East Fifth Area Commission

The Work Group

Community Work Group

Community Policing Workgroup

The advocates in the Milo-Grogan neighborhood invite the residents to attend a workgroup on the development of a Community Policing Initiative. This initiative will try to encompass all of the issues needed to make the neighborhood safer place to live and work.

Traditional methods of policing the Milo-Grogan neighborhood have failed this community. Some members of the neighborhood have noted that dispatchers on the telephone are cold and remote or that response time is slow. Others have said that the only time they see an officer in the neighborhood is when they show up to arrest someone. It is the belief of some in this neighborhood that these problems are caused by police officers that do not know the residents of the Milo-Grogan area or the geography of the neighborhood itself.

The objectives of this workgroup will be to bring a permanent presence of police to the neighborhood. The idea is to have officers come into the neighborhood who will interact with the people and help them create strong block watch groups. The goal to achieving this will be to have police officers based within the community in a nontraditional role, day in and day out.

The workgroup will look at and implement a plan to create a place in the community that will house the future neighborhood police presence. In addition, the possibility of creating a permanent home for the area commission, and a future business association for the area will be investigated by the workgroup at the same time.

The workgroup will try to establish a development corporation that will be the beginning of this project and others to follow in the neighborhood. It is important that residents participate and become involved in order to succeed. Please contact Avis Smith at 299-3617. We can then arrange a time that the workgroup will meet on a regular basis to make Milo-Grogan a safe place to live.



Neighborhood Advocate
Avis Boykin Smith