Community Policing Initiative

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Monterey Community Policing Initiative

The Monterey Police Department has embraced the principals of community policing for many years. We believe our efforts have been largely successful, as Monterey continues to enjoy a low crime rate and community surveys consistently indicate public satisfaction with the service being provided by the Department.

The Department is seeking to enhance it’s community policing efforts by implementing a new and innovative approach designed to facilitate direct personal communication between our officers and the community members they serve.

The fundamental feature of this new approach is that every Monterey Police officer will have direct responsibility for a designated area in the city, which we will be calling a Community Policing Area (CPA). The city has been divided into 20 CPA’s. Each CPA will have two officers assigned to their area, along with a civilian support person and a sergeant. These employees will be permanently assigned to their area and will form a CPA Team. Every person who lives or works within that CPA will have access to those employees for the purpose of dealing with local problems and concerns or to just chat about law enforcement issues.

We feel that making the assignments permanent will give each officer and civilian employee a strong sense of ownership and personal connection with a particular area of the city. Unless an employee is promoted or leaves the agency, they will remain assigned to their area for the duration of their career. It will also help to provide continuity in the relationships the Department is seeking to establish with the community, help build trust and understanding and allow the Department to intelligently focus it’s efforts and resources where they are needed most.

With this new initiative, the Department’s current service delivery process and organizational configuration will remain the same. This means that when someone requires police service, they will still dial 9-1-1 for emergencies, or the Department’s non-emergency number, 831.646.3914, and an officer will be dispatched as soon as possible. The community policing responsibilities performed by the officers and civilian staff will be ancillary duties that they perform during their regular workday under the guidance of their supervisor. Each officer will be required to spend several hours during the week engaged in these new community-policing activities.

The CPA Team will be responsible for conducting quarterly meetings in their area as well as making personal contact with every resident, business person or person responsible for a facility with their assigned CPA. Meetings will be used to disseminate crime statistics from the area and to discuss local issues and solutions to problems. The CPA Team will be selecting a volunteer CPA Captain and alternate who will help them organize future meetings and facilitate communication within the CPA.

The Department will be implementing the initiative in CPA’s over the next few months and hope to have all 20 CPA’s active by the end of the year. You will receive a notice from the Department when your area is having its first general meeting. This meeting will allow you to meet your CPA Team as well as to learn more about the program. We look forward to working with all of our community members to continue to solve problems associated with crime and quality of life issues in the City of Monterey.

For more information on the Monterey Community Policing Initiative contact Deputy Chief Phil Penko by email or at 831.646.3849.

Monterey Bay