On June 25, Acting Chief George McMains and the Newton Police Department (NPD) announced their upcoming summer community policing initiative called Operation Safe Sidewalks: an increase in foot and bicycle patrols in village squares, neighborhoods, and parks.
“It’s officers out, walking through neighborhoods, parks, village squares, just out, walking through these areas, engaging with community members as they see them, stopping into shops and talking with maybe a clerk or talking with a patron. It’s just officers being out there, being visible, being accessible to people,” Bureau Commander of the NPD Community Services Bureau Lieutenant Amanda Henrickson said. “It’s the same thing with the bicycle patrol. You’ll see officers on bicycles — usually they wear a yellow shirt or some type of a police uniform. You can tell it’s a police officer because they’ll have their gear on, [and] they’ll have the badge. They’ll be wearing a bicycle helmet, as opposed to a police uniform cap, but they are readily identifiable as police officers.”
According to a release by NPD, “foot patrols are historically viewed as one of the best ways to reduce and prevent crime in problem areas. The Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment found that increasing their foot patrols in problem areas resulted in a 23% decrease in violent crime. Other studies have shown foot patrols increase the feeling of safety within the community.”
Operation Safe Sidewalks is the first phase of Newton’s P.E.O.P.L.E. Initiative, which stands for Police Empowering Our Public through Leadership and Education. NPD developed the program with the intention of empowering the community through educational skill-building opportunities. The initiative is funded by a Department of Justice (DOJ) Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) micro-grant that the NPD was awarded last year.
The initial award from the DOJ COPS Grant was approximately $175,000. As part of the NPD’s P.E.O.P.L.E. Initiative, $28,000 of the grant is being used to fund Operation Safe Sidewalks.
Operation Safe Sidewalks is a response to community feedback stating that some people in the community felt unsafe walking in their neighborhoods, particularly in areas impacted by incidents of hate/bias and violent crime, especially in the afternoon, evening, and Saturday daytime hours, according to a press release by NPD.
Lt. Henrickson said that reported incidents — such as on the final night of Passover in Newton Centre, where residents walking through the neighborhood were victimized and harassed by an individual driving in a vehicle — encouraged NPD toward the program.
“The response to that incident was many family members, and especially families with children in the neighborhoods there — did not feel safe having their children walking to their religious schools in the area. They did not feel safe having their children walking to their houses of worship in the area,” she said. “In that instance, our officers were able to do an investigation and charge the individual in that incident; however, there’s still those feelings of fear that can linger, even if an arrest is made in a case.”
So for this summer, NPD is hoping that Operation Safe Sidewalks will not only decrease rates of crime, but also fortify connections between the police and community members.
“[The officers are] being accessible to people as they’re out there, and so they’re hopefully going to act as a visible deterrent to any potential bad actors in the area, because [people will] be able to see these readily identifiable officers out patrolling,” Lt. Henrickson said. “But it also provides an additional opportunity for officers to be there and to be welcoming to people in the community to come up, have a conversation, tell them what’s going on in the area, let them know any concerns, and then they can bring that information back to us here at the Police Department, then we can record it and kind of keep track and see which neighborhoods our officers have been going to and what feedback they’ve been getting from the community members that they’ve been interacting with.”
Bella Ishanyan is a Fig City News intern, Massachusetts High School Journalist of the Year, and off to UMass Amherst in September.