Cape police chief off to strong start

Our city manager Scott Meyer made a great hiring decision, in my opinion, when he selected Wes Blair from Lancaster, Texas, to be the Cape Girardeau police chief. Chief Blair has solidified his entire team into a cohesive unit with the goal of improving public safety within our city and also our region. He also has become an active member of our community.

He and his staff have implemented a series of strategies that are intended to improve community relations, reduce crime and improve our quality of life. I will use the balance of my words in reviewing some of these strategies and then ask for all of our citizens' support for our dedicated officers in blue.

Chief Blair was the organizing force, along with the cities of Sikeston, Poplar Bluff and Charleston and the Missouri Highway Patrol in creating the Street Crimes Task Force. These five entities come together in each city at unannounced times to seek out criminal activity. These events have taken 46 criminals off our Cape Girardeau streets since its inception earlier this year. This is a continuing program for each city and will continue to produce positive results in crime prevention.

The department is also actively working on directed police patrols where officers can be redirected to concentrate on specific areas and hot spots where there has been a history of criminal activity.

We are currently involved in several new technologies that will result in time savings for officers so that they may concentrate on more hours actually in the field. Our e-ticketing program will soon be going online, which will increase officer productivity. We also are testing body cameras that will result in better reporting of activity in addition to protecting both the officer and any citizen who they come into contact with during duty hours.

We are concentrating on improving our relationship and engagement with citizens within our community. I recently attended a positive meeting with religious and community leaders on our city's south side. This meeting resulted in several strategies that our department will be implementing in the near future. Our Coffee with Cops program was well attended recently and more will be scheduled. National Night Out was well attended by families, children and our officers during a fun night on the Target parking lot.

I wrote last month about our new Neighborhood Development Initiative. This program has had much community comment and is scheduled to kick off in October in two concentrated areas of the city, which include a large portion of the south side of the city and also the Red Star District. The success of this program is dependent on the involvement of our citizens, but I am encouraged by the early positive comments.

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Next month I will be writing about the importance of continuing and extending the current fire tax of 1/8 cent in order to maintain our equipment replacement strategy and relocate both the police station and fire station No. 4 now located on Kurre Lane.

Citizen support and involvement become major keys to the continued growth and success of our city.

Harry E. Rediger is the mayor of Cape Girardeau.