BLAINE, Minn. – ( Nov. 8, 2018) – For many years, residents in a community off Radisson Drive and Cloud Drive have operated as a Crime Watch neighborhood. Blaine Police Community Outreach Officer Kim Kiley said in order to earn that classification—and the telltale signs posted ostensibly warning would-be criminals—at least 50 percent of neighbors had to participate in at least two yearly meetings.
“We can’t be everywhere,” said Kiley. “Having eyes and ears everywhere within the city that are willing to report suspicious activity and suspicious people and call and tell us about it makes our job a lot easier.”
Now Blaine Police want to make it easier for communities to get involved. That’s one of the concepts behind the new Community Connect program, which launched Thursday, November 8. It is touted as a combination of new electronic tools to track and fight crime and also more organization of Night to Unite events.
“We still want people to get out and meet people face-to-face and still familiarize themselves with the neighborhood,” said Kiley.
Kiley said Blaine Police want residents and business owners to still report and share information via social media about crimes and possible identifying information about possible suspects. A lot of the time, that involves surveillance images from private security systems. Now, police have to ask each individual homeowner for those images. That has proven successful in solving crimes recently, but Community Connect will allow those who own the camera systems to register with the city to make the gathering of that information more efficient, according to Kiley.
“At no time will anyone have any direct access to (the homeowner’s) camera,” said Kiley. “Only when an event occurs and officers need assistance to locate maybe some footage within a neighborhood will they knock on someone’s door to ask them if they have footage.”
The hope is people in Blaine’s neighborhoods will continue doing what they’re already doing but do so in a more organized fashion through the department.
“We’re not able to do our job if we don’t have that community trust,” said Sgt. Ted Berg. “That can start from people who have good experiences with us and have seen us doing good things. Part of that two-way communication is not only people giving us good information but also that they understand what’s going on and can feel better about what we’re doing to help them out.”
Berg and Kiley both emphasized Community Connect isn’t meant to replace or render obsolete Neighborhood Watch or Community Crime Watch programs already in place.
“We’re simply bringing it really to the modern age and making sure people have more opportunity to connect with their police department and more opportunities to make their neighborhood and community safe,” said Berg.
