The West Plains Police in working with community members on the Geographic Policing Committee have designed new Patrol Sectors that will go into effect when the Department begins utilizing their new Records Management Software later this year.
The Department’s current Response Plan has divided the City into two areas that are just too large for officers utilizing Geographic Policing in the community. The new plan has divided the City into four Sectors with similar demographics within those area. The committee worked on the plan with the scope of the project set by Chief Monticelli. The new plan allows the Missouri State University along with the Downtown area to fall into a single Sector; the OMC Campus to fall into its own Sector, with all Sectors taking into consideration similarities in the areas. (See attached Map Designating New Sectors)
The next phase will be identifying which supervisors, police officers, and detectives will be assigned to each of the new Sectors. Once this is done, we will start implementing the geographic policing model and the officers will really start getting to know the businesses and residents within their sectors. This will help the them to better understand of the quality of life issues within each sector and better serve the community within each sector. The police department will also be creating an email address for each of the sectors so citizens will be able to send an email explaining any problems or concerns they are experiencing and have an officer attempt to resolve their concerns.
When the police department’s new web page is up and going, it will have a map that allows citizens to determine which sector they reside or have their business in, and the email addresses associated with their sector. The new emails will not serve as a replacement for 911 calls or calls for service that come directly to the police department. The members of the police department are excited about the new sectors and the ability to work closer with our community.
The Department wants to particularly thank the Geographic Committee for their hard work and discussions on how the City Sectors need to be designed. We are hopeful that the committee can once again start meeting once the pandemic is concluded.
