Madison police officially launched the department’s Community Outreach and Resource Education team this month.
The department’s goal is to maintain and expand its current community policing programs and bridge the trust gap between communities, particularly communities of color, and officers.
The agency works collaboratively with local resources like the Madison Metropolitan School District, Centro Hispano, the Urban League of Greater Madison, the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County and the YMCA.
Madison police Sgt. Scott Kleinfeldt, an officer in the CORE team, said officers are particularly focused on building relationships with youth.
“If I can meet with a youth, and it’s just for a good thing, whether it’s eating lunch in the middle school or doing some type of summer programming, we’re building that relationship,” Kleinfeldt said. “We want to teach that the police are there for good things.”
MPD laid the groundwork for the CORE team in 2014 after the city’s Race to Equity report detailed the issue of racial disparities in Madison. The city received grant funding to start the program in hopes of reducing those disparities.
“That Race to Equity report was alarming,” Kleinfeldt said. “This isn’t a police issue, it’s a community issue.”
The team’s launch comes at a time when police officers have been criticized, both in Madison and across the country, for how they interact with people of color.
“If you look at anything nationally or locally, that’s the big issue right now, is that trust gap,” Kleinfeldt said.
Kleinfeldt said getting kids interacting with officers in a positive environment, like a basketball court, a soccer field, or a school lunchroom, helps keep them out of the criminal justice system.
Kleinfeldt said one example is “Friday Nights at the Y,” a program that allows area youth to spend summer nights playing sports and learning new skills with officers at area YMCA branches.
“These are all programs that we’ve had in place for a long time at MPD,” he said. “Our unit is just to help strengthen those existing programs and create new ones and create new partnerships.”
A.J. Kriha, senior director of programs at the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County, said he’s seen the difference officers make in breaking trust barriers when they interact with youth in an environment they feel comfortable in.
“There used to be times when I very first started and there’d be a police officer or vehicle in the parking lot, and the first comment was ‘Who’s getting arrested?'” Kriha said. “Police officers stop by so often now and make an effort to be with us, to greet our families, to greet our kids, that has kind of just torn down naturally.”
Kleinfeldt said part of the CORE team’s mission will be to educate patrol officers on community policing techniques and how they can help connect citizens with community resources in their daily work.
“Part of our role is to teach officers on the street about the services that these organizations offer,” he said. “If an officer runs into a youth that has problems in some aspect of their life, they know what agency and what to refer that youth to.”
Currently, Kleinfeldt and two other MPD officers make up the CORE team. Police plan on expanding the program in June 2017, when they expect to receive a second grant that will allow them to add three more officers.
