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A Newsletter by the City of Saco, Maine	July, 2005	Return to newsletter index

One Cop, One Beat

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Community policing has been firmly entrenched in Saco as a philosophy since 1997. Community policing embraces building partnerships and empowering citizens and police officers to work together at identifying neighborhood problems, strategizing to develop solutions to those problems, and then implementing the plan to resolve those problems.

This process is simplified and made more efficient when officers work in one particular area, or beat, rather than rotating patrol areas, as was traditionally the practice. "One Cop, One Beat" describes our current policy of assigning a team of officers working different shifts to the same geographical area. This enables officers to become more familiar with the people and problems in their area because they deal with them on a more frequent basis.

Saco Patrol Officer Rick Bourque meets with Barbara Storck, owner of Heart's Desire, to discuss parking issues.

It also increases the comfort level of people who may not be accustomed to having to regularly deal with uniformed officers. This feeling of approachability and familiarity is crucial to the success of any community policing endeavor, because so much of this process requires partnering with each other to make it work. It is very common for residents to call and ask for officers by name because they know who works in their neighborhood.

This familiarity also works to the officer's benefit as well. It serves both service-providers and service-receivers to spend a little more arriving at a permanent solution to a vexing problem, rather than a quick fix aimed at handling a problem quickly.

To find out who the officers assigned to your area are, you may either call the station at 284-4535 or access the police department website at:
www.sacomaine.org/departments/police/police.shtml

Click on the 'Patrol' link on the left side of your screen, and then the 'Community Policing" link to access the list of officers. Remember that we are here to serve you and encourage your input into our operation!