental/custodial involvement.
  • Milestone 1: Senior Management will identify the programs in addition to Youth Commonwealth that can offer education to parents by April 1999. ·
  • Milestone 2: Provide this information immediately to the commanders of the Neighborhood Police Service Centers, so that they can develop and tailor programs to the specific needs of their communities.

  Strategy 2 - Promote support for Youth Commonwealth.

  • Milestone 1: Senior Management will offer its immediate support and identify high-profile individuals who can help Youth Commonwealth implement its fund-raising strategy and expand Youth Commonwealth services throughout the city.
  • Milestone 2: The department’s Public Information Officer will collaborate immediately with Youth Commonwealth on developing a media strategy to support the fund-raising effort.

• Strategy 3 - Work with the Neighborhood Associations and the Grand Rapids Public Schools to prioritize enforcement of the city's parental responsibility and curfew ordinances and to support implementation of an effective truancy-response program.
  • Milestone 1: The captain in charge of the collaborational infrastructure will meet immediately with the City Attorney’s Office, Neighborhood Associations, schools, and other relevant stakeholders, to discuss how City ordinances and the other elements of the criminal justice system can be harnessed to greater support for efforts to promote parental responsibility, curfew, and school attendance.
  • Milestone 2: The captain in charge of the collaborational infrastructure will develop a plan to work with school officials to include information on curfew and truancy in the annual school orientations, held in the public and private middle schools and high schools in Grand Rapids, with implementation by the beginning of school year 1999.
  • Milestone 3: This collaborational problem-solving team will review police policies, practices, and procedures and laws pertaining to these issues and announce their short- and long-term plans to deal with these problems by August 1999.

• Strategy 4 – Police at all levels will be encouraged to work as partners with non-profit agencies who are dedicated to improving the quality of life in the community.
  • Milestone 1: Senior Police Management will be encouraged to join and serve on the boards of appropriate agencies, unless precluded by conflict of interest.
  • Milestone 2: The Captain of each police service area will identify appropriate non-profit agencies and explore developing partnerships with them that can range from encouraging officers to join the group to inviting the agency to become a co-locator in the Neighborhood Police Service Center.

Objective 2 - Develop strategies for holding property owners, landlords, and tenants responsible for maintaining their homes and yards and for businesses to do the same.

• Strategy 1 - The responsibility for identifying neighborhood problems rests with beat officers, Neighborhood Associations, the Neighborhood Improvement Department, and community residents working together.
  • Milestone 1: Beat officers and their supervisors will work closely with neighborhood association leadership, particularly the Crime Prevention Coordinators, in the pilot South Community Policing Team, beginning October 1998, to identify neighborhood priorities concerning crime and quality-of-life issues.
  • Milestone 2: This model will be extended to the other service areas by April 1999.

• Strategy 2 - Establish a zero-tolerance policy for housing-code and nuisance violations that citizens say adversely affect the quality of life in their neighborhoods.
  • Milestone 1: The captain in charge of the collaborational infrastructure will develop a plan to work with other elements of the criminal justice system on providing a systemic approach to housing code and nuisance violations and other quality-of-life issues by June 1999.
  • Milestone 2: The collaborational, problem-solving team will review and propose revisions of ordinances and operational procedures that relate to housing code and nuisance violations by January 2000.
  • Milestone 3: The Training Bureau will develop a plan to educate all beat officers in housing code and nuisance violation enforcement as they are assigned to their geographic areas.

• Strategy 3 - Develop code enforcement teams for each Neighborhood Police Service Center, so that they can work with beat officers to identify and resolve problems.
  • Milestone 1: Senior Management will identify appropriate agencies to include in code enforcement teams and establish priorities and a systemic response to problems by September 1999.

• Strategy 4 – The beat teams and code enforcement teams will work with business owners and residents to ensure that commercial properties contribute to the health of the neighborhood.
  • Milestone 1: The Captain responsible for the collaborational infrastructure will collaborate with the City’s business advocate to develop a partnership approach to working with local businesses, ranging from corporations to small businesses in neighborhoods, by the time that the five additional service area teams are deployed by September 1999.
  • Milestone 2: At the service area level, the Captains will provide leadership by making a personal outreach to the business community, to involve them as partners in improving the quality of life in their areas. The form of those partnerships will be dictated by the specific opportunities and needs of the area.
  • Milestone 3: At the beat level, the teams will meet with and include business owners in their problem-solving initiatives.

   

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