COMMUNITY POLICING TO EXPAND

Community policing will not end when Cpl. Charlie Herbst leaves the Cape Girardeau Police Department later this month.

Herbst, who has worked with officer Ike Hammonds in the community-oriented policing strategy since it began in 1994, submitted his resignation Tuesday. He has accepted a marketing job in Jackson.

Hammonds and Chief Rick Hetzel both said Herbst will be a difficult act to follow because he was a native of the community he worked in and had built trust among the residents. However, both were confident community policing would continue and hopefully expand in the future.

"Charlie's going to create a big void in the police department and community policing," Hammonds said. "Everything changes, but with time we're going to continue to stay focused and fulfill our purpose in the community."

Hetzel said he hopes to see community policing efforts expand to include more officers and more community substations like the location at 619 Good Hope.

"One of the goals is to decentralize our operations and put these substations in the communities for better visibility and community response," he said. "We've been looking at the west side for quite a while. We're kind of waiting now for the Westfield mall to complete their expansion, then we'll go back and work with management (to develop a substation within the mall)."

It's also important to get community-oriented organizations involved in the community policing strategy, said Hetzel. Organizations like the Cape Girardeau Weed and Seed will be important components in the future expansion of community policing, he said.

"One of the things I recognized when I got here was how well-developed community policing efforts were," said Hetzel. "The essence of community-oriented policing is problem solving, and that's what we are trying to do with our community-based programs like Weed and Seed."

Hetzel said another officer will be selected from within the department to fill Herbst's position. Several officers potentially qualify for the position because many perform similar duties in their current roles.

"We've got a lot of patrol officers who take it upon themselves to do that type of thing, but they can't do it to the extent a community police officer can," he said. "We have a number of well-qualified officers. It will be interesting to see how that develops."

A community police officer must be a flexible individual who is willing to perform a number of different duties in the community and work extensively with residents to solve problems in the community, schools and businesses.

Hetzel said sometimes the officers must work for weeks or months to help residents work out a situation so that patrol officers are not called.

"They may be called to address a problem that takes six months to resolve," Hetzel said. "Being a community service officer takes the role of a police officer a step beyond what is normally expected. They're not 9 to 5 people."

Hammonds said the next community police officer will need some time to build community trust. He said he is prepared to help introduce the officer to the assignment, but the building trust will be something the officer will have to do.

"It's going to be up to that individual," said Hammonds. "Depending upon the disposition of that officer, we'll go from there. If he or she's willing to put in the time we'll get the job done."

Hetzel said community policing is the future for the Cape Girardeau police department. Ultimately, he hopes to see the city build public safety precincts which include fire and police departments in a shared facility.

"I think community policing embraces many things, including patrol, traffic, school resource officers and other things," he said. "What Charlie and Ike started in 1994 has been very well-implemented. We're going to continue that tradition."