Plan To Reverse Spike In Violent Crime In Fort Worth Involves Community Policing
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - The Fort Worth Police Department is unveiling some of the details in their plan to bring down a sharp increase in violent crimes.
Police Chief Neil Noakes said it was his top priority to reverse that spike, and the plan known as Fort Worth Safe is the department's attempt to fix the problem. Part of the plan is heavily focused on the idea of community policing.
Earlier this year, Noakes spoke to CBS 11 News about how he hopes the initiative will help curb violent crime.
"I hope to tell you that violent personal crime has been reduced. I hope to tell you we've made some amazing strides with every single community in Fort Worth. And specifically the communities where we're having trouble now. We don't need to go to the communities that love us already. That's easy. We have to go where it's hard," Noakes said.
Fort Worth Safe is made up of two prongs.
The first is an enforcement change that, among other things, would monitor known offenders, use technology to track the trends and specifically dedicate officers to the initiative seven days a week.
The second prong is community policing that would use members of the community to actively engage with officers to combat crimes.
"It's one of those initiatives that should have been happening. We used to do it and we got away from it. Crime has gone way up so it's time to bring it down," community activist Cory Session said.
Sessions believes community policing is the key to reversing that crime spike.
"The police work for the citizens. The citizens don't work for the police, but we all need to work together," he said.
While this initiative doesn't address it, community leaders like Session said the Fort Worth Police Department also needs to add more officers to its force to continue to serve the growing city.
"The city cannot continue to grow and have crime stay down if we don't increase the number of officers on the streets," Session said.
While the department did not provide hard data on the spike, police cited this past month of April where several innocent bystanders were shot in multiple shootings as an example of the kind of crimes they are looking to stop.
