Columbia residents hold first forum on community policing

The Columbia Police Department held its first open forum on the future of its community policing program.

The forum Wednesday at the Daniel Boone Regional Library focused on the Fourth Ward, the first of seven meetings throughout the city. The first six will focus on specific wards in town, while the seventh will be held citywide.

The Columbia City Council passed a resolution in February to develop a community policing model for the department. Sgt. Robert Fox was chosen to lead the process, and will present his idea on what the program will look like, how it will be implemented and how it will be funded.

Fox asked several small groups gathered at the library to submit their suggestions on what community policing meant to them, how to implement the program and how they would track its success.

Kay Callison said she was encouraged by the discussions and intent of the meeting.

“Police were asking for our issues and our input, and you get to know people better,” Callison told ABC 17 News after the meeting. “And when you get to know each other better, you get to engender trust, and community policing is all about trust.”

Others questioned how the department would ultimately view and handle a community policing philosophy. Joanna Trachtenberg said future meetings should focus more on time for community feedback. She said the department should also take more seriously that the outcomes of the process would be a systemic change for CPD.

The department employs nine officers in its Community Outreach Unit, a group dedicated to working with specific neighborhoods on public safety and other issues. City data shows that instances of crime and calls for service have dropped in those neighborhoods since the unit was started in 2015.

Callison said the department’s current funding level can’t handle an expansion of the unit.

“I think it’s awful that they’ve felt like they had to cancel the traffic enforcement unit, for heaven’s sake, in order to do community policing,” Callison said. “That, to me, is an untenable situation.”

The next forum will take place on Thursday at 6 p.m. at Gentry Middle School for Fifth Ward residents.