really for officers to get out in the community doing a lot of programs they're going to talk a little bit about that tonight for instance our neighborhood watch groups with our sixteen different areas within the city we're going to do presentations tonight on community policing our officers are going to get up and do that in a minute here also going to be talking about neighborhood watch a couple officers doing that as well as gets got some of our guys going to do some holiday scams and holiday safety tips for you tonight so without further ado i'm going to have our community policing president presenters come up and talk a little bit  policing with new prevention measures such as problem solving committing gauge men and community partnership partnerships with police traditional policing it's something that we're getting away from and moving into the community policing traditional policing was viewed as a reactive policing approach based on crime prevention through temperature all services and calls for service and usually resulted in negative impacts with the general public typically with traditional policing the only time citizens saw the police is when they needed help when something was going wrong and you know now with community policing you get to meet your officers maybe a national might alter whatever and see who we are not on the bad side of things  gets us on the flip side on the good side what we need also is a peace proactive policing style and it's based on problem solving rather than reactive policing response it's a partnership with the community for  problem solving some of the benefits of community policing it improves the relationship between the police and the community it gives a community a sense of responsibility and accountability for preventing crime police have communication with the public what crimes are problems and what are affecting the community it also allows a community to be the eyes and ears of the department the police can't be everywhere at once the citizens are so it helps one your cultural with your police officers so you can call us and be very forthcoming with whatever issues you're having and also prevents crimes and sort of problems before they become a nuisance you know being upfront in knowing your officer being personal them you can talk to about your problems and we can try and fix your problems before they become a bigger problem or a nuisance so the north need police the strategies and goals one of them is to create increased communication with citizens in the city through proactive patrol and social media such as our facebook account that we got twitter and to have open lines of communication with the public we have you see our creative policing partnership patrol map this is this is a specific community policing partnership where officers assigned to designated areas geographically and you can communicate with your assigned officer that that way it's also to continue to have positive interaction  public through city events and programs some of those programs obviously the most popular one i think is national night out all the block parties and stuff and all the block parties i'm sure everyone has seen where we can come all interact t community the bike rodeo it's a thing where we just started up this last year again we have a little bicycle course with bikes bicycles see few tips for the the youngsters that come in and we also have a raffle through donations and stuff to have the  kids who participate we can get a prizes and like bike helmet stuff like that neighborhood watch over you already said and crime prevention house checks and evaluations i don't lot of you are aware of the burglaries we had last year you know with that we can check your house when the internet if you have a facebook i strongly suggest following us we post a lot on their recovered property crimes that have happened is to keep you guys updated on what we're doing and what's going on we also have an anonymous tip line so if something's going on in your neighborhood you want to remain completely anonymous the phone number six five one some four seven cops or some for seven to six seven seven also or non emergency line seven question if you know our caller department would be more and have an answer any questions you guys have  once again the neighborhood watch events of surrey mail that is also going to list on the bottom here if you need to ask any questions any more than happy to answer any questions you guys might have the most poorly face to face interaction  annoy us we're not robots we want to get to know you guys and you know continue to grow their community policing so all any questions for these to appear i know we have some new citizens attending tonight so just want to say we really make our cops assessable accessible here in the city in our same paul every citizen has complete access to e mail and contact information so we really try to break down the barriers by getting those officers in the community in their specific neighborhoods so if you have a you locate your neighborhood where you're living you can associate that with your police officer and if you have a question or you need some traffic enforcement or you're seeing some suspicious going on you get in contact with those officers in the will immediately address the issue so yes sir you can certainly stop in the great thing about these guys talked about as our vacation check program with our police reserve unit so if you it's a free service you leave you go out of town for a certain period of time or a night or two you want your house check to come in here  away farm or watch for a house watch farm the dates and who's got keys to the house in case we need to get in contact with somebody and we'll go around and check the property make sure the doors and windows are secure properly lighted that type of think just keep an eye on your property it's a free service you taxpayer service so good thing to do not not not a lot of people know about it so  thing else alice also is a part of our new bike patrol unit here too so in the summertime we get them out on the bicycles officer leave here in the back he's also a member of it so really you know it's just about get him out of the squad cars get out in the parks meaning people really breaking down the barriers crime is anonymous feature that's why that's why crime exists to sort of speak you know so we take that in him and he away from crime we get to know people get to know the neighborhoods you guys get to know your neighbors we break down those barriers and crime typically goes down yeah sure yeah absolutely and they can contact with people that are hanging on the gateway trail you know it's a big part of the city's eq a way it's busy now especially with that rotary park building down there down on thirty six it's getting to be kind of a  central location for us so y on officially it goes back to like one thousand nine hundred forty eight right now about forty percent of americans are part of the national i mean part of the neighborhood watch program which basically means it's one of the largest privately programs in the  nation how it works basically what neighborhood watch does is a stablished actually an occasion between the communities and the police my doing that it really kind of focuses on people being visible reporting crimes letting people know that if something unusual neighborhood it's going to be reported it goes from a little as having a walk group within your neighborhood so people can see that people are outside it goes to if your neighbors don moving their trash cans up back up to the garage it goes to just stopping and talking with police officers they talked earlier about the mapping program and about accessibility with officers and how in my opinion how they would watch really does work it's two components it's not just the neighborhood or the community working can can work together in she mentioned amber did the garbage cans mail stuff like that so when your neighbor is gone for the niger whatever you see a garbage can at the end of the road so that maybe as you walk by walking your dog you have the kids maybe you bring their garbage can up to the hole so somebody does drive by and they notice that house they don't think oh nobody's home right now it's all about looking out for each other it's about improving your quality of life in the more you know your neighbors and the more that you can work together with your neighbors to kind of keep an eye on each other the better you're going to feel about your neighborhood the better the safer you're going to feel and the more information you're going to help us with in the long run the other thing is a question we get asked a lot is when do i call nine one one when do we call a neighbor and that is a really hard question to answer because every person is going to be different you live in the neighborhood you guys watch your neighborhood you know what is suspicious and what doesn't normally happen in your neighborhood you know that certain cars that aren't coming up and down the streets all the time or an individual that doesn't belong whenever you feel unsafe you feel that something is out of place then it's time to call on and there can be a simple if there's somebody in the neighborhood that doesn't look right they've been looking in wrong and rogers whatever the case may be call us up it doesn't mean that we're going to do anything front desk after ask for whatever offers on it to say this is what i saw i don't know this anything but i just thought it was weird happened three times now those are the things that help us give you guys more patrol more protection also the sheet that we provided in the observation document when you saw that helps us in the future when we get called back maybe there's a pattern of things make a copy of it written down and then when we say observations of physical we don't want that we don't want it's fine we'll take anything we can get but when you say suspicious activity what does that actually mean this is a she said to be me it's going to be totally different than what it might mean to you so suspicious activity instead of saying that say the individual was looking in car windows the individual had a hold of a face mask and it's the results of information like that be specific so it will help us going forward things like now in one of these he was talking about is making the group smaller for example where i live that obviously it's a big neighborhood but what we do is that it's just the front of the block set based other so that's one group for us down the street three or four blocks that kind of get together so that's what we're talking about making it a smaller so it's manageable and that's where the communication comes in it's not necessarily that part of our town i don't want my neighbors to know there's a couple of them i don't want to know in my town but there might be one or two that you want to contact and say hey i'm out of town till saturday that's what's going on the example was about three weeks ago we had a call at one o'clock in the morning one of the neighbors goes on vacation his neighbor to write always knows this he got home late and forgot to check his iraq store well the neighbor calls that kind of talk and she was like i'm so sorry to call this is not like him he doesn't do this and we're knocking waking up at about one thirty and he was like i got home and i totally forgot check my garage door but he said that was really cool but they called because that's not like me to leave my garage door open so those are things that she knew but he was out of town didn't know he came back early and obviously left his garage door open that's where that communication comes in and after that phone tree system comes in as well to start this what we say is recruit your neighbors talk to your neighbors and see how big you want your group who's going to be a part of your particular group second is contact and organize the neighbors set up a meeting some people do annually you can do it twice a year you can do a quarterly whatever works for you and your team contacted to sign so basically know we are always be able to come to every meeting but we'll definitely try our send somebody else i can't come to mine but he's available he might be able to go to it and give out information back to me and then implement the phone tree and once again the phone tree is not necessarily i'm going to contact fifteen people something happens i'm going to contact these two and maybe you're assigned a contact too and so on best typically how the phone tree works or not contacting ninety people at one time once that's  mean nothing if you're not actually doing the stuff that goes along with the program which i said is being visible is communication and having those meetings so once you've established the meetings in the meeting dates and spoken to your as e session so we can all get to meet the officers and neighborhood officers and have some pie and all that stuff so there when you call nine one one you're going to be told communicator is going to be the t c so the answering the phone they're really the information to the dispatch yes so the dispatcher the actual person that's disk dispatching the squad cars is not the one taking a phone call they're they're asking the information as they're as you're giving them the information on the nine one one call they're typing it in and it's going out to the the dispatcher who's actually dispatching the squads in your area so as the already being dispatched they continue to ask for information and they're continue to type it in updating the squads as they're in route to your call so other downtown st paul's or dispatching unit yeah i think it's changed over the years now so now when you call in it's actually going to go right to ignore st paul call taker and you know they're going to their assigned to the specific area so any other questions for officers you don't and that's ok ok if you don't need the whole neighborhood maybe you only need five of you guys to be able to say hey we're going to meet and maybe we'll take walks on sundays and check things out it's ok to distribute that information we do have to be poor like i don't want any flyers to my house well we'll avoid your house then you know just talk to neighbors because it isn't that maybe the five houses over here will say now maybe the three over here will say yes but because of you for you can prevent a lot of crime for that neighborhood and if you're the person like you said i don't mind sending out e mails i don't mind communicating then you're the best option to be that captain of that of that group because it doesn't bother you have the time to do it and i think that as you start doing more activities more people will start getting involved just like we're doing when we start doing the bike program in the fishing with cotton we're hoping to do that more and more obviously the first you do things you don't have a lot of attendance the more you do it and you have more people coming to it so i say if it's just you and no one neighbor starting out will take that so great thank you and now we have off certainly an officer betts coming up to talk about holiday safety tips and scams going on and they're passing out some brochures regarding their presentation and after this we do invite everybody to stay after and mingle with within our st paul police department and get to know your neighborhood  cops could could i have the c s i shows up piro quickly for these guys get started these are community service officers for the city in our st paul i want to have them introduce themselves and talk a little bit about what their role within the police department is and within our community here and you know my name is jordan guard this is dustin thompson and dominic jara i'm not sure if you guys have seen it's a white trailblazer says community service on it and we've gone to some communities some neighborhood watch means and stuff basically the role of a community service officer here we take care of a lot of the smaller things such as animal complaints parking complaints some of the medical calls that way we keep our officers freed up just in case something else has to happen in the city we also take care of the evidence here all the property that comes in through the city we manage it manage the evidence room it's really also a stepping stone to become a police officer myself i just graduated college and doesn't and dominic they're both in college right now it's a great stepping stone to become an officer to get your foot in the door learn the day to day  s that police go through and become you know part of the department saw mostly animal and parking complaints are our major duty that we take care of for the department also do part patrol we also we partake in the house checks prisoner transports let's say someone is arrested instead of taking an officer out of the city for an hour to bring someone to jail we do it to keep the officers in the city for more police protection you know it's basically we try to do everything we can to keep the officers you know in the city to be you know here we can do the smart things to try to make everything run smooth so any questions about what we do or yes sir sometimes we are if there's a weapon involved call typically we stay away till everything is clear we have tasers we don't have handguns you know on your typical call though non violent yes  we will back up the officers so yes sir yes sir we do we we will be usually primary on all the medical calls so yes actually part of the degree is to have first responder certified so all we're all syrup certified first responders as well so the community service officer is a paid position with the city there are volunteers is a light blue where the time of season where everybody's buying gifts and buy a lot of stuff online and for family members for christmas so that for the holidays so we just wanted to give us a little tips on what to do with online scams and what to do with holiday safety tips  we're going to go over some ways to avoid becoming a victim during the holiday season so first ones to be online scams with more shoppers than ever using mobile devices and computers for holiday shopping many are and avert leaving themselves vulnerable safe stick with the big name retailers or on small size familiar payment system such as pay pal the second one is don't click on hyperlinks and e mails one common scan is involves a lot of emails that people sin hyperlinks that  want you to open so once you open it sometimes they ask fully personal information such as being called numbers you want to be able to stay away from the so called law give viruses also and you don't want to be  have had a call once where does lady got an e mail saying that she had a virus on her computer and she clicked on the link and it started a virus and it was retracting personal information from her computer on to that i know a lot of a sears or cell phones and how many of us have cell phones in here tonight don't you buddy i use it for shopping wise buying stuff online stuff like that that's another thing to be aware about basically use caution when shopping by phone mobile devices make shopping more convenient but they often that protection such as such as anti virus is where your computer will have that where your phones don't consider avoiding entering your payment information on a phone and use big retailers which often come with extra security so at that credit cards you come with an axe to fraud protection which means consumers might be able to get their money back if they fall victim to fraud and shopper sked should contact their credit card company at the first sign of a scam and usually get a lot of these calls and so you're going to need to make a report with the using the same password across multiple accounts including financial accounts can leave you at risk for password break ins for important accounts use own secure passwords that are long and difficult to guess one thing to stay away from is do not use your name as a password a lot of people use that and it's don't just go in there just those just try to log in under your name just type in and as much information they know about you and they can see so this crack your password next i'm going to request refunds shoppers have the right to cancel orders and get refunds of orders or late or show up damaged or defective if the retailer is this the refund shoppers can call in their credit card companies for help and hopefully they can read get your money back for your send you a new package of what you ordered is don't friend strangers foster sometimes prey on people over social media sites just so such as facebook to protect yourself to protect themselves consumers should avoid something from questions from strangers it's easy to unfriend someone after accidentally accepting a friend ques next one is avoid fake holiday cards that might look like like you're spreading cheer but holiday e cards can pack a hidden punch but are acting recipients to click on embedded links which basically comes back to your hyperlinks which is you know basically come in and get your information and they can funnel to scam sites if you're see even a card be sure you know how to send it before opening it and the last time we have is schedule regular people work review reviewing credit card and being statements each month can help consumers catch any errors as well as the first sign of potential fraud each in the charges seem incorrect or your credit card company or big no next we have holidays see if you tips so when you guys are on the boat make sure you shop during the day try to shop during the day when whenever possible and shop with a friend safety in numbers as better than shopping alone when you're more a victim of these predators that are out there be aware of your surroundings pay attention to who is around you and what they are and what they're doing and what activities are going on be aware of someone is watching you following you and you should notice who is around you say for instance if you're basically an aisle number two and you notice somebody that's kind of suspicious kind of following you just be aware of that don't ever walk out to your car with loaded always kind of have your hands available or keys in your hands using your keys and between your knuckles can also be used as a weapon not sure if a lot of you know up that's what i do want i'm on a boat in this case i do have my hands full pick your parking spot wisely look for a well that area never try to park in the dark that's kind of where all the basically that's become a victim at that point if you own a small car trying not to park next to a large vehicle which can block your vision or for our point of view of security cameras so always try to stay invisible light and out in the open try to stay another citizens view of all your entering or exiting your vehicle no do not leave your vehicle on attended while the engine is running even if you're only going to be away for it for  seconds that's when a lot of people will hide behind their vehicles or even out in the open and you'll go return the car to the cart corral and this you'll come back in your car will be leaving the scene so you want to show you guys or maybe not be getting into a warm vehicle but you'll be getting where you know that you're going to be going home with that vehicle that night and like i said before keep your keys out when your protein your vehicle and always keep them in the palm your hand with the key and be aware of how you carry your purse or try to carry only the amount of cash you'll need to make your purchases and limit the number of credit cards to only the necessary ones for your current shopping trip for that day keep a list of all credit cards along with contact four numbers for each card and keep it in a safe place with the hope in the event they're or stolen discuss various situations with your children and what they will do if you are separated and what they will do if approached by a stranger and what will you do to basically just before you go out with your family or kids going to have a pet a plan in place that if you do end up getting lost whether it's small america or even smaller when you're like maple at mall just just be aware of not all of us are good people out there and there are some people who want to prey on kids so we are going to have a safety plan and  like to drink that stuff and want to be able to control that so if you do drink remain with your friends you want to be loss you won't be the only one walking around that makes you very vulnerable to be taken advantage of and consider you ladies consider how much and what kind of jewelry your wearing these looks for a lot of people with a lot of jewelry try to be able to hide it i know you're old yes i want to look pretty and all that but when things can be taken off your neck of your home around doors windows and driveways that's true just trees around your doors and windows not only is it safer for you guys but it's also safer also if you have your address there sometimes it gets difficult you know you can put us in the area but to actually find a direct address sometimes bushes kind of basically hide the address that we're actually looking for to be able to approach your door from the outside and you're certain that there is no intruder waiting for you behind those bushes keep them short and maintained and also where they cannot be seen from outside your home i actually had a recent call regarding a stolen package and the guys basically dropped it off in the front door and unfortunately they are going to reimburse him which is a good thing but at the same time he was  building a custom box to put outside to make it look like a planter so it's something that is good to keep in mind that having something out there that maybe doesn't look like anything but it is something that's going to be safety for your  recommend leaving garage door service doors open where we can do is basically we kind of patrol the area time to try to deter that kind of activity but same time it's happening during broad daylight and so the best thing to do is basically go on the comment  stay leave the package during the certain hours if you know you're going to be home at this time or put it in a safe place that only you or maybe your spouse  also i saw a news not a couple days ago was some to similar to that were i don't know if it was u p s or fed ex but they you can drop it off at a different location such as like a small retail store and as long as you show up and show your id and they confirm that's you you can pick up your packages there and go oh i just recently sold out a new store i must be something new i have no idea why they don't know i can call them and they you know as they walk to your car with a purpose don't just love the game kind of stroll throughout the parking lot you want to make sure you get to your destination get there quick get there quick get there safe that's the main point and that's why we're out here tonight to try to get you guys out there in the middle of the more safer with holiday shopping what shortcuts you may take through unfamiliar areas and unsafe areas with stopping traffic and leave enough room between your car and one of you one in front of you and event that you need to pull away quickly we do that as officers we do stop at intersections we do stop pretty far away from other vehicles in case we can merge in the calls or in case something happens we can pull out pretty quickly away from other vehicles but as soon as we do the same thing we do we don't mean steve three or four cars things back but enough to where if anything happens or emergency or if we pull up behind you guys you're able to pull to side for us to get through and that is it for our safety tips is there any questions at all and we do have a lot of handouts in the back in regards to a lot of different types of stamps from the attorney general so if you guys do want to pick some up after this session there are a whole bunch of other information the back to a little bit more in depth a it was one of the companies are using the same people were driving people were driving up and down the street hitting the button or waiting for the garage doors to open up i don't know i was sad i don't think we have that as much as we did in the past but they've kolob the company to correct that and think one big safety item that we need to would like to talk about is leaving valuable items inside your vehicle i can't tell you how many calls we get and hundreds of calls here that are officers to people even valuable then they'll just break open a quick window there's a lot of tools these days that can crack windows open right away and they'll be gone just like that but so you come out all your gives all your bags and stuff are gone or maybe you can make a quick jog home before you go to the next store you know your v called especially when you're talking about your computer and you may have a problem that's saying to do just hang up you know it's probably just nonsense and chances are the people can't even speak proper english you just laugh at them you hang up your put your phone on a card or a lot of talk to empty room just walking if you're not expecting it it might be something that you don't want to know so and they want a number from you or a password and get a laugh out of whatever or sleep for me i do have my customer there and i always had a call back and i've had that call at least four times and i don't have them this is my work number i get them all the time and slip sometimes they will they'll use local companies i think last year they used an bank or something i would anchor make that hit so it could be a bank that you might actually be using and i would just say he said hang up and call back your bank you don't i don't talk to them on the phone they call gee you can hang up call back or just go into the bank and say hey you called or whatever that's it's know the question first off if you guys ever heard of this woman you know on a lector garage story you got the arm that and the crook all these got to do is give this a good slam in just the right place and that thing will fall right down  knowing of stuff with your windows make sure they're locked we have a piece of water there to keep it and stuff like that that's just thinking  all right well thank you guys appreciate that i just want to thank everybody for coming out our officers here worked tirelessly here to protect you guys and to do community outreach and really break down the barrier with your police department come out meet the officers we're going to have questions  we're going to meet and greet after here with cake and coffee and thanks to lori for putting this all together for us really appreciate it thank you so really really this is a chance for everybody to get to know their neighborhood officers we have our whole entire police department here so yeah come on out to come talk to us be great they they we respond right from here so thank you guys we really appreciate it