New Town to hold community policing meeting
New Town to hold community policing meeting
By Jerry W. Kram
Law enforcement agencies in the area will be holding a meeting to talk about community issues and questions at the New Town Civic Center at 7 p.m., on Thursday, Jan. 22.
Officer James Johns, acting chief of the New Town Police Department said the meeting would be a chance for local law enforcement agencies to explain issues and dispel rumors about policing in and around New Town. The New Town PD, Three Affiliated Tribes Police Department and area safety forces will be presenting information for the public.
"We just want to address some of the concerns we have been hearing around the area," Johns said. "Some of it is rumor control and some of it will be addressing concerns of the community to make this a better place for everybody."
Johns said the purpose of the meeting will be information sharing and an opportunity for citizens to get to know their law enforcement officers.
"We want to people to know what we are hearing, what we are seeing and what we are doing to make the community a better place," Johns said. "This is an opportunity to share and come up with solutions for the problems we face in New Town."
One of the topics Johns wants to cover in the meeting is the basic operations of the NTPD. He said he wants people to understand how the department functions and the constraints it operates under. "The biggest thing is letting people know what we do," Johns said. "Knowing our ;jurisdictional limits and allowing people to see what we do. We won’t be putting on a complete academy, but we will show the things we run across on a daily basis – the guns, the drugs and the things that people don’t see. We want people to know there are reasons why we do certain things."
